Sexism and Men's Issues

Why we need a better cultural context for paternity leave (That's a men's issue, right?)

http://www.sportingnews.com/mlb/story/2014-04-02/daniel-murphy-paternity-leave-mike-francesa-boomer-esiason-new-york-mets-wfan-sports-talk-radio

Paternity leave is a men's issue and it should be something we give. I would love for us to have paid universal maternity and paternity leave. It's hard to find places that give paternity leave at all.

I think Russia doesn't conscript you at 18 like the other men if you're a single father.

So there's that.

Sort of

The best most men have is hopefully The Family Medical Leave Act. (That's not the exactname but iI can't remember it. It gives people regardless of gender leave off work to have a baby, attend to a sick immediate family member,or take time after the death of a family member.)

The catch for that is you have to be at your job for over a year among other things.

It's called parental leave here, where the couple can almost freely choose who gets what days. There is a restriction that some days (I think it's 80 days or something like that) are exclusively for each of the parents.

On the plus side, Murphy's manager is on Murphy's side. But also, if I understand it right, the controversy seems to be mainly about the sports commentary people being idiots.

edited 4th Apr '14 4:12:33 AM by AnotherDuck

I think this could be related.

OK, first off, that is a significant change in language. If there are significantly more female rape victims, then it's reasonable to direct more ressources towards them. That doesn't mean we have to completely ignore male victims, which was your first suggestion.

Regarding the situation we spoke about before, the equivalent of your argument seems to be ignoring female victims because, while they are victimized in far greater numbers, there are problems that are unique to men, such as the believe that a man cannot be raped by a woman.

It's not like there isn't evidence suggesting girls are given an easier time in school, such as studies showing female teachers favouring female students.

Funnily enough, your argument is one I use on another issue but let's leave this out of here.

'Not much of an issue' is different from 'no issue at all'. The list tries to be comprehensive and might include minor stuff, which I see feminists do often enough (not a complaint). We could argue about the severity but I think we are already somehow in agreement of this situation not being optimal and I suggest we leave it at that.

My suggestion would be more along the lines of women trying to approach the men they like. Men won't be as pressured to approach anymore and therefor women won't be as annoyed by men who come to them. Everybody wins.

I was speaking more of specifically designated drop-offs (whatever you wanna call them) at hospitals and the like. Another problem I see here is how these places often don't even make minimal efforts to find the biological father, who might not even know of this but could nontheless care for a child. This is something where I don't see how you could argue women being able to give children to a state-funded organization without cost to herself, yet men somehow have to pay.

I've also have some sources (with more sources attached to them) on discrimination against fathers in family courts, here and here, with rebuttals to some claims in those cases.

May I point out a rather large fly in the "look for the biological father of the kid you've basically found on the doorstep" thing? If the mother can't/won't say (for whatever reason) or isn't around to, you've got a major stumbling block. The main means of finding out would be running a genetic search. Now, which particular group of people are mainly on the DNA register, again?

And, just how comfortable would you be with that thought? (Granted, not every person who has been booked in a police station turns out to be charged. But... still.)

edited 8th Apr '14 5:37:43 AM by Euodiachloris

Eh, they don't have to make a DNA search. Or if they do, they could ask men who might be the father to come over for a DNA test. The point is, they should make some effort to find the father, which is almost always preferable to leaving the child in state care.

Except that no one is suggesting we ignore anyone. The feminist movement that's trying to shut down women's prisons doesn't come with the additional tagline "and don't do shit for men". In fact, I also linked you to a movement from feminists that endorse prison abolition altogether.

No, that's not equivalent at all. Again, your argument is that focusing on abolishing women's prisons is sexist because it's a problem that affects men more than women. By the very logic you're presenting here, then focusing on male rape victims is sexist by the same degree.

Again, nothing about the campaign suggests ignoring men's prisons. It simply focuses on women because of unique problems women face. If that's what you call sexist, then focusing on male rape (by having men's shelters, male-only awareness campaigns or men's support groups) would be equally sexist because it does nothing to help the larger number of women suffering from the same problem.

edited 8th Apr '14 6:30:03 AM by KingZeal

I agree that systematically searching for the biological fathers of children given up by their biological mothers for adoption would be infeasible. But why should women have the right to give up all rights and responsibilities over a child while men don't? Either force both to own up (abortion is another matter entirely) or force neither.

And, how do you "force" a guy to come forward if he doesn't know? Or a mother to cough up a name if, again, she doesn't know? She might suspect a laundry list. Or, have had a one night stand she never knew the name of.

And, a rapist doesn't always leave a business card. <_<

Worse: what if actually saying who the Daddy is would get her into serious trouble? "Um — the daddy is my daddy... but, Dad'll kill me if he finds out I let anybody know... And, I don't want my baby to have this hanging around their neck all their lives."

edited 8th Apr '14 7:03:50 AM by Euodiachloris

Except that they don't do shit for men, they only want to close women's prisons, exclusively. The prison abolition movement is a different movement altogether. Yet you somehow defend the position of people who want to close prisons on the basis of gender alone.

It depends on what kind of focus we do here. I won't consider good practice when you dedicate massive amounts of money and activism towards helping male rape victims when there is none of that for female victms. There already is support for women and you want to help men as well? Sure, go ahead.

And there is a difference between what is acceptable for a private person and what is acceptable for a government. On your own you can spend your time and money pretty much as you want. If you want to spend time on animal welfare you can do that without people complaining that you ignore, well, people. Governments however have an obligation towards every one of their citizens, so they can't favour one purely based on gender.

There is nothing entirely unique to people with vaginas in terms of prison population.

Edit: Who said anything about force? All I want is some effort to find the father. If they don't find him in each and every case, it's still worth it for the ones who end up happy with their children.

edited 8th Apr '14 7:02:51 AM by Mastah

Did I say I was replying to you? Note the post above my post.

edited 8th Apr '14 7:04:56 AM by Euodiachloris

Most people who give up their children do so out of the kids best interest.

And most parents who aaren't there are so by choice.

Considering the growing amount of states willing to give rapists and other sexual predators (of both genders) parental rights, I am more than willing to give any parent the benefit of the doubt when they are trying to place their children in a better situation without giving the other parent's name.

I think you may have lost track of what the original argument was here. Remember, you were providing reasons why persons like yourself continue to speak of feminists as a monolithic entity. It's true that there are two different campaigns for the two different issues, but both campaigns are assisted by feminists. Even if I were to accept your complaint here, you are pretty much reinforcing the argument I was making in that feminists are not a single amorphous blob.

However, I do not accept your complaint because yet again, just because this specific campaign is aimed at helping women exclusively doesn't mean that they are actively impeding the other campaigns that help men. Again, if that's what you're arguing, then any campaign to help male rape victims actively impedes any campaign to help female rape victims.

So again, what's the problem? Prison abolitionism as a wide scale movement exists.

What does that have to do with what we're talking about?

Really?

Confronting an absentee father might just make more problems for the mother. If he cut and ran when she got pregnant, then he's not likely to be too inclined to take the baby now.

Part of the adoption process is that both the mother and the father have to sign off on the paperwork, or a significant effort to get the father to sign off must at least be provable. As mentioned, my household's been through the adoption process before; when one of my crew got pregnant off a guy she met at a club, he turned nasty, screaming at her and calling her things like "cunt" and "whore", demanding that she abort the baby, and refusing to sign the paperwork because that would be an acknowledgement that the child was his, whereas "a slut like you" could have got pregnant off anybody.

Then he changed his number and we never heard from him again. In cases like that, I worry that having the hospital confront him about his paternity would have brought the screaming, cursing bastard right back into our lives.

edited 8th Apr '14 7:24:36 AM by TobiasDrake

Sorry, I guess I have taken that too personally (or personally at all, since it wasn't adressed at me).

So we should give one parent the benefit of the doubt but not the other? I'm not saying we should give the child out to everyone who can prove to be the biological parent after the child has been given up and this might be a problem that has to be resolved in conjunction or after we deal with parental rights issues. But in most cases it is more beneficial for a child to grow up with one parent rather than none.

I'm not saying feminism is a 'single amporphous blow', I'm just of the opinion that there are problems within the feminist movement which affect vast amounts of it. You're argument doesn't really work then, when the feminist who want abolish prisons for women exclusively can't take credit for the ones who want it for both genders.

And it's actually not the counterpart of wanting exclusively women out of prisons, which would be prison abolitionism just for men. If there already is a movement to get people out of prison, why don't those people who want female criminals walking free participate in that?

The goal of the campaign is to convince the government to close women's prisons. Which they can't do without ignoring equal rights legislature they themselves put up.

OK, they have no unique issues aside from pregnancy and birth. Some of the article is a bit misleading, such as when they talk about the majority of female prisoners being incarcerated because of non-violent crimes, as if that weren't true for male prisoners. Other points talk about statistical differences which, if we want to play the numbers game, would have to extraordinarily more problematic to help a higher or equal number of women with closing fewer women's prisons than men's prisons.

Still, you do have a point about pregnancy, you just didn't argue with it at all.

What exactly happened to 'best interest of the child'?

Is it really in the child's best interest to have Mummy and Daddy pitching fits at each other throughout their early childhood as Daddy keeps telling Mummy that there's no way that brat has anything to do with him and he's going to refuse to pay or sign anything? Because of "you have to put the father's name here, dear" when she tried to sort the problem out as best she could during a very stressful time.

Or the other problems you can have? "There's no way that's our grandchild, Howard! Tell our Jason he's going to have nothing to do with that bitch's kid, or we disown him!" After all, it's not always just the father you're having to deal with. -_-

There are a ton of problems that can happen by making people disclose everything in a heavy-handed way. What might work in many situations... will cause merry hell in many others. -_-

You'll also get the same problems if you "force" mothers to come forward when they try abandoning their kids. They may be doing that because they have issues with having a child beyond "didn't like the father; don't think he's ever going to like the kid". And, not just economic issues. What of mental health? Family problems?

Sometimes, not knowing could be in the best interests of the child. -_-

edited 8th Apr '14 8:17:31 AM by Euodiachloris

No one said there aren't problems within the feminist movement. But the feminist movement is just that...a movement, with various groups, sub-groups, and agendas therein.

By the logic you're also using, there is nothing different about any movement, ever.

No, remember your argument earlier was that this is a problem that primarily affects men. So, a prison abolitionism campaign automatically benefits more men than women by virtue of more men being in prison. A campaign exclusively designed to abolish prison for men for reasons, like, say...the argument that men receive more unfairly harsh punishment than women is no more sexist than an abolition campaign centered around the fact that women have unique problems to deal with.

I don't think that's how it works. Showing preferential treatment toward a group because of unique and genuine concerns doesn't seem to contradict any legislature that I know of.

There are several other issues, too, such as higher rates of depression, greater instances of self-harm, and other specific problems that the original link I provided when this argument first started.

If you have counter statistics to challenge these points, it would do the thread a lot of good to see them.

I wasn't adressing this specific instance more than I was adressing the claim that the wellbeing of the mother should be the primary concern. For one, he wouldn't have to argue about refusing to pay if he doesn't have to. If the mother wants to give the child up for adoption anyway a father would have to be a total asshole to refuse anything towards that goal. Which he might be but I think this is more of a worst case scenario than an average case. What could help (not necessarily in this case) is making the paper where he admits being the father the same where he puts down all parental rights and responsibilities.

I'm more arguing about cases where we have an infant, so the problems with the parents arguing about custody and the like shouldn't be as memorable for the little thing. And anyway I don't see this as massively more problematic than a child growing up feeling unwanted when it is in state care.

To some degree, that's true. We will have different problems about each group. But the degree to which these problems define the movement is the real issue here. For an extreme example, we can positively assume the KKK and similar groups are causing more harm than good. Even in cases with groups where we have a common interest, we ought to criticize them and expect and demand better. In the case of feminism I just think that has to be a lot better.

Again, those are statistical arguments. Meaning you would still help a great many more men by closing men's prisons rather than women's prisons because the total number of men would be that much higher.

But they do... I had this exact discussion with Pola and Gab a couple of pages back, men DO have the ability to "give up all rights and responsibilities".

False equivalence. For one thing, the KKK is an organization, not a movement. The National Organization for Women is an organization. The Center for the Advancement of Women is an organization. The International Alliance of Women is an organization.

Feminism, by contrast, is a movement. Again, what you are doing is unjustly conflating a movement as an amorphous blob.

Second, he KKK's exact mission statement upon its creation was to violently enforce white supremacy by any means necessary.^note Nowadays, the official mission statement is more roundabout—which only says its goals are to uphold the "values of the original klan"...which again, was white supremacy. Feminism has had a number of variable goals and philosophies, and even the term itself wasn't coined by activists. The only unifying goal that feminism has is the advancement of women. For most that means advancement toward equality, for some, that may be advancement toward supremacy.

And once again, if this is the argument you're making, then the same argument applies to helping male victims of rape over female.

I should first note that most of this comes from my perception of what I've read in the thread. Haven't done research on it, so this may not apply, depending on how and why things really are. Anyway.

Wanting to abolish prisons for women alone is a problem when it comes to sexism. It strengthens the idea that men are criminals who need to be punished, and women are victims of unfortunate circumstances who need to be coddled. Abolishing prisons exclusively for women is tackling the problem at the wrong end, the way I see it.

The proper solution would more likely be to improve conditions for women in prison to a "fair" level. Or gender-equal abolishment.

I mean, you could make a similar campaign for men (and only men) needing bigger paychecks. Men spend more money, so they need more. Higher pressure to pay for women than the reverse, higher car insurances, and other stuff. I'm sure you could find "unique" problems men face if you really tried. (Also not saying these arguments hold up very well either.)

I think that's about equally sexist and misguided.

As for the non-unique problems, I also want to know the actual rates for them. Higher prevalence, sure, but how high? There are about 10-15 times more men in prison than women, depending on source. Are the problems women face in prisons 10-15 times worse or more prevalent than for men?

Do imprisoned fathers have the same rights to spend time with their children as imprisoned mothers?

I wonder about the hygiene issue. Do men have better immune systems so they can handle more filth, or are women filthier so they need more cleaning?

By continuing to blatantly argue in bad faith, Mastah has had his OTC privileges removed. There's no point in debating with someone who keeps moving the goalposts or refusing to acknowledge inconsistencies in his arguments.

edited 8th Apr '14 1:02:44 PM by Fighteer