Despite being really, really not fond of MRAs Amanda Marcotte is actually pretty ardent about her support for men. Case in point: while she things divorced and separated men still support their children she also thinks it's evil to force indigent and imprisoned men to pay it.
There's a twist to the story, below, that I think makes the point that traditional, conservative anti-feminists are far more brutal to men than even the dead, white "radfems" of the decidedly radical 1970s. Emphasis mine.
But throwing men in jail for not paying child support is just stupid. Charging men who are in prison and literally cannot make the money to pay child support for child support is just stupid. These are policies that not only hurt men that might very well intend to pay child support but can’t, but it doesn’t actually do anything to get the child support paid. Men who can’t make money can’t pay child support, and being behind bars pretty much means you can’t hold a job.
I realize [expletive deleted] blame feminists for this, but it’s worth pointing out these backwards, punitive laws tend to be in place in anti-feminist, conservative states. The reason behind them isn’t “feminazis out to get paid”. It’s actually because conservatives believe that mothers are on public assistance not because they’re poor, but because they’re not married. They still subscribe to this ridiculous notion that Mom + Dad + Baby = No Problems Ever Again, and figure that if people are struggling financially, it’s because they’re sexual deviants. And so their child support laws are geared not towards making sure men pay for their children so much as punishing people for not being married, and punishing people for being poor. It’s no good for the mothers, either, because they’re often expected to go to great lengths to try to get the money from the fathers before they’re permitted to get public assistance to feed their children. This is all rooted in a highly punitive view of gender roles and responsibilities, and no one benefits from it.
Source: Pandagon
I think that's about right. It is evil to hold non-custodial parents (it's not just men) responsible for child support if they're simply and legitimately unable to pay. It's particularly evil to use child support as just another way for legislators and prosecutors to pile on punishment than either law, justice, or (more to the point) penal theory would otherwise allow. And finally, as Amanda makes clear, it's also evil for social service agencies to refuse to provide assistance for children and their custodial parents (usually but not always women) when the primary-earning parent (usually but not always men) are also indigent. Or in jail.
But do check remember that not only do such laws tend to be more draconian in jurisdictions where feminism has less influence, many or most of those laws predate feminism by decades!
So once again, who really hates men? And if you were genuinely interested in men's rights, against whom would you rationally expend most of your efforts to resist their influence? In fact, who might you most logically want to form alliances to combat such oppression?
Oh, and last point? At least in progressive jurisdictions legislators and courts, legislators, and society in general are all at least sympathetic to two crucial-to-men's-rights issues.
1) That divorce law and child support aren't strictly gendered, such that it's not enshrined that mothers stay home with children and fathers are responsible for all financial support, with the result that if a mother abandons her children or if a mother has more financial resources than the father then child support can go the other way, and
2) That opportunities exist for women such that they are economically, socially, politically, and legally capable of earning a living wage and supporting themselves and their children... or even their children and their ex-husbands if the husbands instead provided most of the primary care.
Items #1 and 2 aren't fully distributed yet, even in progressive, feminist-friendly jurisdictions, but they're a lot further along than in conservative, feminist-antagonistic ones. Thing is, though, that traditional anti-feminists don't want women to have equal rights (these days they don't seem to want women to have rights at all!) Such jurisdictions actively don't want men providing anything but financial support for their children (ok, maybe laudably beating them with their belts "when your father gets home.") But sure as shittin' you're not going to find many feminists who want that for themselves or men.
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Amanda isn't even close on
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 2011-03-24 06:53.Amanda isn't even close on this one. Child support laws aren't there to punish or prevent out of wedlock births. They are the cause of out of wedlock births. We didn't have very many out of wedlock births when we didn't have child support laws. Sexism against men is the only reason that unmarried men are forced to pay child support. It's all reponsibilities and no rights for the man. It's all rights and no responsibilities for the woman. That's exactly how feminists want it.
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"We didn't have very many out
Submitted by figleaf on Thu, 2011-03-24 09:50."We didn't have very many out of wedlock births when we didn't have child support laws."
So according to you, since women didn't even get the fucking right to vote until 1927 the Home of the Good Shepherd here in Seattle, which I used to drive past every day, which at one point was one of the largest buildings in north Seattle, wasn't built in 1911 primarily to house women who were pregnant out of wedlock.
Because, according to you, there just weren't any out-of-wedlock births until them dang femininisters got their hook into us men's precious bodily fluids, eh? Yup, there was just no such thing as homes for "wayward" girls, anywhere in the world, until right around 1968.
Seriously!
figleaf
Now that was punishment. My
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 2011-03-25 08:40.Now that was punishment. My original statement of there being fewer out of wedlock births is correct. You obviously disagree with the punishment but the fact is that it worked. My point is that child support is punishment against MEN. There is absolutely no reason that an unmarried father should be court ordered to hand over his earnings to a woman. Women want all the choice but none of the responsibility. You are a sexist if you think men should be punished for a woman's "choice".
And I'm sure you know that feminist groups have come out against presumed joint custody. They are in favour of presuming that women are the superior parent. They are not for equality. They are for special rights and privledge for women.
Maybe it's because I'm an
Submitted by figleaf on Fri, 2011-03-25 10:58.Maybe it's because I'm an actual father or something but... what kind of dickhead doesn't want to do everything he can to support his own fucking children? Even if he can't stand their mother? This isn't a trick question, by the way. I genuinely don't understand it.
Also, on joint custody I'm going to have to call your bluff: you can't make a blanket statement about "feminist groups," not least because there are "feminist groups" that are quite enthusiastic about joint custody and argue, both in court and before legislatures in favor of it. For instance:
I can see how, if someone's so blinded with fear, they might not recognize that there are different schools of feminism. But they're absolutely there, and some of those schools are entirely sympathetic to positions that are also taken by (normal, non-misogynist) father's and men's rights organizations.
Also, not to put too fine a point on it but while there are other feminist groups that do argue against joint custody they're joined in much larger numbers by anti-feminist groups who argue that it's not just tradition but "god's purpose" that children stay with their mothers. .
And finally, based on my own prior experience in the very-poor and near-homeless community, it's not feminists but highly anti-feminist conservatives who've set up the current system that pretty much obliges poor men to "abandon" their families when they can't support them lest their families receive no social or charitable assistance at all. I mean, it ain't *feminist* groups that send inspectors into single women's homes at 5 AM to do bed checks to make sure the father isn't really staying with his family! Point being that even when there are subsets of feminism who argue for essential gender roles they're just echoing mainstream society. Meanwhile the rest of us (I'm an anti-essentialist feminist) think gender-bound ideologies are a trap regardless of source.
fl
Maybe it's because I'm an
Submitted by Danny (not verified) on Tue, 2011-04-05 21:06.Maybe it's because I'm an actual father or something but... what kind of dickhead doesn't want to do everything he can to support his own fucking children? Even if he can't stand their mother?
Probably a "dickhead" that has tried to do everything he can but is still pushed away by mothers they can't stand and a system that is more than happy to be their weapon of choice.
Funny. You know, when I left
Submitted by figleaf on Wed, 2011-04-06 00:40.Funny. You know, when I left my dead-end career and moved across country to go to college, at age 26, no less, my mom started sending me a small amount of money once a month. Even though living on opposite sides of the country she couldn't see me except maybe once a year at Christmas.
And you know what's even funnier? My dad sent me money too, even though he was on the same side of the country my mom was.
Funny how for the kind of real man my dad is, and the real woman my mom is, it wasn't any trouble at all to support one of their children all the way through the Reagan recession even though neither of them had custody of me and they only got to see me once a year.
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Oh, and one last thing about that. Even though I know how much you hate feminism, thanks in very large part to feminism, when my parents divorced because my dad wanted to move "back to the land" and my mom didn't my mom already had a good paying job -- good enough that she and my dad were able to split the child support for my younger siblings 50/50 whether they were staying at her house (early on) or his (when she had to move away to take care of her mom and our grandmother.) Without feminism then a) my mom would have had no career opportunities at all and b) therefore my dad would have had to pay 100% of child support... and probably alimony to boot.
No what's funny is that you
Submitted by Danny (not verified) on Wed, 2011-04-06 04:53.No what's funny is that you think I hate feminism. I actually don't. I'm just not pretending that its some perfect entity that is beyond reproach. But about your story. Its great that the circumstances of your parent's divorce went so well but frankly that's not always the case.
And there is big difference between being an adult and getting a little support from both parents and being a baby that is being held by one parent like a hostage. As an adult you can pretty much pick which parent is in your life. Babies don't have that luxury.
<I>Without feminism then a) my mom would have had no career opportunities at all and b) therefore my dad would have had to pay 100% of child support... and probably alimony to boot.</i>
So where is feminism when all these dads (and moms) are getting pushed out of their children's lives?
"There is absolutely no
Submitted by tlt (not verified) on Fri, 2011-03-25 18:09."There is absolutely no reason that an unmarried father should be court ordered to hand over his earnings to a woman. " If he's pulling at least half (or whatever proportion he's capable of) of the weight childcare-wise and financially, you're right. If the parents can work things out in some kind of stable, equitable way, then it's a waste of time and energy to get the courts involved.
I know a guy who has a 7-year-old with a woman who he isn't married to and has no interest in marrying. He doesn't pay child support, but the child lives with him half the week and with the mom (in the same city) half the week, on a highly organized, regulated schedule. The little boy has never known anything else, so I guess it doesn't bother him. He'll probably get sick of all that as he gets older, but it seems to be working for everyone now. But, most people can't make that work, especially if they have irregular work schedules and other children to take care of or live far apart.
I used to work in the child support enforcement bureau in the county court of a large metro area. I saw so much ridiculousness. 19-year-olds who already had four children with two or three women. 50-year-olds with 10 or 12 children with nearly as many mothers. 60-year-old single grandmothers trying to raise their child's three-year-old twins. I saw lots of instances in which the mother or both parents were paying child support to a grandparent, sister, brother, aunt, uncle or cousin, often because neither of them could stay sober, employed, out of jail or just generally get it together. Do you object to that as well?
Or is it just the principle, just the idea of a man having to give money to a woman - even though he's really giving it to the children - that bothers you? Besides, it's not like child support is winning the lottery. No one's going to coast through life on a few hundred dollars a month that they have to split between two or three kids.
I probably shouldn't have been, but I was shocked at the number of men who honestly, truly believed that the fact that they hated their child(ren)'s mother so much was a legitimate reason to not pay child support. But the same people who were too immature to look past that were often too immature to show up for visitation, pick the child up from school or buy things they'd agreed to buy.
Lordamercy, I don't miss working at that place.
Feminists, like most
Submitted by Anette (not verified) on Thu, 2011-03-24 11:53.Feminists, like most people, prefer fathers to be good caring parents rather than absent walking wallets.
Riiiiigggght. Because people
Submitted by Kaija (not verified) on Fri, 2011-03-25 05:01.Riiiiigggght. Because people will make huge life-changing forever decisions based on the changing whims of public policy and the availability of "support". That's like saying that we can't have healthcare cover gender reassignment surgery or people are going to be running to the hospital demanding sex change operations simply because they can get it paid for and people can't resists free stuff!
The "out of wedlock" births have been happening since the Year One. Girls used to be quietly sent away "to Europe" or "finishing school" or "visiting out of state relative" or forced to marry (kind of sucks for the man at the end of the shotgun too) . Thank goodness we have more choices for people of all genders and more community compassion for taking care of the children instead of punishing them for their parents' actions.
Figleaf, small
Submitted by LadyProf (not verified) on Sun, 2011-03-27 23:43.Figleaf, small correction--the right to vote came for all American women in 1920, not 1927, but Washington State men were ahead of this curve, extending the vote to women in 1910.
So she finally found it her
Submitted by Danny (not verified) on Tue, 2011-04-05 21:02.So she finally found it her heart to admit that men get a raw deal when it comes to this?
Frankly I like the fact that seems to care however considering the anti-MRA rant she pretty much gets a free pass on I'm a bit shocked. I can't help but wonder how feminsts would react if this were an MRA spewing venom about feminists while also talking about a legitimate issue.
Yeah, Amanda never spends a
Submitted by figleaf on Wed, 2011-04-06 00:21.Yeah, Amanda never spends a minute standing up for men.
I'll ask you one more time, Danny, who's the bigger threat to men, feminism or anti-feminists? Clue.
If you spent 1/10th the time carping about the bitterly anti-male, anti-feminist, pro-patriarchy Charles Murray and Karen Hymowitz as you do whining about feminists who more often than not are *actually on your side* you might get a little more respect when you do raise objections.
fl
<i>Yeah, Amanda never spends
Submitted by Danny (not verified) on Wed, 2011-04-20 16:27.<i>Yeah, Amanda never spends a minute standing up for men.</i>
Yeah, I never said such a thing. However I did say that people act like the things you point out somehow negate the negativity she spews.
<I>If you spent 1/10th the time carping about the bitterly anti-male, anti-feminist, pro-patriarchy Charles Murray and Karen Hymowitz as you do whining about feminists who more often than not are *actually on your side* you might get a little more respect when you do raise objections.</i>
So I should devote equal time in my critiquing in order to get more respect from folks that are apparently free to spend their time however they wish (because I know what happens when you expect a feminist to devote their time by someone else's standards and their reaction would be correct)?