The power differential explained in one poignant post.

EvilPundit · 2013-01-27T00:54:02+00:00

The text, for the record:

Women have much more power in relationships than men do. Not just by social convention (which, believe me, is power enough), not just because others are more sympathetic to their side of any story (which, believe me, is also more than power enough), but via the full weight and majesty of the law.

Let us construct, in our heads, a hypothetical scenario. I shall use you and I as examples, just give some sense of the impact of these events on people’s lives.

Let us suppose that we meet, by chance, in some gathering place in some city where, at some time in the future, we both reside. I am tall, handsome, muscular, well-dressed, and confident; you are pretty, intelligent, charming, and you get my jokes.

Nature takes its course.

About a year later, you decide that I am a good catch, the best of your available options, and you would like to be married. You drop hints, but I demur. I like you well enough, but you want children and I do not. Not to mention that I am still considering my options and am unready to enter into any sort of lifelong pact.

(This is the branch point. This is where we tell the story of what you could legally do, were you so inclined.)

You simply stop taking your birth control pills, without a word to me. This is not a crime, because legally, I have no right to know. They are your pills, and it is your body.

After a couple of attempts which I did not know were attempts, you become pregnant. You may have attempted with other men as well. Let’s leave that matter unresolved for the moment.

You do not tell me until you start to show. This is also perfectly legal.

Once I figure things out, I offer to pay for half the termination procedure. You decline to undergo one. This, too, is legal. The law allows you the “right to choose”. I, however, have no such right.

I do a little snooping, and discover unused quantities of birth control pills in the bathroom cabinet. Since they come in those neatly dated little wheel-things, I am easily able to deduce the exactly day you stopped. I terminate our sexual relationship post-haste.

You are angry and accuse me of putting you in this delicate situation and then abandoning you. I demur, arguing that you placed yourself in this situation. Negotiations deteriorate.

I demand a paternity test, not feeling very trusting at this point. You refuse. You can do that. You have the legal right, it’s your body, I cannot force you to undergo amniocentesis.

You give birth to a daughter, and name her Zoe. I am named on the birth certificate as the father, simply because mine was the name you gave when they asked. I was not even there.

Now, I have refused to marry you. I still have that right, in most situations. (Look up “common-law” marriage, a law that allows a woman to force a man to marry her.)

So you legally demand that I provide you with the benefits of marriage anyway, to wit, a large portion of my income. You have the legal right to do this. It’s called “child support”.

In court, I demand a paternity test, but am denied one. You see, because I offered to pay for an abortion, I acknowledged the child as mine. And my name is on the certificate. And, most important of all, the very court that is ruling on the matter receives a cut of all child support payments. (Bet you didn’t know that, did you?)

Legally, the money is for Zoe, but the checks come to you, in your name. You can spend them however you like, with no oversight whatsoever.

I’m not even sure Zoe is mine.

Now I’m in a bad situation. But the story does not end here.

The tanking economy causes budget cuts, and my cushy job as an engineer at a major defense contractor is lost. The only thing thing I can find to replace it is a job hawking cell-phones in one of those mall kiosks. This is not, however, grounds for reducing my child-support payments. The initial amount of them was determined by my income at the time, but legally, they are a right belonging to Zoe, and determined by Zoe’s need, so my income is not a factor.

Now I cannot pay. I am a “deadbeat dad”, according to society. And the newspaper my photo is published in. And the website my picture is posted on.

My failure to pay tanks my credit rating, too, with all its attendant woes.

The economy loosens up a bit, and I reapply to my old firm. They’re keen to hire me, but they can’t. With a record of delinquent child support payments, I cannot pass the background check. Now my career is blighted, too.

Many years have passed at this point, and I’m in deep trouble. Broke, no career prospects, poor credit, spotty criminal record (failure to pay child support is a misdemeanor in some jurisdictions), depressed, no means or confidence to attract another woman even if I could ever trust one again.

But the story doesn’t end here.

Desperate, I manage to find some pretext to visit you, and I steal some of Zoe’s hair from her hairbrush in the bathroom. I pay for a lab test out of my meager remaining resources.

Zoe isn’t mine.

I take you to court, and lose. Yes, lose. Because I had already been paying child support, I am the publicly acknowledged father. (If you do not believe this could possibly happen, I sympathize. It’s crazy. But google “joseph michael ocasio” and prepare to be shocked.)

Okay, end of scenario.

Look where we are. My life is indeed ruined. At no point did I have any power to stop it (except by remaining celibate my entire life). At every point, what you did, you had the legal right to do. You didn’t have to “get away” with anything. You could write a book about it, and nothing would change, because it was all legal.

The only thing protecting most men from this fate is nothing but women’s lack of inclination to do this. They are entirely in her power.

Would you accept being in an 1700’s-style marriage, where your husband owned everything, and had the legal right to beat you, simply because he was a “nice guy and wouldn’t do that”?

That is precisely what men are being asked, no, expected, to accept.

Is it any wonder we are distrustful and suspicious to the point of paranoia? It’s our only defense. The law will not protect us. The law is against us, straight down the line.

Think about it. Try to imagine how that might feel.

sampatri · 2013-01-27T09:56:48+00:00

Don't know why I'm always downvoted for linking this article ;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_support#Criticism

McCulley states:

When a female determines she is pregnant, she has the freedom to decide if she has the maturity level to undertake the responsibilities of motherhood, if she is financially able to support a child, if she is at a place in her career to take the time to have a child, or if she has other concerns precluding her from carrying the child to term. After weighing her options, the female may choose abortion. Once she aborts the fetus, the female's interests in and obligations to the child are terminated. In stark contrast, the unwed father has no options. His responsibilities to the child begin at conception and can only be terminated with the female's decision to abort the fetus or with the mother's decision to give the child up for adoption. Thus, he must rely on the decisions of the female to determine his future. The putative father does not have the luxury, after the fact of conception, to decide that he is not ready for fatherhood. Unlike the female, he has no escape route'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubay_v._Wells

Dubay_v._Wells is MRA's Roe Vs Wade. There is plenty of unfinished work to be done on this, but progress has seemed to be halted in the MRM.

Someone needs to leak a copy of ;

McCulley, Melanie G. (1998). The male abortion: the putative father's right to terminate his interests in and obligations to the unborn child. The Journal of Law and Policy, Vol. VII, No. 1.

It's behind a paywall. Every man should be able to have access to this publication.

Even if the unborn feotus IS your child, you should have the right to relinquish rights to it. Men should have the right to parental self determination also.

Please dont downvote this.

stopsayingfaggot · 2013-01-27T04:09:51+00:00

This looks like plagiarism of a reddit comment made three years ago. And there was a short critique of it at the time in /r/law.

emskem · 2013-01-27T08:11:07+00:00

A very thought provoking post. lovely writing. I have always been happy to have the ability to opt-out so to speak. As a bi-lady being with women has always been easier than being with men. Society seemed to sit-in and listen in the relationship with me when I dated men.

It wasn't so much as all women were horrible people, but the power to truly fuck someone else's life up for your own benefit is there. And you're encouraged to access that power. And if you feel uncomfortable about it, then clearly you haven't found your inner goddess/read enough about gender theory/whatever.

And it's just so fucked up that you have to resist being an incredibly controlling, powerful part of someone's life. I couldn't handle anything about that. My wife is a fantastic person, and I get to enjoy exactly that without ever having someone else's opinion matter so much, as long as I can laugh off the 'who's the man?' question.

Crimson_D82 · 2013-01-27T03:24:12+00:00

I would have fled to a neutral country where they legally wouldn't hand me over, that;'s your only real choice.

AloysiusC · 2013-01-27T08:17:10+00:00

This is the most important point:

Is it any wonder we are distrustful and suspicious to the point of paranoia? It’s our only defense. The law will not protect us.

It illustrates how power imbalances negatively affect both sides. It shows how all this women racket has nothing to do with actually helping women and it's only about feeding primitive instincts of the unenlightened.

Modron · 2013-01-27T22:02:52+00:00

Well, there is only one solution chaps... Find a chick who is infertile! So that basically means a woman who has had a hysterectomy, or has PCOS, or an anorexic (that will only cause only temporary infertility, though... Until she gains weight.), or a thyroid problem, or iron overload (again temporary infertility if early stages). No doubt I'll get down voted for this post, but it's a good solution... :)

123vasectomy · 2013-01-27T14:30:34+00:00

I really enjoy this guy's writing style. I'm gonna follow him.

2013-01-27T20:19:49+00:00

Viewing this article as a self-contained essay, I find it lacking and unpersuasive. It makes a lot of bold claims, but doesn't cite any sources for them, and instead tells the reader to google it themselves. It makes more sense that it is a Reddit post, but it should have been cleaned up before posting as a blog.

Bobsutan · 2013-01-28T01:50:30+00:00

The whole post was effectively one giant Briffult's Law.

I do have one bone to pick:

Would you accept being in an 1700’s-style marriage, where your husband owned everything, and had the legal right to beat you, simply because he was a “nice guy and wouldn’t do that”?

Men back in those days did NOT have a legal right to beat their wives. GWW has dispelled that myth many times over.

Workchoices · 2013-01-28T02:43:15+00:00

I like this, its the perfect hypothetical to show the power imbalance to the women in your life. Im going to show my partner this tonight.

2013-01-29T14:23:28+00:00

Well written, though the author's choice to explain the various legal issues in the context of a narrative may invite accusations of speculation.

2013-01-27T14:59:09+00:00

The only thing I found wrong about this is that he specfically states that at NO point did he have any power to stop any of it. Well, yes a vasectomy isn't a viable option when you're a young healthy guy looking to settle down but still keeping your options open, and celibacy is also not an option for the same reason. However, he SHOULD have been wearing a condom just like the woman was using birth control. BC was her choice. She didn't encourage him not to wear one, condoms weren't even discussed and he met this woman, didn't want kids, but still didn't use a condom, putting all his faith into her birth control which is not 100%? Also STIs...So yes he did have the power to stop it...at the very beginning. BUT, she took advantage of it and ruined his (hypothetical) life at every turn.

MechPlasma · 2013-01-27T13:44:14+00:00

There's a few... problems with it. Some things like that the common-law marriage part isn't very relevant to the rest of it, that most states wouldn't let you refuse to do a paternity test, and that while there are cases of men being forced to pay for children they don't own, that's not very common. But everything else is... yeah, that's awful alright.

Edit: haha wow, I was wrong. You really do have a specific right to refuse a paternity test, unless it's a court order.

Title	The power differential explained in one poignant post.
Author	EvilPundit
Upvotes	198
Comments	32
Date	January 27, 2013 12:53 AM UTC (13 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/mensrights/comments/17cecf/the-power-differential-explained-in-one-poignant-/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/the-power-differential-explained-in-one-poignant.1604954 https://theredarchive.com/post/1604954

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