Is innumeracy a prerequisite to being an MRA?


These numbers do not add up. A redditor is claiming that women are after men’s precious bodily fluids, because the average annual child support payment is $5,150. “Be careful with your sperm. Your very freedom is at stake,” he says.

But this makes no sense. What woman would steal sperm to get impregnated for a lousy $5000/year payout? That’s nowhere near what it costs to raise a child, not counting the costs in time and worry and all the responsibilities of taking care of the little pain-in-the-butt. Yet somehow, all this guy sees in women is venality — that they’ve got a way of milking $5K/year out of him, as if having sex with him is like buying a lottery ticket for her.

I had no idea that child support costs were so low, though. Women, you are being robbed by this system. Don’t you wish you could just have a baby, then pay up a measly $5000/year to greet a well-adjusted, mature, interesting young adult 18 years later?

Also, warning: be careful with his sperm. Pregnancy is just the start of a lifetime of servitude for you, and you should only do it willingly and with some appreciation for the non-monetary rewards.

Comments

  1. Esteleth has eaten ALL the gingerbread! Suck it! says

    Ah, but PZ, you are not using MRA logic.

    See, anything that is for any purpose other than being 100% dedicated to the child doesn’t count.

    Paying rent? The custodial mother benefits from that by having shelter.

    Ditto for paying electric, heat, and other utility bills.

    Also phone, TV, and internet, of course, as the mother is also benefitting by having those bills paid.

    Money that keeps gas in the car can means that the mother can use the car.

    In MRA logic, the only “fair” child support are:
    1. Paying for the kid to be clothed
    2. Paying for the kid to be fed

    Since anything else benefits the mother on the side, this is not fair (“subsidizing” her existence and survival).

    And, well, yes of course it costs far more than $5K a year to raise a kid.

    But I’d bet that food and clothing for a kid can be gotten for that much. And that, in MRA logic, is “fair.”

  2. Esteleth has eaten ALL the gingerbread! Suck it! says

    Seriously. The kid is allowed to be comfortable and well-fed and all that. But the mom? She’d better be shivering and starving in rags, because otherwise she’s a thief and a leech.

    Because intangibles.

    (and, of course, “that damn woman thinks she can leave me”)

  3. Esteleth has eaten ALL the gingerbread! Suck it! says

    The reason why day care costs more than $5K a year is because a lot of those dollars are going to pay the workers. QED.

  4. says

    And sure, you can live on $5k/year. Some people do that right now. But you’re going to be living in rags in a shack and supplementing your diet with roadkill to do it.

  5. says

    There is a commenter in the Manboobz comments saying he’d spermburgle if he was a woman. Because of course he would. My own comment from the thread (because I’m a wee bit proud of it)…

    I was just thinking about this subject today. My thousand dollar idea – a sperm bank that caters just to paranoid MRAs. They come in and leave however many deposits they think they may need if they ever meet a woman who doesn’t leave them in a quivering pile of impotent rage, a woman who has fallen so low she has no choice but to hook up with an other-women’s-spit-encrusted Omega of a man. Once the MRAs precious ejaculate is frozen and guarded by armed Alphas, the onsite doctor will give the MRA a vasectomy so they will never have to worry about being spermjacked.

    Then I realized it’s a business I could never start because I’m a woman and they’d see through my magnificent ruse to get their golden seed into my hellish black hole of baby-making horror.

  6. Esteleth has eaten ALL the gingerbread! Suck it! says

    MRAs scared of sperm-thieving women?

    Easy fix. All men get vasectomies, after depositing a decent number of sperm samples for storage. Given that sperm quality and quantity decreases as a man ages, this is win-win.

    When he meets a woman he thinks is up to snuff, he arranges for her to be inseminated.

    Where is the downside of this?

  7. magistramarla says

    My daughter would be happy to manage to get 5K per year out of her ex.
    She gets $230 per month in child support, and she had to run up a lot of attorney’s fees and battles with him constantly just to get that.

  8. mikebethany says

    Well obviously we got some sperm bandits out there:

    They’re climbing in windows, snatching up sperm and what not. So you better hide your sperm, hide your wipes, etc.

  9. alwayscurious says

    One more line to add to those deficient sex ed classes: potential parents–you have financial responsibilities to your kids, legally enforceable even if the relationship ends. Birth control…just use it.

  10. says

    Aside from the fact that bearing a child into this cesspool earth is a cruel and selfish act. 1. Don’t get preggers. 2. If you do, abort and spare a kid a life of misery.

  11. alwayscurious says

    I’ve also heard complaints about men that intentionally avoid work or try to find jobs that will pay “under the table” so they can claim $0 income & thus weasel out of child support payments.

  12. freemage says

    PZ: There’s a pair of cognitive defects that really do seem to be required to be an MRA:

    1: Innumeracy, noted here.

    2: An utter inability to perceive context. This often results in a kind of specialized quote-mining, where, when someone offers up an example of a misogynistic quote, they’ll pare it down and ignore where it was set (say, in a thread about spermburglaring) if they have to, to ensure that you can’t see the misogynistic forest because your nose is shoved into a tree. The Manboobz thread on this very article had a few choice examples of this, as well.

  13. Nepenthe says

    Yeah… you’d have to pay me at least 5k per instance of being barfed or pissed on for me to raise a sprog. Guess all the dudes are safe from my fluid-thieving wiles.

  14. Janine: Hallucinating Liar says

    Meh. After my parents got divorced, my father was supposed to pay child support. Even though it was court order, he never paid a penny.

  15. left0ver1under says

    The $5000 (or $420 per month) is likely the difference in cost between what a person or couple spend with and without a child (e.g. a home with an extra bedroom, food, utilities, clothes, etc.).

    Even so, their “arguments” are as laughable as they are ludicrous. They’re calling women “leeches” rather than calling for “men” to take responsbility for their own actions. (No doubt because they “think” men shouldn’t have any responsbilities for their actions….)

  16. says

    @Esteleth…

    After being told over and over on facebook about the evils of abortion and “I believe in the right to choose–the right to choose to keep your legs shut!” (it’s almost cute how proud they are of their stupid slogans, each repeating it like it was the very first time I would have ever heard such amazing logic), I finally said that, fine, I’ll support an abortion ban if we have mandatory vasectomies at 13. If you want to control my body, seems only fair that I can control yours.

    Of course, that makes me an evil, man-hating feminazi. Even several female friends were appalled at my suggestion–not because I was (sarcastically) supporting an abortion ban, but because I would dare suggest that men should be subject to the same bodily interference. I got several lectures about how disgustingly anti-freedom and unconstitutional such a thing would be, a horrible example of a dictatorship and government interferance. When I’m like…um, yeah, hello, that was the whole damn point, I was told it’s not the same thing at all. Well, of course not, I was talking about the sacred male penis, which is obviously outside the jurisdiction of the government (unless that penis is near another male penis, but I think gay guys give up their rights of manhood or something), while my uterus is totally subject to govenmental oversight. Sigh.

    Also, re: child support: I had a friend who left her abusive spouse, taking her three kids (all under the age of 5). She was incredibly brave, especially because she had married at age 17 and never finished high school. We worked at the same day care center and I used to tutor her after work to help her get a GED (and then pass her early childhood education classes). She put herself through school, eventually getting her pre-school teaching certification, specifically working day care so she could be around her children at work (she felt they were way too traumatized by the abuse and divorce to then leave them alone), and also because that was the only way she could afford child care. Her dirt-bag ex refused to pay child support because he was convinced that she would use it on hersef…every couple weeks, he’d make a big deal about dropping off a package of diapers or something similar, tyring to humiliate her as much as possible in the process, and flat refused to ever give her money. Being that she had absolutely no money and little education, it was very difficult for her to go to court and get child-support, and unfortunately, when you are living on nothing and frantic to figure out how to feed, clothe, and house your kids, the system works very slowly.

    But thank goodness there are organizations and courts that help women, now. When my grandma (who married at 15) was left with four children and my dad in her belly after her husband ran off with a woman he met at work, child support was a pipe dream. She tried, once, to get him to pay child support. It was suggested to her, by the lawyer she visited, that she should try prostitution instead, and she didn’t need to leech off her ex-husband with a “goldmine between her legs.” He then offered to be her first customer. Grandma never tried to get child support again, but worked two to three jobs to take care of those kids, eventually putting herself through school to become a bookkeeper, something she’d always dreamed of.

    I lived with her for a year, taking care of her while she died of alzheimers and lung disease (I couldn’t bear the thought of her going to a nursing home) and she told me stories that made my hair curl. I thought I understood the history of women, all proud of my women’s studies courses at college, and I knew nothing. Later, when I read a blog post by one of her sons complaining about how she was never around when he was a child and was always tired and short-tempered, how he always wished for a nice, traditional mother like his friends, I ripped him a new one. I don’t think I’ve ever been so angry in my life. I couldn’t believe how little he understood or appriciated about the sacrafices his mother made, how hard she worked, what she had to endure. Maybe she didn’t have fresh-baked cookies and bread every day, but she would starve herself (and did!) before letting those kids go to bed hungry. Fascinating that he never blammed his father for putting his mother in the position of having to work 14 hour days in the first place.

  17. gregpeterson says

    I certainly agree in principle with the sentiment floated here about fathers taking responsibility for their children, but as so often happens in life, the issues are a little more complicated. For one thing, the male would prefer to end an unintended pregnancy doesn’t even have that as an option. That has no bearing on the cost of raisng a child, obviously, but it must be said that if a pregnant woman doesn’t want to pay the cost of raising a child, she at least has a (for now legally protected) option. Also, the courts are still stacked in favor of the mother getting custody of the child, which in many cases is probably a fine thing, but again–the lack of options might play in to the child support amount argument, especially if the mother decides to take the child to, say, a different state some distance away. And for those of us fathers who do stick around, do pay the child support, and remain involved in the lives of our children–there are costs beyond the amount sent to the mother. In my case, I had a much larger apartment than I would have needed for just myself because the kids stayed with me most weekends. It’s never going to be anything like truly fair to anyone, and I’d be the first person to sign on for child support payments to be treated similar to Social Security contributions, deducted directly from the paycheck and sent to the mother. It must be said that a little accountability on the part of the mother would not go amiss. I was very fortunate in that my kids’ mom was excellent and used that money to give our children a great life, excellent education and activities and so forth–but that is not guaranteed, and some mothers really do pocket some money from child support without actually, you know–doing much to support her children. It’s a mess, honestly, but as someone who has gone through some of these issues, it occurs to me that one thing that might help promote child support is a shot at fairness for the dads who want to be involved with their kids as more than just a wallet. As unfair as things are to women–and there is no denying that point–family law happens to be an area where men do get regularly screwed as well.

  18. Akira MacKenzie says

    Well, to be fair, $5000 a year could potentially be problematic for the working poor, especially in this shit-hole of an economy. I certainly couldn’t afford it.

    Then again, we could bolster the welfare state and make sure that everyone (especially single moms) could have access to food, clothing, shelter, and health care, education, etc, as well as stimulate the creation of well-paying jobs for those who can work them, thus eliminating the need for (or at least mitigating the pain of) Tha’ Menz to pay such support.

    Oh, wait. That would be filthy, freedom-hating, SOCIALISM! I know Tha’ Menz don’t seem to like that notion either.

  19. says

    gregpeterson:

    For one thing, the male would prefer to end an unintended pregnancy doesn’t even have that as an option.

    This would be a good reason for men to get into the habit of thinking prior to having sex and taking responsibility for their own reproductive ability.

  20. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    because the average annual child support payment is $5,150.

    Talk about peanuts. Apparently, ManlyDude™ has no clue as to how much it actually costs to raise a child

    What the cyberpedia has to say.

  21. says

    Innumeracy appears to be a prerequisite for most delusions and irrationalities. For example, Bill Clinton cited the GOP’s problem with “arithmetic” at the Democratic National Convention. Absolutely right. Nutcases and extremists believe in things that just don’t add up.

  22. Gregory Greenwood says

    So, basically, these MRA goons are afraid of being waylaid by highwaywomen who spring from the bushes wearing a duster, a wide brimmed hat pulled down low, and a ‘kercheif across their face; who level their brace of flintlock pistols and promptly utter the immortal words;

    “Stand and deliver; your semen or you life!”

    ***

    … Because child support payments of $5000 dollars a year is riches beyond imagining, dontcha know, and is in no way, shape or form a woefully inadequate figure that won’t even begin to cover the expense of raising a child.

    Nope, not one little bit…

  23. says

    “But this makes no sense. What woman would steal sperm to get impregnated for a lousy $5000/year payout? That’s nowhere near what it costs to raise a child, not counting the costs in time and worry and all the responsibilities of taking care of the little pain-in-the-butt. Yet somehow, all this guy sees in women is venality — that they’ve got a way of milking $5K/year out of him, as if having sex with him is like buying a lottery ticket for her.”

    Ah, but PZ, many of us actual humans don’t hate babies or kids like you do. Many of us think that having children brings joy and meaning to our lives.

    Maybe some women do not realize that the average child support payment is $5000 per year.

    Maybe some women have more than one baby and understand that fixed costs and variable costs of two children is not twice that of one child.

    Maybe some women understand how child support is apportioned as a percentage of income and might seek men that will be paying higher than average.

    Maybe some women are already living with parents, or are already living in subsidized housing, and this extra $5,000 per year is a meaningful amount of income.

    So PZ, perhaps the innumeracy is on the women’s side, or perhaps it’s with you that do not understand these concepts, and are ignorant, and yet hardly skeptical of manboobz, or unwilling to look into it.

    Perhaps PZ, the redditor was right when he wrote, “The courts will enforce child support orders even if the sperm used to impregnate the woman was obtained through fraud, rape, theft, or coercion.”

    40% of all births now occur outside of marriage, and federal rules pressure states to chase down fathers and hold them responsible. You’re the numerate scientist PZ, can you tell us of Type I and Type II errors and how that relate to this issue of federal rules pressuring states to chase down fathers and hold them responsible?

    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/magazine/22Paternity-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

    If you examined the subject PZ, you would find these things have happened, repeatedly, and paternity fraud is actually rather common.

    30% of men that give DNA tests to “their” children to establish paternity find out they are not the fathers.

    Perhaps that should concern you.

    “One hundred and twenty-two years ago, the playwright August Strindberg meditated on this quandary. “The Father” is the story of a cavalry captain whose wife hints that he might not be the father of the daughter he adores. Consumed with doubt, he rages at his wife: “I have worked and slaved for you, your child, your mother, your servants . . . because I thought myself the father of your child. This is the commonest kind of theft, the most brutal slavery. I have had 17 years of penal servitude and have been innocent.”

    Maybe August Strindberg was an innumerate MRA as well.

  24. says

    I certainly agree in principle with the sentiment floated here about fathers taking responsibility for their children, but as so often happens in life, the issues are a little more complicated.

    No, it isn’t.
    Actually many people here agree that the cost of child-raising should be covered by society and paied for via general taxes, but the current consent is that the people biologically responsible for creating a child are the ones who are financially responsible.

    For one thing, the male would prefer to end an unintended pregnancy doesn’t even have that as an option.

    I fully support the right of all men to terminate all pregnancies that happen within their bodies at any time and for any reason.

    That has no bearing on the cost of raisng a child, obviously,

    Bingo!
    If you understand this, why the rest of your post?
    Whether or not parents like it, a child has to be fed, clothed, cared for, needs a flat, needs healthcare, needs education. As said before, currently that burden is on the people who made said child happen. Deal with it. Your or any person’s feelings are 100% irrelevant to the needs of the child.

    but it must be said that if a pregnant woman doesn’t want to pay the cost of raising a child, she at least has a (for now legally protected) option.

    Yay! After we find ourselves in an uncomfortable position of being pregnant which already puts our lives at a higher risk than when we are non-pregnant*, we can have another invasive medical procedure done to deal with it. Aren’t we privileged?

    *Before anybody goes off about how safe pregnancies and childbirths are nowadays: There’s a reason for that and it’s called modern medicine. Pregnancy and childbirth haven’t suddenly become safe things, we just have more means to deal with the complications.

    Also, the courts are still stacked in favor of the mother getting custody of the child, which in many cases is probably a fine thing…

    Yawn…

    the lack of options might play in to the child support amount argument, especially if the mother decides to take the child to, say, a different state some distance away.

    I know that’s hard to deal with, but:
    Children aren’t property anymore, women aren’t property anymore.
    It always burns down to that: the anger of women being beyond men’s control. How dare she make a decission and have a life? How come guys don’t get any ownership back in exchange for the money they pay?

    And for those of us fathers who do stick around, do pay the child support, and remain involved in the lives of our children–there are costs beyond the amount sent to the mother.

    Poor old black cat.

    In my case, I had a much larger apartment than I would have needed for just myself because the kids stayed with me most weekends.

    And that diminishes the amount those kids need during the week how?

    It must be said that a little accountability on the part of the mother would not go amiss. …some mothers really do pocket some money from child support without actually, you know–doing much to support her children.

    Must. Control. Women. Must. Control. Women.
    So, you actually tell us a few sentences above about the increased cost of living you yourself experienced but you actually think that the mothers will just burry the corpses in the backyard and live gloriously on 5k a year. Every cent must be accounted for. And if she ate the core of the apple his money bought he gets a refund!**

    it occurs to me that one thing that might help promote child support is a shot at fairness for the dads who want to be involved with their kids as more than just a wallet.

    And while you might have a point somewhere in your control-fetish, what does that have to do with the issue of child support? Children don’t need less food or shelter because you take them to the playground.

    **Reminds me of the jaintor who works in my husband’s lab. She fell around his neck crying because he simply gave her 20 bucks. Her daughter needed new shoes and her ex demanded a blowjob in return.

  25. Nepenthe says

    Ah, but PZ, many of us actual humans don’t hate babies or kids like you do. Many of us think that having children brings joy and meaning to our lives.

    I just savor the fact that this statement was made a few days after our Squidly Overlord made several posts about the joys of family, including his children.

    “The Father” is the story of a cavalry captain whose wife hints that he might not be the father of the daughter he adores. Consumed with doubt, he rages at his wife:I have worked and slaved for you, your child, your mother, your servants . . . because I thought myself the father of your child. This is the commonest kind of theft, the most brutal slavery. I have had 17 years of penal servitude and have been innocent.”

    Wait now, who’s the one who hates children again?

    —-
    To answer the question in the title: no, it’s not a prerequisite. On the job training is offered. Every time I read MRA screeds I find myself getting a little dumber.

  26. ButchKitties says

    …and she had to run up a lot of attorney’s fees and battles with him constantly just to get that.

    This.

    I’ve also heard complaints about men that intentionally avoid work or try to find jobs that will pay “under the table” so they can claim $0 income & thus weasel out of child support payments.

    And this.

    About half of my single parent friends have completely given up on trying to collect child support for the reasons above. Most dropped it because the legal costs of getting child support were so high that it wasn’t worth the expense. One friend managed to get her ex-husband’s wages garnished, only to have him immediately quit his job. He’s constantly floating between temporary/seasonal jobs and unemployment because he only takes jobs that pay cash, all to avoid child support garnishments. I swear some people put more effort into avoiding child support payments than it would take to just make them.

  27. doubtthat says

    @29 olivercrangle

    I’m a family law attorney. I have probably worked on 200+ child custody cases. I have yet to encounter an example of a woman having a child for the support payments. If they wanted money, they would marry the guy and continue to live with him because support payments are NOTHING compared to the cost of raising a child.

    Cases like the one mention in the NY Times piece are incredible outliers. Yes, in any given system, shit happens, and it sucks for that guy (I don’t know what goes on in Penn, but the problem he has would be solved with a single court hearing in my state). But compared to the number of women who are abandoned with children, the problem of men paying for non-biologically related children is a minuscule issue.

    That does not mean it should be ignored, but attempting to move from that crazy story to “women are trying to get rich on shitty child support payments” is just stupid.

    I deal with this CONSTANTLY. I find it consistently hilarious: parents, men and women, will always try to move for residential custody so they avoid the support payments. It has never, ever been the case in my experience that a party is paying more in child support than it costs to have the child living with them. $400 a month doesn’t even cover the grocery bill if there is more than one child.

  28. says

    Talk about peanuts. Apparently, ManlyDude™ has no clue as to how much it actually costs to raise a child

    Funny how nobody ever talks about the personal cost the woman has…
    I mean, that whole pregnancy shit?
    Look what surrogate mothers take, if you want to have a market price.
    And honestly, if the father of my vhildren would have to pay 30 minutes of every hour I put more into this whole parenting thing than he does, he’d have to file for bankruptcy pretty soon…

  29. Anri says

    I’ve also heard complaints about men that intentionally avoid work or try to find jobs that will pay “under the table” so they can claim $0 income & thus weasel out of child support payments.

    You don’t have to doubt this at all – I know one personally.

    Fortunately, the mom is doing a terrific job (ok, with a little help from her friends – including my SO and I) at bringing up the kids. The way they’re going, they’re gonna set the world on fire (in a good way) and do a whole lot better than I ever did. Which is utterly as it should be.

    . . .

    Maybe August Strindberg was an innumerate MRA as well.

    …or maybe he was a playwright writing, yanno, fiction.

    Or should we be concerned that Smaug might have been on the Endangered Species list…?

    But, no, let’s examine the Terrific Point Being Made on it’s own merits, shall we?

    “The Father” is the story of a cavalry captain whose wife hints that he might not be the father of the daughter he adores. Consumed with doubt, he rages at his wife: “I have worked and slaved for you, your child, your mother, your servants . . . because I thought myself the father of your child. This is the commonest kind of theft, the most brutal slavery. I have had 17 years of penal servitude and have been innocent.”

    “I have improved that child’s life for 17 years now, and I shouldn’t have loved it in the first place because it might have come out of someone elses’s nutsack!”
    …and that’s your idea of a deep, telling argument? A fictional asshole who is pissed off that he missed out on the chance to abandon a child?

    That’s a telling argument, all right. I’ll leave the exact lesson as an exercise for the reader.

  30. DaveL says

    Maybe some women do not realize that the average child support payment is $5000 per year.

    In which case the joke’s on them, isn’t it? Hardly a cause for grievance on the part of the author.

    Maybe some women have more than one baby and understand that fixed costs and variable costs of two children is not twice that of one child.

    I hate to break it to you, but a woman’s body is not a factory and nobody is getting rich raising litters.

    Maybe some women understand how child support is apportioned as a percentage of income and might seek men that will be paying higher than average.

    Which still amounts to a monumental bargain on the part of the men, who couldn’t find 168 hr/wk child care for less than $100 per week if they tried.

    Maybe some women are already living with parents, or are already living in subsidized housing, and this extra $5,000 per year is a meaningful amount of income.

    In which case I wish them joy, but it still remains a small fraction of what a parent would otherwise have to pay for round-the-clock child care.

    30% of men that give DNA tests to “their” children to establish paternity find out they are not the fathers.

    And what percentage of men administer such tests to their putative offspring? Exactly how common is paternity fraud?

    Maybe August Strindberg was an innumerate MRA as well.

    Interestingly enough, Strindberg’s play never reveals whether the child actually does belong to the character in question, but one thing’s for certain: when you feel the need to invoke a work of fiction as your only example, it says a lot about the real-world scope of the problem.

  31. says

    I saw a link to this post on facebook (posted by the FtB page) and when I clicked on it, I got this message:

    The link you are trying to visit has been reported as abusive by Facebook users. To learn more about staying safe on the internet, visit Facebook’s Security Page. Please also read the Wikipedia articles on malware and phishing.

    Remember this, next time a slymepitter tries to claim the mantle of martyrdom, suffering from the harsh censorship of FtB/PZ.

  32. thecalmone says

    Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper (USAF) explains to Group Captain Mandrake (RAF) why he denies women his essence:

  33. johnfraser1 says

    women decide whether they want to become pregnant and use sperm to do it. they are 100% responsible for their decision and the support of their children.

  34. says

    Brian:

    1. Don’t get preggers. 2. If you do, abort and spare a kid a life of misery.

    I want to post a snarky reply, but I’m too busy laughing at your widdle attempt to be ‘edgy’. That’s what you were going for, right?

    Anyway.

    $5k a year?? I’ve probably spent that already and DarkBaby is only 2 months old.

  35. DaveL says

    women decide whether they want to become pregnant and use sperm to do it. they are 100% responsible for their decision and the support of their children.

    In the upside-down world of MRAs, apparently only men can experience unwanted pregnancies.

    Also, while I thought I had a daughter, apparently I was mistaken and she’s exclusively my wife’s child.

  36. Gregory Greenwood says

    Caine, Fleur du mal @ 30;

    brace of flintlock pistols

    Damn.

    Isn’t that just the way? There is always that one hard to find item that would really complete the outfit, but you just can’t seem to lay your hands on it…

    Still, it is probably just as well that I don’t have access even to flintlock firearms. Reading idiotic, misogynistic MRA screeds is enough to drive a chap to imprudent actions like issuing a challenge to the author to meet one on the field of honour for pistols at dawn*.

    ———————————————————————————————————————-

    * I am obviously joking here. I do not advocate the shooting of anyone.

    Even MRAs.

    No, really.

  37. says

    johnfraser1:

    women decide whether they want to become pregnant and use sperm to do it. they are 100% responsible for their decision and the support of their children.

    Yes, they only use free range sperm floating about in the wild, I mean that stuff is never, ever attached to man in any way whatsoever. Nope.

    You know, all that is fine and dandy, johnfraser1, so let’s never hear about how men get shafted when it comes to decisions to terminate, how men get shafted in custody decisions, how men get shafted over child support, or how men want a child, okay?

    Once more, for the ultra-dim: take responsibility for your own reproductive ability. Carry or keep your own condoms, with absolutely no access by anyone other than yourself. Do not keep one “handy” in your wallet unless you wish to be a daddy. If you really, really don’t want sprogs, get yourself fixed and make sure you do the proper follow up. Not sure about that kid thing? Get fixed and store your precious, precious sperm.

  38. says

    @doubtthat

    “It has never, ever been the case in my experience that a party is paying more in child support than it costs to have the child living with them. $400 a month doesn’t even cover the grocery bill if there is more than one child.”

    Really?

    In California where my (ex) wife and two kids lived a mile from UC Berkeley in the flatlands near North Berkeley BART, in a triplex apartment, and where I earned about 100K from Xerox, where my ex earned about $40K per year, the court ordered me to pay for child support for two children, and this was child support not spousal support, $2300 per month.

    My case was not considered unusual. My attorney did not say this was outrageous. These were just the numbers that came out of the formulas. This is what I paid.

    (I am told in Massachusetts it’s even worse.)

    Our rent at the time was $750 per month. We were feeding two adults, and two toddlers (who shared a bedroom). It’s hard to imagine how it would cost $1150 a month for one of these cuties.

    Are you sure “It has never, ever been the case in my experience that a party is paying more in child support than it costs to have the child living with them.”

  39. chigau (違う) says

    For reasons I don’t remember, olivercrangle is already in my killfile.
    Having read his comment, he can stay there.

  40. says

    they are 100% responsible for their decision and the support of their children.

    I keep forgetting that I impregnated myself!

    Ollie:

    Ah, but PZ, many of us actual humans don’t hate babies or kids like you do. Many of us think that having children brings joy and meaning to our lives.

    I couldn’t get any further than your first statement– if you are this incredibly wrong right off the bat*, what are the chances that your tl;dr is in any way shape or form accurate?

    *It’s not like PZ spent Xmas with his family or anything.

  41. Gregory Greenwood says

    johnfraser1 @ 40;

    women decide whether they want to become pregnant and use sperm to do it. they are 100% responsible for their decision and the support of their children.

    I take it from this… interesting perspective on the matter that reproductive anantomy and biology are not your strong suits?

    And I bet campaigns for social justice that might actually tackle poverty among single mothers and ensure a guarantee of a basic standard of living for them and their children make a charmer like you come out in hives. It’s all a commie conspiracy, right?

    A little remedial education might be in order. Then you might be able to demonstrate a minimal level of understanding of the topic at hand, and could contribute to the conversation without making a complete arse of yourself each and every time you set finger to keyboard.

    Here is a tip to get you started – reality obstinately refuses to conform to MRA delusions like that which you espouse @ 40. It is quite, quite unreasonable when it comes to ignoring the crushingly ignorant talking points of misogynistic scumbags. Who’d have thought it?

  42. Amphiox says

    30% of men that give DNA tests to “their” children to establish paternity find out they are not the fathers.

    Right. And it’s routine for men to reflexively and automatically give DNA tests to their children, just for the kicks, rather than primarily when they have some other reason to doubt their paternity.

    In other words, 30% is a tellingly LOW number.

    And olivercrangle is caught making yet another pathetically dishonest argument.

    But what else is new?

  43. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    We were feeding two adults, and two toddlers (who shared a bedroom). It’s hard to imagine how it would cost $1150 a month for one of these cuties.

    Gee, $9,100 a year is what Wiki says is the cost of 0-5 year old child. And your problem is is that you are a cheap person who doesn’t take responsibility. You should mature some.

  44. says

    @DaveL, the 90s. (Rent Control. It was about a block from Cedar Market)

    @Amphiox, I got that number from the NYTimes article I linked to, if you have a problem with it, take it up with them.

    @Nerd, 12 * 1150 is 13800, far more than the 9100 you claim the Wiki says. But that’s taking your sexist notion that I was supposed to pay for the entirety of the support of my kids, and not share that cost on some basis (usually percentage of total income) with my ex. It also makes the naive assumption that the costs for two children are twice the costs of one child. Fixed costs versus variable costs, ie., they share a bedroom, one kids gets hand me down clothes. We needed one family car for two kids, not two family cars. I do appreciate how you assume I am cheap and all sorts of other stuff when you clearly have no idea, and pretty clearly have no idea how support is calculated or even what it takes to support children.

    More skeptical pharyngula logic I suppose.

  45. DaveL says

    @DaveL, the 90s. (Rent Control. It was about a block from Cedar Market)

    And what was her rent after the two of you went your separate ways? Did she keep the rent-controlled apartment under the existing rent ceiling?

  46. speed0spank says

    I know the economy is bad and some people have it way worse than I could even imagine, but I’m having a hard time believing that these guys actually think that amount is worth having a child for (especially if they didn’t want to be a parent). I make about that much a year at my shitty part time job where I only work two overnight shifts a week.
    I am willing to bet the recipients of these pitiful child support payments put in a zillion times more work raising their kid/s than that, and most of them probably have to work their own jobs on top of actually parenting.

    Blah. These people just boggle the damn mind.

  47. Gregory Greenwood says

    olivercrangle @ 29;

    Ah, but PZ, many of us actual humans don’t hate babies or kids like you do. Many of us think that having children brings joy and meaning to our lives.

    Ummm – you know PZ has a family, right? And just spent christmas with them and blogged about all the fun times they had together? That might undermine your point just a smidgeon.

    Maybe some women do not realize that the average child support payment is $5000 per year.

    How lovely that your base assumption is dishonesty and incompetance on the part of women, rather than considering that maybe the man might bear some responsibility.

    Maybe some women do not realize that the average child support payment is $5000 per year.

    Maybe some women have more than one baby and understand that fixed costs and variable costs of two children is not twice that of one child.

    Maybe some women understand how child support is apportioned as a percentage of income and might seek men that will be paying higher than average.

    Maybe some women are already living with parents, or are already living in subsidized housing, and this extra $5,000 per year is a meaningful amount of income.

    Citations needed in a big way. And no; works of fiction and single articles from the New York Times hardly amount to compelling evidence of widespread ‘paternity fraud’. Don’t present individual outlier cases as if they represent common practice.

    If you examined the subject PZ, you would find these things have happened, repeatedly, and paternity fraud is actually rather common.

    30% of men that give DNA tests to “their” children to establish paternity find out they are not the fathers.

    Perhaps that should concern you.

    You do understand that the number of men who choose to request paternity tests doesn’t actually say anything about the actual, objective level of ‘paternity fraud’, don’t you? Vast numbers of people of people in Turkey and other Middle Eastern countries have talismans to ward off evil spirits, but that doesn’t prove a high incidence of actual evil spirit actvity in the region. Why don’t you provide some scientifically credible evidence to back up your claims of widespread semen theft by evil spermburgling hellions, if the practice is as common as you claim?

  48. Nepenthe says

    I got that number from the NYTimes article I linked to, if you have a problem with it, take it up with them.

    Translation: “I accept statistics totally uncritically. I also have other people chew my food for me. *places underpants on head*”

  49. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    But that’s taking your sexist notion that I was supposed to pay for the entirety of the support of my kids, and not share that cost on some basis (usually percentage of total income) with my ex.

    No immature slacker. It is your real costs of being a parent in the real world. If you don’t like the numbers, cite your own or shut the fuck up. Irresponsible misogynist losers like you tend to make many assertions without data, which means what they say can *POOF* be dismissed without evidence. Put up or shut the fuck up. You know that.

  50. says

    “And what was her rent after the two of you went your separate ways? Did she keep the rent-controlled apartment under the existing rent ceiling?”

    Gosh DaveL, what do you think?

  51. crowepps says

    As to paternity fraud, while the 30% figure is the result where men are highly suspicious that they aren’t the father, on that evidence 70% of those highly suspicious men find out that they are indeed. The percentage is still likely inflated because it excludes all the men who are confident of their fatherhood (and who are unlikely to be wrong based on study results).

    A survey of 67 studies reporting nonpaternity suggests that for men with high paternity confidence rates of nonpaternity are(excluding studies of unknown methodology) typically 1.9%
    http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.1086/504167?uid=3739512&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101518631921

  52. says

    In California where my (ex) wife and two kids lived a mile from UC Berkeley in the flatlands near North Berkeley BART, in a triplex apartment, and where I earned about 100K from Xerox, where my ex earned about $40K per year, the court ordered me to pay for child support for two children, and this was child support not spousal support, $2300 per month.

    So, you’re quite more than middle class but you obviously would only allow food-stamps level standard of living for your own children, because obviously otherwise your ex might have it too easy. What an asshole, to begrudge your own kids some nice things that you can easily afford.
    Yeah, not all of us hate babies (they’re delicious if marinated for 48 hours), but you obviously do.

  53. DaveL says

    “And what was her rent after the two of you went your separate ways? Did she keep the rent-controlled apartment under the existing rent ceiling?”

    Gosh DaveL, what do you think?

    I have no way of knowing, other than your answering the question.

  54. says

    @Gregory Greenwood

    “You do understand that the number of men who choose to request paternity tests doesn’t actually say anything about the actual, objective level of ‘paternity fraud’, don’t you? ”

    Yes, I specifically described it accurately because you’re right, all too often people take the 30% and attribute that incorrectly to all births. It’s a much smaller number, but it is neither zero nor insignificant, hence why paternity tests are profitable especially in an atmosphere where 40% of kids are born out of marriage.

    (If you Google hugo schwyzer paternity fraud ted you can find a very famous male feminist encouraging and colluding in paternity fraud so that Hugo did not have to pay child support.)

    Citations for the rest of that? Ask that family lawyer d00d or do your own research. Those are basically obvious statements though you may need to know a bit of economics for one of them, and the demographics of single mothers.

  55. karmacat says

    To Olivercrangle

    You are using your own situation as evidence. You are also leaving out details: did you go through mediation, how much is day care for the children, etc. In any case, your situation is what we call an anecdote and doesn’t contribute to the discussion.

  56. cicely (The Lessor of Two Weevils) says

    I’ve also heard complaints about men that intentionally avoid work or try to find jobs that will pay “under the table” so they can claim $0 income & thus weasel out of child support payments.

    My late ex-BiL, for instance, until he solved that “problem” by finding a woman to sponge off of live with who was willing to do all the housework as well as have a full-time job (and give him control of her wages); after which he didn’t do a lick of work in any way proximate to a table. Oh, yes; and took my sister to court on a regular basis, just for entertainment.
     
    Jerk.
     
    And the judge indulged him in this.
    *spit*

  57. says

    @DaveL,

    “I have no way of knowing, other than your answering the question.”

    Actually DaveL, if you are familiar with divorce and how it goes, then you are able to make educated guesses that would be 100% accurate.

    But since you need it spelled out for you, of course she got to keep the rent controlled apartment.

  58. Amphiox says

    I got that number from the NYTimes article I linked to, if you have a problem with it, take it up with them.

    Translation: I quote mine from lay press articles and ignore the primary literature just like a creationist.

    Utterly pathetic intellectual dishonesty all the way down.

    But of course this is olivercrangle we’re talking about here, so nobody’s surprised.

  59. says

    @karmacat,

    No, I am not using my case as evidence of totality. With the exception of rent control, everything I have described goes off of formulas. This is how it is. This is fact. The formulas are pretty simple too. Add up the salaries to get total income. Index that into a table to determine what the state figures the kids should get for support at that level of income. Split the answer to the two parents as a proportion of their income.

    The rent control aspect does point out that the formulas don’t take into consideration the actual costs of the kids.

    The only reason I brought any of that up is because the family law lawyer claims “It has never, ever been the case in my experience that a party is paying more in child support than it costs to have the child living with them.””

    It’s just a silly statement to make in California (and I am told Massachusetts and other states.)

  60. says

    @Caine, Fleur du mal

    Thank you very much! Jeez, I do feel like I am getting old when no one recognizes that.

    But that that is my handle has little to do with what I write, it’s just a handle because people demand one.

  61. Nick Gotts (formerly KG) says

    Fixed costs versus variable costs, ie., they share a bedroom, one kids gets hand me down clothes. – olivercrangle

    You were making $100,000 p.a., and you want your two children to share a bedroom, and one of them to have hand-me-down clothes.

    I don’t think I need comment any further on that.

  62. says

    @Hey Nerd

    “No immature slacker. It is your real costs of being a parent in the real world. If you don’t like the numbers, cite your own or shut the fuck up. Irresponsible misogynist losers like you tend to make many assertions without data, which means what they say can *POOF* be dismissed without evidence. Put up or shut the fuck up. You know that.”

    No, you got the math 100% wrong. And then you misinterpreted the result and said that cost should be born 100% by the man even though it simply has never worked that way. You failed the math. You made a sexist assumption.

    When I pointed that out to you, you call me a misogynist loser.

    As I said, this is Pharyngula Logic at its finest. Pharyngula bullying, silencing tactics at their finest. This is not how skeptics interested in discussion engage with one another with intellectual honesty.

  63. Nick Gotts (formerly KG) says

    Yes, I specifically described it accurately because you’re right, all too often people take the 30% and attribute that incorrectly to all births. It’s a much smaller number – olivercrangle

    And in fact we have no idea whatsoever, from what you say, what that number is. Presumably you don’t ewither, or you’d have told us. Which would rather support the point of the OP, because being numerate doesn’t just mean being able to count and calculate: it includes knowing when numbers are meaningful, and using them appropriately.

  64. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    You were making $100,000 p.a., and you want your two children to share a bedroom, and one of them to have hand-me-down clothes.

    Ooh, the high-wage bracket is $20,000 per annum. What a irresponsible selfish and immature sociopath is OC.

  65. says

    As I said, this is Pharyngula Logic at its finest. Pharyngula bullying, silencing tactics at their finest. This is not how skeptics interested in discussion engage with one another with intellectual honesty.

    First of all, you wouldn’t know logic if it jumped up and bit you. Second of all, we know who you are, and know we can expect no intellectual honesty from your direction, so we might a well call it as we see it. Your own words condemn you.

  66. Nick Gotts (formerly KG) says

    Pharyngula bullying, silencing tactics at their finest. – olivercrangle

    Yes, I see that you’ve been completely silenced.

  67. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Pharyngula bullying, silencing tactics [descriptions of my character] at their finest. – olivercrangle

    Fixed that for you OC.

  68. Tethys says

    But that’s taking your sexist notion that I was supposed to pay for the entirety of the support of my kids, and not share that cost on some basis (usually percentage of total income) with my ex. It also makes the naive assumption that the costs for two children are twice the costs of one child. Fixed costs versus variable costs, ie., they share a bedroom, one kids gets hand me down clothes. We needed one family car for two kids, not two family cars

    You poor thing, so put upon. I bet you’re completely mystified as to why she divorced you, but by golly you are going to make sure she suffers as much as possible for it.

  69. says

    @Nick Gotts,

    What I want for the kids has nothing to do with what their mother provides the kids, what the state demands for the kids, or what psychologists and doctors think is good for the kids.

    And yes, in most of the world, kids get hand me downs, and toddlers often share rooms, especially when you live in a 2 BR apartment.

    I am sorry we all can’t live in your fantasy world.

    And yes, I earned 100K a year before taxes, and in 2009 that was in a 28% federal tax bracket and California’s was 9.55% or about a 38% tax bracket total.

    So that 100K after taxes was actually $62,000 dollars per year with a child support order of $27,600 per year or 45% of my income, leaving me with $34,400 per year in Berkeley / San Francisco to live on.

    (Before taxes, the $27,600 is $44,516)

    So yes, having $34,400 per year to live on to generate the $27,600 the courts determined my kids needed to live on in a rent controlled apartment in Berkeley, yes, I was okay with their sharing a bedroom.

    I am sorry I fail your tests and believe that the kids truly didn’t need $27,600 a year to house and feed them at the ages of 1 and 3 in Berkeley.

  70. noxiousnan says

    @gregpetersen #22 – Greg, please check out the comment immediately above yours. That was all too typical a very short time ago. My mother never received child support from my father, and he just moved a few miles away and started another family. The issues you have are not at all compelling.

    If men do not want exposure to the consequences of sex they should abstain from it, just like women. There are reasons, as I’m sure you well know, why men do not get to decide if a woman should abort. Perhaps the MRM should stop warring with feminism and start working on an artificial womb so that future MRAs can see all those babies to term that women do not want to bring into the world (and you can color me s h o c k e d shocked when that doesn’t happen).

    As to the courts, show me a case where the father is primary caregiver before the divorce, but not after the divorce, and we can talk. But just showing statistics that women most often get primary custody tells me nothing since women are also most often primary caregivers.

    You had to get a bigger apartment for weekends with your kids, yet you make no mention of the extra room required by your wife for the same reason. I have no clue what shot at fairness you expect from the courts, but I suspect if they were truly fair, you’d perceive it as even worse than you do now.

  71. Gregory Greenwood says

    olivercrangle @ 68;

    Yes, I specifically described it accurately because you’re right, all too often people take the 30% and attribute that incorrectly to all births. It’s a much smaller number, but it is neither zero nor insignificant, hence why paternity tests are profitable especially in an atmosphere where 40% of kids are born out of marriage.

    The point I was making was that the fear of paternity fraud does nothing to demonstrate how commonly it actually occurs, and the industry trades on that fear.

    (If you Google hugo schwyzer paternity fraud ted you can find a very famous male feminist encouraging and colluding in paternity fraud so that Hugo did not have to pay child support.)

    The first page of that google search was nothing but a list of ranty MRA sites, including the infamous A Voice for Men. It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

    Citations for the rest of that? Ask that family lawyer d00d or do your own research. Those are basically obvious statements though you may need to know a bit of economics for one of them, and the demographics of single mothers.

    You are the one making the claim, thus the burden of proof also falls upon you.

  72. says

    one kids gets hand me down clothes. We needed one family car for two kids, not two family cars

    Yes, yes, one kid gets screwed over and is told from the get go they aren’t worth as much as the first kid, ’cause everyone knows kids don’t mind that sort of thing at all and why on earth would a woman need a car of her own?

    You’re a disgusting worm, just like your chosen namesake.

  73. cicely (The Lessor of Two Weevils) says

    women decide whether they want to become pregnant and use sperm to do it. they are 100% responsible for their decision and the support of their children.

    Yes, they only use free range sperm floating about in the wild, I mean that stuff is never, ever attached to man in any way whatsoever. Nope.

    And men never, ever have access to things like condoms, and spermicides. Ever.
     
    Ya know, it’s amazing how that sarcastic “pay to play” comment only ever applies to women, where sex is concerned.

  74. daniellavine says

    @crangle:

    I’d probably be able to take your arguments more seriously if they weren’t all based on personal (and I suspect falsely reported) anecdote. I’d also take your arguments more seriously if you could address some of the quite salient counterarguments.

    Let’s go back to what you were saying about paternity tests. You’re trying to imply that women are evil because so many paternity tests come back negative. Others have pointed out that this may very well be a result of a self-selected sample, a very plausible explanation. Do you have any response?

    Or you could spell out exactly what it is you’re trying to imply. Do you really think a large proportion of women have children just to get those fat child support payments? This is pretty clearly the implication behind your statements. Do you have any evidence to back it up? You haven’t even demonstrated this for your own (dubious) anecdote let alone demonstrating that it happens at any kind of scale.

  75. DaveL says

    Actually DaveL, if you are familiar with divorce and how it goes, then you are able to make educated guesses that would be 100% accurate.

    But since you need it spelled out for you, of course she got to keep the rent controlled apartment.

    I am familiar with “divorce and how it goes.” My wife has stories about the poverty she lived in with her mother after her parents’ divorce. Her sister just got divorced, and her ex kept the family home and residential custody – she had to move in with her mother.

    I concede you got screwed on child support because of a formula that doesn’t take into account exceptional circumstances like a bargain-basement rent-controlled apartment. There are plenty of women who get screwed on child support, too. Please don’t try to pretend your experience is emblematic of the system in general.

  76. says

    @Tethys

    Nowhere here have I castigated or mentioned my ex wife or how I have paid my support or my views of my kids in anyway. EXCEPT I did say that kids bring many of us joy.

    Regardless, as typical Septic Feminists, you choose to derail and make personal attacks on me, along with many others, by writing

    “You poor thing, so put upon. I bet you’re completely mystified as to why she divorced you, but by golly you are going to make sure she suffers as much as possible for it.”

    So I write to the one lawyer that her/his experience of support was not my experience nor the experience of many others in California, and your response and those of others here at this forum is that I am a misogynist, a loser, want my kids to grow up poor, and are trying to punish my ex wife.

    No, Pharyngula commenters, never bully, make personal attacks, get their facts wrong, get their logic wrong, try to silence others, or behave terribly in general in the face of dissent.

  77. says

    Cost of childcare for babies and toddlers was over $11K per year per child (July 2011) in Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota, Colorado, California, Illinois, Washington, and Wisconsin. That’s over $22K per annum for two toddlers, i.e. over $400 per week. [ref: http://www.babycenter.com/0_how-much-youll-spend-on-childcare_1199776.bc%5D

    I realise olivercrangle is talking about the 90s, so fees wouldn’t have been quite so high then, but I bet it was still a substantial chunk of cash going out the door each week so that your ex-wife could keep her $40K per year job. Those standard calculations which appear to have surprised you by their generosity probably take all these factors into account, but you appear to choose to overlook them.

    Then of course there’s all the other usual extras of middle-class childhoods – toddler music/dance/art lessons, tiny-tot-gymnastics, trips to the zoo/baby-proms concerts/etc. Unless you think that your kids shouldn’t be able to access these sources of social capital because they’re no longer living with you.

  78. catwhisperer says

    $5000 a year just for popping out a sprog? And here I am, working for a living like a sucker!

    *quits job, buys plane ticket and short skirt, and heads for U.S.*

  79. Halophilic NC says

    This general thesis (multitudes of women are out there ready to go through the inconvenience of childbirth and child-rearing just to fuck you over) and it’s apparent importance has really opened my eyes about the MRM. It’s patently absurd. There obviously are some crazy people in this world that might do exactly this but it can’t possibly be as large or as important of a problem as repeated Reddit/AVfM/YouTube posts make it out to be. It reeks of the paranoia they disparage of some feminists.

  80. says

    @DaveL,

    “I concede you got screwed on child support because of a formula that doesn’t take into account exceptional circumstances like a bargain-basement rent-controlled apartment. There are plenty of women who get screwed on child support, too. Please don’t try to pretend your experience is emblematic of the system in general.”

    You are in denial DaveL, if you think the costs of two children are twice the costs of one child, or if you think the costs of two children, both below the age of 5 is anywhere close to $27,600 per year.

  81. jefrir says

    If $5000 is such a wonderful amount to earn for raising a child, why are MRAs not queuing up to become foster carers? Fostering agencies will generally pay way more than that; in the UK, they’ll even pay more per child than the amount olivercrangle thinks is such a huge amount to pay for two toddlers.

    The rent control aspect does point out that the formulas don’t take into consideration the actual costs of the kids.

    And if they did we’d get fuckwit MRAs moaning about how their exes were spending extra on things like rent in order to steal their money – like by moving into a flat big enough to give the kids a bedroom each.

  82. daniellavine says

    So yes, having $34,400 per year to live on to generate the $27,600 the courts determined my kids needed to live on in a rent controlled apartment in Berkeley, yes, I was okay with their sharing a bedroom.

    I am sorry I fail your tests and believe that the kids truly didn’t need $27,600 a year to house and feed them at the ages of 1 and 3 in Berkeley.

    Another interesting question you could ask yourself: what would you have spent it on otherwise?

    If your child support payments had been, say, half what they were and your children were dutifully wearing hand-me-downs and eating a steady diet of hot dogs and mac’n’cheese would you have lived a life of asceticism, buying all your clothes and Goodwill and stashing away the extra cash in case of health emergencies on the part of the children (something neglected so far in this discussion of child support costs) or to help pay for their educations?

    Or are you mad because you couldn’t afford a Ford Mustang to drive around on the weekends pickin’ up chicks?

    What better use did you have for that money than spending it on your kids is what I’m asking.

  83. Nepenthe says

    Median per capita income in California in 1995: 24,498.

    Boo-fucking-hoo. You weren’t quite making twice that… after taxes and child support!

  84. says

    @Kristjan Wager

    “I think you meant infamous so-called feminist. Hugo Schwyzer is hardly considered a decent person around here, nor among most (all?) feminist bloggers. He is a predator, who uses feminism as a tool for picking up prey.”

    You and I agree 100,000,000% on that.

    Regardless, he is definitely considered a feminist, and has long been, even when MRAs were pointing out the guy is a sociopath and feminists were using him as a shield and sample of how some feminist men get it.

    You may not think he is a feminist — so what? Plenty of feminists thought he was and paraded him around as such up until a year ago. So enjoy him, he’s yours.

  85. Tethys says

    women decide whether they want to become pregnant

    Another idiot who thinks women come equipped with internal warning messages that say “Warning: Birth Control Failure! Grant access to uterus? permit __ deny___

  86. nightshadequeen says

    I am sorry I fail your tests and believe that the kids truly didn’t need $27,600 a year to house and feed them at the ages of 1 and 3 in Berkeley.

    …this guy seriously reminds me of my mom, who thought that an additional $300/sem for a *nonsmoking* dorm was way to much for me, pretty much right after buying a $50k car for herself.

    Yeah, I probably could have gone to a state school and paid my own way, but seriously. The smell of cigarette smoke gives me fucking migranes. That’s…not worth $300/sem.

    Hey olivercrangle, mind breaking down the expenses and telling us exactly how much money your kids deserved?

  87. daniellavine says

    @Halophilic:

    This general thesis (multitudes of women are out there ready to go through the inconvenience of childbirth and child-rearing just to fuck you over) and it’s apparent importance has really opened my eyes about the MRM. It’s patently absurd.

    There isn’t much else to say.

    @olivercrangle:

    Do you have a substantive response to the assertion that this is simply absurd? I’m sick of hearing about your family life. Do you have any evidence that this is really a widespread and particularly harmful phenomenon? More harmful than, say, child support non-compliance?

  88. says

    Despite what has been put out by others commenting, things like phone, Internet, cable, etal are not items that should be expected to be paid for by the other party. They are not necessary or vital to taking care of one’s children

    If you think providing proper educations for your children is vital, or even just necessary, then internet is a must these days.

  89. daniellavine says

    @olivercrangle:

    So enjoy him, he’s yours.

    Funny, when PZ said something very similar about Mark Lepine guys like you were bullshit about it.

    Mark Lepine: enjoy him, oliver, he’s on your side.

  90. noxiousnan says

    @Olivercrangle #29.
    “Maybe some women have more than one baby and understand that fixed costs and variable costs of two children is not twice that of one child.”

    Well if so, they’re in for a shock because the courts realize that too, and they factor it in.

    “The courts will enforce child support orders even if the sperm used to impregnate the woman was obtained through fraud, rape, theft, or coercion.”

    This is why I don’t go anywhere near Reddit, a place where people admit and support the idea that one should be able to avoid child support for a child borne from rape.

    “30% of men that give DNA tests to “their” children to establish paternity find out they are not the fathers.”

    Oh, boo hoo! Here’s a suggestion, don’t wait for ten years on that DNA test. Get it as soon as the baby is born. Make DNA tests as common as pre-nuptial agreements are now so after a few years no one has to take personally that children will be tested at birth even if the relationship is fine. It would probably be healthier for the child than having a dad silently smouldering and suspecting the child’s paternity. I’ve seen that and it’s hard on the whole family (but mostly on the kid who usually has no understanding of the dynamics).

  91. says

    Regardless, he is definitely considered a feminist, and has long been, even when MRAs were pointing out the guy is a sociopath and feminists were using him as a shield and sample of how some feminist men get it.

    Citation fucking needed. You better provide it ASAP, or stand exposed as a fucking liar.

    The people who called him out as a sociopath was feminist, not MRAs, and no feminist uses him as an example of how feminist men get it. No feminist want anything to do with him. A few pseudo-feminist sites, like Good Men Project, hung on to him, but all the feminist sites cut their ties with him as soon as his backstory became known.

  92. daniellavine says

    @olivercrangle:

    You are in denial DaveL, if you think the costs of two children are twice the costs of one child, or if you think the costs of two children, both below the age of 5 is anywhere close to $27,600 per year.

    This doesn’t address DaveL’s point, which is that your case is not representative. You haven’t done the least little bit to establish that situations like yours are a more serious problem than, say, child support non-compliance.

    Incidentally, my father never offered and my mother never asked. Why shouldn’t I take my own situation as more representative than yours?

  93. DaveL says

    You are in denial DaveL, if you think the costs of two children are twice the costs of one child, or if you think the costs of two children, both below the age of 5 is anywhere close to $27,600 per year.

    Given the cost of living in Berkeley, CA? If it weren’t for the exceptional good fortune of a rent-controlled apartment I’d say it would exceed that by quite some margin. Unlike you, however, I have citations to back it up. Look up the cyberpedia link above – it shows that a 2-parent family with a $100K+ income would be spending, on average, more than $20K/yr per child.

  94. says

    Oliver Crangle

    So that 100K after taxes was actually $62,000 dollars per year with a child support order of $27,600 per year or 45% of my income, leaving me with $34,400 per year in Berkeley / San Francisco to live on.

    Didn’t you just tell us how little money your ex and the two kids could have lived on there?
    So, what is it? Is 27,600 for two people way more than enough or is 34,400 for one person practically poverty?

  95. Muse says

    I’d also like to know how much oliver thinks his ex spent on childcare in order to keep her 40k job?

  96. says

    it shows that a 2-parent family with a $100K+ income would be spending, on average, more than $20K/yr per child.

    Oh but Dave, those parents would be doing stupid things, like providing clothing for both children, feeding them something other than generic brand mac ‘n’ cheese and allowing them internet, television and phones, because parents know internet is needed for education, phones for safety and maintaining friendships and television because it’s fun and gosh, kids need to have fun now and then. Why, they probably also provide those kids with their own room, because privacy. Silly people.

  97. says

    Olivercrangle: funny how you only show up here to whine about feminism. Funny how you’ve just announced that you want nothing to do with organized atheism. Funny how you’re pretty clearly a disgruntled, innumerate MRA yourself. Funny how you’re a divorced man who resents paying what you consider excessive child support for children you claim to love. Funny how you think I, with my 3 kids I’d do anything for, somehow hate children.

    So why don’t you go away already? Because you’re really really close to having to go away anyway.

  98. nightshadequeen says

    I’m going to repeat myself because seriously, please answer the damn question.

    Hey olivercrangle, mind breaking down the expenses and telling us exactly how much money your kids deserved?

  99. says

    Giliell:

    So, what is it? Is 27,600 for two people way more than enough or is 34,400 for one person practically poverty?

    Why, both of course! It’s more than enough money for others, but dirt poverty for poor, poor Ollie.

  100. daniellavine says

    Didn’t you just tell us how little money your ex and the two kids could have lived on there?
    So, what is it? Is 27,600 for two people way more than enough or is 34,400 for one person practically poverty?

    That’s what I was trying to get at by asking him what he’d rather spend the money on but I’d much rather see him answer this question.

  101. says

    @daniellavine

    “If your child support payments had been, say, half what they were and your children were dutifully wearing hand-me-downs and eating a steady diet of hot dogs and mac’n’cheese would you have lived a life of asceticism, buying all your clothes and Goodwill and stashing away the extra cash in case of health emergencies on the part of the children (something neglected so far in this discussion of child support costs) or to help pay for their educations?”

    I don’t understand your question.

    First,

    You are making a lot of false assumptions. (And FWIW, I paid for the kids health care too, and it was a very nice plan.)

    1) If my support was half of that, there is no evidence that mom, who was making $40,000 per year would be forced to feed them hot dogs and mac n’cheese.

    2) That my support went entirely 100% to support the kids and did not go into the ex wife’s student loan payments, wardrobe, new car, dating

    3) That if my support was half of that that I would not be giving more to the kids when they were with me. That if they had a 2BR with their mother, that they could have a 2BR with me, or that my place couldn’t have toys in it, clothes, etc., on a par to what was at their mother’s place.

    And of course, you make a pretty wonderful assessment that as long as I am not dead, there is no reason I should be able to live a life where I can “pursue happiness”.

    “Or are you mad because you couldn’t afford a Ford Mustang to drive around on the weekends pickin’ up chicks?”

    So let’s explore that.

    If my kids, both below 5, are living decently in Berkeley, in a shared bedroom, in a 2BR apartment near the North Berkeley BART, and are fed and housed at levels WAY above poverty level, and if that clearly takes much less than $28,000 a year to do so,

    What the hell is wrong with my wanting a Ford Mustang to drive around on the weekends pickin’ up chicks?

    Why do YOU feel my needs, desires, wants compete with my kids, given that the kids are are in a North Berkeley Apartment, and are living far far far above poverty level?

    Why do YOU seem to feel there is any need to compare the two situations to decide if I get to have my Ford Mustang to pick up chicks with?

    What if I did spend that money on that Ford Mustang to pick up chicks? What import does that have on the question of whether child support is determined reasonably or not?

    I will put it another way to help you understand.

    What would I have done with the money that I was absolutely not allowed to do?

    GO BACK TO SCHOOL.

    The truth was I did not like the industry I was in, and would have loved to have worked in a different field, one I would have been much happier with, one that would still have let me support my kids at a level far higher than poverty and let them live in North Berkeley, but one that would have paid me far less money.

    When I change jobs, or go back to school, the court asks my ex-wife if that is okay with her. And my ex-wife has the right to ask the court to impute wages to me at the prior wage.

    So what would I have done? I would have gone back to school or taken a job that made me happier.

    Now are either of those two reasons acceptable to you? Are they better than getting the Ford Mustang? Well who the hell are you to make that choice for me, or for other people in this situation?

  102. says

    PZ,

    YOU SAID YOU HATED CHILDREN IN THIS VERY POST.

    “That’s nowhere near what it costs to raise a child, not counting the costs in time and worry and all the responsibilities of taking care of the little pain-in-the-butt.”

    That is, you denied that a woman might want to have children to help her escape from her life and give her some meaning, even though that is exactly what many young mothers tell us they want.

    So don’t whine that I said you hate children. You told us that yourself.

  103. johnfraser1 says

    i’m surprised and disappointed by the number of ad hominem attacks and slurs that having an opinion here attracts. i expected that at rationally oriented blog like pharyngula i could participate in a straightforward discussion of my and other peoples’ points of view but that’s not the case.

  104. Matt Penfold says

    So that 100K after taxes was actually $62,000 dollars per year with a child support order of $27,600 per year or 45% of my income, leaving me with $34,400 per year in Berkeley / San Francisco to live on.

    Even today that is greater than the median income for an American. And that net income figure seems rather low. Were you too cheap to pay an accountant to do your taxes ?

  105. Muse says

    Um… I’m fond of children. They are still pains-in-the-butts sometimes. perhaps you’ve not spent enough time around children to make an accurate assessment.

  106. says

    Answer #114, Crangle.

    Why is it such an imposition for you to live on $34,400 after taxes, while your wife has an income of $40K (before taxes) and also has to care for two children? Presumably spending a good chunk of money to put them in reasonable daycare/schools so that she has time to work at all?

    Or better yet, fuck off.

  107. says

    Oh, on hand-me-downs.
    I like them. They’re great. There are hand-me-downs that were already given to us for our firstborn and that are now in the little one’s wardrobe.
    And lately I’ve been noticing that I need to stock up upon some new stuff for her. Because those shirts? They look grubby. After they’v been worn by 1-2 kids while playing, while painting, while eating, they’re grubby and even when freshly dressed the poor kid looks like she had a long day already and there’s no way we could wear them to some official appointment.
    But I guess Oliver wouldn’t mind if the pediatrician looked at his ex funny and treated the kid like xie was a tad neglected.

  108. Matt Penfold says

    i’m surprised and disappointed by the number of ad hominem attacks and slurs that having an opinion here attracts. i expected that at rationally oriented blog like pharyngula i could participate in a straightforward discussion of my and other peoples’ points of view but that’s not the case.

    First, if you have not worked out capitalization, I have to wonder how you expect to participate in a dicussion. And second, you have yet to say anything cogent, so there can be no discussion with you.

  109. says

    i’m surprised and disappointed by the number of ad hominem attacks and slurs that having an opinion here attracts. i expected that at rationally oriented blog like pharyngula i could participate in a straightforward discussion of my and other peoples’ points of view but that’s not the case.

    You could definitely do so, but perhaps it would help if you understood the words and phrases you use. Where is the ad hominem attacks in this comment thread?

  110. says

    @Giliell,

    “Didn’t you just tell us how little money your ex and the two kids could have lived on there?
    So, what is it? Is 27,600 for two people way more than enough or is 34,400 for one person practically poverty?”

    Yes, Giliell, I am here to tell you the costs for two little kids, below the age of 5, are not the same costs as for two adults, or one adult.

    I know this befuddles you and PZ both, but its true.

    Moreover, you and PZ BOTH fail math. Because if I am paying $27,600 for the kids, the mother is also paying her share for the kids. You have been told this over and over, but you both keep making this sexist assumption that my costs are THE costs.

  111. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    i expected that at rationally oriented blog like pharyngula i could participate in a straightforward discussion of my and other peoples’ points of view but that’s not the case.

    Funny how you aren’t smart and literate enough to capitalize your I’s like any erudite and intelligent person who is capable of rational argument. Instead you play the by the MRA loser script and pretend we have to accept your UNEVIDENCED OPINION instead of evidenced rational thinking….

  112. Nick Gotts (formerly KG) says

    So that 100K after taxes was actually $62,000 dollars per year with a child support order of $27,600 per year or 45% of my income, leaving me with $34,400 per year in Berkeley / San Francisco to live on. – olivercrangle

    My heart bleeds for you.

    Well actually, not. It bleeds for your children, having such a hate-filled cheapskate as a father.

  113. says

    Crangle, you’re a lyin’ fool. I did not say I hated children. I said they’re a pain-in-the-butt. You do realize that you can love the little beasts while recognizing that they really are a lot of trouble to raise?

    Oh, wait. Your ex-wife is the one struggling to maintain her sanity and some kind of reasonable life while raising two kids (who she probably loves) while you grumble about paying child support. You probably don’t have the slightest idea of the struggles and responsibilities of being a parent.

  114. nightshadequeen says

    @johnfraser1

    <blockquote></blockquote>

    Those are quote tags in HTML. Please document the ad homs in this thread; in particular, please note exactly how each ad hom was used as an argument.

    Insults do not count.

    Olivercrangle, please answer the question.

    Hey olivercrangle, mind breaking down the expenses and telling us exactly how much money your kids deserved?

  115. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    I know this befuddles you and PZ both, but its true.

    Until you evidence your assertion with a citation, you are nothing but a bald-faced liar incapable of telling and evidencing the truth. Welcome to science, where your lies say “don’t trust this bullshitter”.

  116. says

    @PZMyers

    “Olivercrangle: funny how you only show up here to whine about feminism. Funny how you’ve just announced that you want nothing to do with organized atheism. Funny how you’re pretty clearly a disgruntled, innumerate MRA yourself. Funny how you’re a divorced man who resents paying what you consider excessive child support for children you claim to love. Funny how you think I, with my 3 kids I’d do anything for, somehow hate children.

    So why don’t you go away already? Because you’re really really close to having to go away anyway.”

    Really? Threatening me?

    Is this post about Atheism or is it an attack on MRAs?
    Is my discussion on this post about MRAs and innumeracy and support on topic, or offtopic?
    Is my discussion in this post attacking people, or am I being attacked personally?

    Have I abused this thread, or have I responded to questions and attacks of others?

    So what PZ is my crime in this thread or at your blog in general that you are now threatening to ban me?

  117. Nick Gotts (formerly KG) says

    And before you do any more whining about personal attacks, olivercrangle, reflect that it is you who chose to make this thread largely about you and your personal circumstances. If others don’t agree with the high opinion you evidently have of yourself, you know who to blame.

  118. jefrir says

    And my ex-wife has the right to ask the court to impute wages to me at the prior wage.

    Did you read the mentions above of men deliberately taking lower paid jobs or working for cash-in-hand specifically to avoid paying child support? Do you not think the courts might have a reasonable interest in ensuring that their children should not suffer just because daddy’s a selfish arse?

  119. says

    Moreover, you and PZ BOTH fail math. Because if I am paying $27,600 for the kids, the mother is also paying her share for the kids. You have been told this over and over, but you both keep making this sexist assumption that my costs are THE costs.

    No we don’t. We fully realize that she obviously also had to pay something, in order for the kids to have a proper home. As others already have pointed out, your payment barely covered the childcare costs, which would allow her to make the money for which to buy food, pay the rent etc.

  120. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Really? Threatening me?

    And who are you immature and irresponsible lout? You are nothing. Nobody. Not worthy of posting your bullshit where responsible folks discuss things with evidence.

  121. Muse says

    Oliver – I still want to know what you think you *should* have been paying. I’d like to know what you think the costs of daycare for a 1 and 3 year old are. I’ll give you a hint, it’s not small, and it’s not something you generally have to factor in as a cost for an adult, so yes, I’d say that the cost of a 1 and 3 year old may well be comparable to the cost for an adult.

  122. Rasmus says

    Maybe August Strindberg was an innumerate MRA as well.

    You joke, but that’s actually not far from the truth. He was a massive psuedoscience enthusiast and I think he would probably have been an outspoken MRA if he was alive today.

  123. Matt Penfold says

    So what PZ is my crime in this thread or at your blog in general that you are now threatening to ban me?

    I would have thought it was pretty obvious. Vapid stupidity, coupled with an over-inflated sense of entitlement. Not to mention your MRA-inspired attitude, and your willful dishonesty in reading PZ comments.

    Why did you have to ask ?

  124. crowepps says

    Interesting — Table 1 reports low paternal confidence in less than 13% of unmarried men, and in only about 3% of married men. So it would be 30% of a small number whose suspicions that they aren’t the father are correct, and only 1.9% of the much larger confident number who are being fooled.

    http://www.unm.edu/~jlancas/DemCorPatConf2006.pdf

  125. says

    Your crime is that you’re a repulsive idiot.

    The only reason you haven’t been mercy-banned yet is that your stupidity probably causes you more than enough suffering on its own.

    And no, I’m not befuddled by the fact that your ex-wife is ALSO making sacrifices to raise your kids. Look up at the top of the post: it’s about MRAs claiming that women get pregnant to ride on the gravy train of child support payments. Do you seriously believe that your ex-wife took advantage of you, getting preggers and then divorcing you so she could live a life of prosperous extravagance on your leavings?

  126. says

    1) If my support was half of that, there is no evidence that mom, who was making $40,000 per year would be forced to feed them hot dogs and mac n’cheese.

    40k before taxes. Practically rich!
    And doing all that childcare work, too
    So, your ex can work her ass off making 40k, wipe shit off little asses at 3 am and all you care about is a Ford Mustang.

    Yes, Giliell, I am here to tell you the costs for two little kids, below the age of 5, are not the same costs as for two adults, or one adult.

    I know this befuddles you and PZ both, but its true.

    Yes, that’s kind of true. They cost some more than one adult. I’m going to guess that one of the reasons your ex is your ex is that your ex might have something to do with your idea that parenting consists of “driving the kids around in a Ford Mustang” because you seem to be 100% ignorant of what children cost.

  127. says

    i’m surprised and disappointed by the number of ad hominem attacks and slurs that having an opinion here attracts. i expected that at rationally oriented blog like pharyngula i could participate in a straightforward discussion of my and other peoples’ points of view but that’s not the case.

    I answered you seriously, johnfraser1, and gave my response the due consideration warranted by an opinion you pulled straight from your ass.

    There hasn’t been a single ad hominem directed at you, you fucking idiot. Go away and learn what an ad hominem fallacy actually is – here’s a hint: it’s not an insult.

  128. says

    @PZMeyers

    You started this post with a dishonest question:

    “What woman would steal sperm to get impregnated for a lousy $5000/year payout? That’s nowhere near what it costs to raise a child, not counting the costs in time and worry and all the responsibilities of taking care of the little pain-in-the-butt.”

    The question is dishonest because you attribute children as a net negative, a pain in the butt.

    An honest rephrasing would be

    “What woman would steal sperm to get impregnated for a lousy $5000/year payout? It costs a lot to raise a kid, is the amount of joy and meaning they can bring enough to outweigh the costs to raise the kid, the costs in time and worry?”

    My conclusion is that you must think of kids as a net negative, and not as a positive addition to your life.

    As I said from my first post, many men and women consider kids to be net positives, and so for a woman that wants a kid, but would like a subsidy, that might very well be a motive to seek child support from a man.

    In addition, if a woman has more than one child, that support is looking better and better, especially if they live in subsidized housing, or with parents, or share rooms.

    In the meantime though, apart from my noting you seem to hate kids, I have said nothing about how you parent, or about your relationship with your wife or kids. That doesn’t stop you from repeatedly, over and over disparaging how I feel about my kids, or deciding for us all how I feel about my ex wife or how I treat them.

    Now, maybe you think heh, it’s just a blog, it’s really nothing but talk.

    But actually PZ, I think it goes straight to why so many people cannot FreeThoughtBlogs seriously, as anything other than a net negative to Atheism, to feminism, or even to discourse.

  129. Tethys says

    No, Pharyngula commenters, never bully, make personal attacks, get their facts wrong, get their logic wrong, try to silence others, or behave terribly in general in the face of dissent.

    Poor cupcake. How dare we notice that you do not want your former wife and children to enjoy the same standard of living they had while you were married.

    We are such terrible meanies.

  130. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    But actually PZ, I think it goes straight to why so many people cannot FreeThoughtBlogs seriously, as anything other than a net negative to Atheism, to feminism, or even to discourse.

    Actually, it is your evidenceless and SELFISH OPINION that hurts both you and what you purport to support. You haven’t made your case. In order to do that, try here like anybody who wants to engage in a serious evidenced base discussion. OR SHUT THE FUCK UP.

  131. says

    My conclusion is that you must think of kids as a net negative, and not as a positive addition to your life.

    Says the person wh, so far, hasn’t said anything nice about his children but whined a lot about the costs.

  132. says

    Crangle, did you even look at the article I linked to? Because it’s about a fucking MRA making a purely economic argument that women are trying to steal his precious bodily fluids and income. Not me. One of yours. With your reasoning, he should have been hoping for a spermburglar to come along and gift him with a lovely little child at such a low, low cost.

    Like I said. You really are such an idiot.

  133. says

    My conclusion is that you must think of kids as a net negative, and not as a positive addition to your life.

    This, from the idiot who thinks at least one child doesn’t require new clothes, who thinks children don’t need their own room and thinks they sure as hell don’t need phone, television or that damn internetz! It’s a pity you don’t extend that “doesn’t need internet” to yourself. Everyone would be better off if you did.

  134. Tethys says

    My conclusion is that you must think of kids as a net negative, and not as a positive addition to your life.

    You either crossposted with PZ, or you are abysmally bad at thinking since you are ignoring a direct correction to your erroneous conclusion.

  135. says

    @Muse,

    I was paying far far above any sort of poverty level. The kids were living in North Berkeley, about 1/4 mile from campus, down the block from Andronico’s.

    I don’t know what I *should* have been paying.

    I got into this because someone purporting to be a family law lawyer made a claim that “It has never, ever been the case in my experience that a party is paying more in child support than it costs to have the child living with them.”” and that claim just does not hold up in California or Massachusetts.

    My issue is not so much with the child support schedule itself, although yes, I did feel then, I was very pinched by it, and it was very difficult to live on it while still trying to live in the Bay Area.

    A greater issue I had with it, and still have with it, is that any job change I make, and desire to go back to school, or change industries, anything that might require paying the kids less, but still, far far far above poverty and able to still live in North Berkeley (though none of us now live there) was always subject to veto by my ex wife who could say to the court, he can do X, but he has to pay us support at the prior wage.

    Against that veto, then yes, the child support laws were and are onerous in terrible ways.

    What the schedule was was too high. That is clear by the testimony and the facts of how many divorced fathers live. But it is unfair to ask me to then set the right number.

    The formula is simplistic. It is very difficult to appeal. And very difficult to get lowered. The formula does not reflect real world costs. The money is not accounted for and their is no accountability period.

    During this recession, it has been very difficult for people who are laid off thanks to the banksters to get lower payments.

    So called deadbeats are often unemployed, or disabled.

    Penalties for being a deadbeat involve jailtime, loss of professional licences, loss of drivers licenses, defacto loss of employment. None of these penalties will aid the children.

    It’s a huge mess, but it’s not made better when it’s discussed in terms of mothers versus deadbeat dads.

  136. Nepenthe says

    Dude, PZ’s eaten lutefisk for his children. Lutefisk Unless you’ve leapt in front of a bullet, you’re going to lose this “who loves their kids more” fight.

  137. Matt Penfold says

    A greater issue I had with it, and still have with it, is that any job change I make, and desire to go back to school, or change industries, anything that might require paying the kids less, but still, far far far above poverty and able to still live in North Berkeley (though none of us now live there) was always subject to veto by my ex wife who could say to the court, he can do X, but he has to pay us support at the prior wage.

    So you think you are more important than your kids. There are plenty of parents who are still together who are not able to change job to something more rewarding but that pays less, or go back to college or do anything that reduces their income because otherwise they would not have enough income to provide for their kids.

    How arrogant of you to think you are more important than your kids.

  138. arrenfrank says

    ‘Ollie’, atop the rest of your output (already amply dealt with) — all of which may as well be a transcription of flatulence:

    But actually PZ, I think it goes straight to why so many people cannot FreeThoughtBlogs seriously, as anything other than a net negative to Atheism, to feminism, or even to discourse.

    Unlike the specious bleats of “ad hominem” above, this is a blantant argumentum ad populum. Not only is it fallacious, but as a self-professed atheist* you may want to reflect for a moment that by this poor excuse for a rationale, atheism itself can be disparaged, as most people see it as a net negative for humanity, full stop.

    (This is aside from the laughable notion that whatsoever MRAs might claim to see as a net negative for feminism should be taken as if it were in good faith…..)

    * Why the arbitrary caps? As pedantic as it undoubtedly is, I can’t help seeing capricious capitalization as a reliable hallmark of lackluster thinking.

  139. says

    Yes, Oliver Crangle, we understand. Fathers should never ever have to pay more than it costs to keep children slightly above poverty level. No nice things for them. If the damn bitch who also does their dirty laundry, wipes the shit off their asses, cleans up their little messes, makes them breakfast, takes them to daycare/school, picks them up, cooks them dinner, takes them to sports, takes them to playdates, holds the hankie for them to blow their little noses, does their dishes, gets up at 2 am when one is sick, holds them in her arms even though they’re puking over her, puts clean sheets on their beds after they peed into them, organizes their birthday party, misses the important talk at work because the daycare closes, buys their grocery, comforts them when they bruise their knee, knows what their favourite plushie is called, knows how their friends are called and where they live thinks that they deserve something nice she better has to pay for it because FORD MUSTANG!!!

  140. David Marjanović says

    She tried, once, to get him to pay child support. It was suggested to her, by the lawyer she visited, that she should try prostitution instead, and she didn’t need to leech off her ex-husband with a “goldmine between her legs.”

    *headdesk*

    He then offered to be her first customer.

    *HEADDESK*

    Christ, what an asshole.

    Maybe some women understand how child support is apportioned as a percentage of income and might seek men that will be paying higher than average.

    …Maybe you’re projecting. Never mind the facts in comment 34 that you’ve managed to overlook somehow – I can’t find another explanation for why you seem to think large amounts of people have no emotions other than greed and plot it several years in advance.

    Maybe August Strindberg was an innumerate MRA as well.

    …That’s not how I’d put it, but the reason isn’t that Strindberg appears to be famous.

    That cavalry captain (not that I understand how his job is relevant here) isn’t the biological father, and yet the mother stays with him for 17 years? That’s a long time. She… prrrrobably loves him, and probably a whole lot more than the biological father. She definitely thinks he’s a better father than whoever knocked her up and disappeared.

    I’m bad at predicting such things, but I might actually feel flattered.

    And what does he do? Immediately stops loving the child at all. o_O O_o Christ, what an asshole. He never loved the child, it turns out; he loved himself and only himself. Are you sure Strindberg meant him to be an agreeable character, a good guy? Isn’t he a Type V antihero, or at the very least Type I?

    **Reminds me of the jaintor who works in my husband’s lab. She fell around his neck crying because he simply gave her 20 bucks. Her daughter needed new shoes and her ex demanded a blowjob in return.

    *headwall*
    *headwall*
    *headwall*

  141. arrenfrank says

    blantant /ˈblāntnt/
    Adjective
    Completely lacking in subtlety, yet somehow simultaneously bland as Wonderbread.

  142. says

    I know that this is something of a tangent, but why is it that MRAs, creationists, slimepitters and similar jackasses seem to be collectively unable to understand even basic HTML tagging, no matter how many times it’s been explained to them? Is this a deliberate of their trolling, trying to make the posts hard to read, or is it just a stunning incompetence and unwillingness to learn? What do you say, olivercrangle? What’s your excuse?

    (Also, oliver, your whining about the pitiful 34000 you were forced to live on? Not impressive, since my husband and I put together have never made that much in our lives, even if you count the income of the people we were rooming with. So basically, I’ve got no sympathy at all for your complaints that your children are driving you into the poorhouse; if you didn’t want to spend so much money on them, maybe you should have taken some steps before you had any).

  143. says

    PZ,

    “Crangle, did you even look at the article I linked to? Because it’s about a fucking MRA making a purely economic argument that women are trying to steal his precious bodily fluids and income. Not me. One of yours. With your reasoning, he should have been hoping for a spermburglar to come along and gift him with a lovely little child at such a low, low cost.”

    Your prior post to Peter Higgs to task for a statement he made about Richard Dawkins. I believe (I may be wrong) you have taken Richard Dawkins to ask about statements he made about Feminism.

    Does this invalidate Physics?
    Does this invalidate Atheism?

    David Futrell’s usual tactic is to find a stupid statement made at an MRA forum and then blow it up beyond all reason and cry outrage. And you amplify that.

    There are dozens of posts and thousands of comments made at /r/mensrights everyday.

    YOU could choose to engage with them. But you choose not to. You unskeptically, uncritically, act as the amplifier of Futrelle.

    You do not critique the original statement with reason or intellectual honesty, you pick it apart dishonestly and worse, as you have here, you threaten to ban people that try to defend it.

    That last behavior is really despicable PZ.

    “Because it’s about a fucking MRA making a purely economic argument that women are trying to steal his precious bodily fluids and income. ”

    If you had asked your question honestly, and been present to examine the situation, you could have critiqued:

    The redditor for his own lousy assumptions and economic analysis and fixed his argument by noting that while it is doubtful a woman would do that for what seems to be a paltry $5,000 per year, that under some circumstances it could be a perverse incentive, but that you would need more evidence its really anything anyone would do.

    Regardless, there are many cases where MRAs and the courts have seen women blatantly lie about who the father is, and even blatantly well, spermjack sperm, by yes, stealing it from used condoms that were thrown away. And we’ve even seen courts take those blatant frauds and still make the so called father pay support.

    You can argue these are such rare events that you do not believe they are worth any discussion.

    But you should not be arguing they do not occur, or that in a very difficult economic environment like we have now, and where 40% of births are outside of wedlock, that men are not acting reasonably to discuss if this is possible, how likely it is, and what might be done.

    You asked a question in this post, and I answered it in the context of this post. I gave the reasons that a woman might feel the support was a reasonable incentive.

    You and your regular commenters have chosen bullying and personal attacks as a method of refutation. And you have tossed upon that, banning.

  144. says

    What an interesting discussion.

    I went over to the Reddit link and I entirely agree that the comment is the kind of ridiculous gender-politics scaremongering bullshit that needs to be called out. I felt like I was reading some kind of inverted Schrodinger’s rapist in the replies that followed, with all women to be treated with some kind of warranted mistrust. Fine: if these guys want to live their lives stewing in their own miserable juices they will be the ones that suffer, ultimately.

    Of course there ARE some genuine issues that underpin much of this, and imo possibly intractible ones. Having sat there myself whilst a (casual) partner has performed a pregnancy test I know what a hideously disempowering thing it is to know that a positive result leaves your future almost entirely at the discretion of somebody else. But what is the alternative? I don’t think there is one. Ultimately the woman is the one who will bear any child or bear the greater (potential) emotional distress of an aborion so on what grounds could one possibly ever justify giving the chap an equal say in the outcome (and ofc 49% of the vote is no better than no say whatsoever).
    I truly think this is just one of these things in life where it is just hard shit. If you are a guy in that situation somebody deciding your future on your behalf is simply the best of all the not wholly satisfactory alternatives.

    Anyway, two points I wanted to make:
    1) A lot of talk about whether $5000 a year is a lot or not very much with PZ asserting that this amounts almost to robbery. However, it is unclear what circumstances this spans and due thought needs to be given both to:
    i) The situations where the mother is actually earning more than the absent father and so, in juristictions whereby payments are based on earnings, will therefore draw less than what may be an optimal amount
    ii) Situations whereby the fathers circumstance is such that he is simply unable to pay more because his earnings are so low
    iii) Thirdly, and this is the one I really wanted to bring up, that most custody arrangements (certainly in the UK) involve the child staying several nights per fortnight with the non-custodial parent. If you have your child for three days out of every fourteen then this (certainly in the UK) is quite rightly factored in to maintenance payments (though not necessarily on a directly proportional basis)

    I just think it is a bit difficult to pass judgement on 5k a year when so many factors can be involved and this average is liable so vary wildly from circumstance to circumstance.

    The second thing I wanted to comment on was when PZ said this which was my one big bone of contention – yes, just the one today ;)

    Don’t you wish you could just have a baby, then pay up a measly $5000/year to greet a well-adjusted, mature, interesting young adult 18 years later?

    I think it is a sad state of affairs, in these times where we are trying to throw off the straitjackets of our biological past, that we still automatically see fathers as second class parents. Even if in the majority of cases that happens to be true, and possibly always will be, each father is an individual and deserves to be rated as such and not as an ‘average male parent’. Now I feel pretty sure PZ would wholeheartedly agree with me in that (which would probably make that a first) and yet this line portrays the father as some sort of necessarily absent cash cow simply there to be milked for material benefits, perhaps with the possibility of some kind of relationship with the adult child somewhere down the line.
    Maybe I misunderstood it but my assumption would always be, for the sake of the child AND the father, that the father will be able to play an active role throughout the development of the child whenever that is in any way possible.
    Surely any father who would see benefit in being able to have a future relationship with a well adjusted adult child down the line would be the kind of parent who would want to be involved along the way?
    Who would have every right to be involved along the way.

    Jim

  145. says

    and even blatantly well, spermjack sperm, by yes, stealing it from used condoms that were thrown away.

    Citation seriously fucking needed.
    And no, not one of your MRA pals who claims that it happened to a friend of his cousin’s co-worker.

  146. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Maybe I misunderstood it but my assumption would always be, for the sake of the child AND the father, that the father will be able to play an active role throughout the development of the child whenever that is in any way possible.

    Gee, what a naive, if you think all non-custodial fathers, especially those with new families, want anything to do with previous children…

    Jim, check reality before you post. You are not reality compliant…

  147. Matt Penfold says

    Crangle,

    You still have not explained why you think you are more important than your kids. And if you are so reluctant to contribute to the cost of raising them, why did you have kids in the first place ?

  148. says

    Nerd

    Gee, what a naive, if you think all non-custodial fathers, especially those with new families, want anything to do with previous children…

    In Germany, one year after a divorce, 50% of non-custodial fathers will have no more contact with their children. And that’s Germany with automatic shared custody and all…

  149. omnicrom says

    Olivercrangle if you hate FTB so much why are you here? You aren’t winning converts, you’re too wrong and too dull and too thin-skinned to win support from the Pharyngulite horde. No one has any respect for you on any level, you’ve shown yourself to be painfully self-important and generally just wrong on everything.

    In your last post you actually uncritically claimed that Spermjacking is a real problem instead of an MRA fever dream, got a citation for that? That’s the deal on Pharyngula, the onus is on YOU to reject the Null Hypothesis. If you think Spermjacking is a real problem, or that women get pregnant for child support payouts, or if Paternity Fraud is a statistically real thing YOU had better have data to support it. If you whine and tone troll and generally act like a pain in the neck you WILL get yourself flamed. This blog makes no bones about being nice, the people here care ONLY that you can back up your assertions.

    If there is a debate on paternity it’s “How can society best care for children”. If you think that the courts are biased in favor of women how would you change it to make it fair? Here’s a hint, if your answer is simply “Remove childcare payouts” then you’re going to be flamed some more because that’s a non-answer that doesn’t work.

  150. Gregory Greenwood says

    @ olivercrangle;

    You have made a lot of claims about the notional hardships suffered by men who have to pay child support. I asked you for citations to support your claims @ 60, only for you to demand that I do your research for you @ 68;

    Citations for the rest of that? Ask that family lawyer d00d or do your own research. Those are basically obvious statements though you may need to know a bit of economics for one of them, and the demographics of single mothers.

    (Emphasis added)

    As I have already noted, the burden of proof lies on you as the party making these rather outlandish claims, and I am still waiting for you to do anything to credibly substantiate your arguments.

    If you won’t support your arguments with evidence, why should anyone here will take you seriously?

  151. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    In Germany, one year after a divorce, 50% of non-custodial fathers will have no more contact with their children. And that’s Germany with automatic shared custody and all…

    Sigh, sad state of affairs world-wide.

  152. says

    and even blatantly well, spermjack sperm, by yes, stealing it from used condoms that were thrown away.

    For the third time now, for every single fucking idiot out there who can’t manage to take responsibility for their own penis:

    Step one: Think. This would be the most important step. Yes, it’s even more important than your penis gettin’ all happy.

    Step two: Take responsibility for your penis and your reproductive ability.

    Step three: Carry or keep your own condoms, to which, not one single person outside or yourself has access to and don’t carry a “handy” one in your wallet unless you wish to be called daddy.

    Step three A for the extra stupid: Clean up after yourself. This shouldn’t be a big deal, as a decent person would do this anyway. Included in said clean up would be disposing of said condom and your ever precious manly fluid in which ever way you desire. This would mean, for the extra paranoid among you, rinse the fucking thing out in the sink prior to discarding. Your mess – you clean it up.

    Step four: If you don’t want sprogs, you have an option, it’s wonderful. Called a vasectomy. Get one.

    Step five: If your paranoia over your precious manly fluids is still taking up too much room in your head, get yourself a vasectomy and store your sperm at a handy bank. Or take vows of chastity.

    Short form: Your penis, your precious fluids, your responsibility.

  153. David Marjanović says

    Oh crap, this is a fast thread, I got lost in TV Tropes and didn’t refresh before submitting. Where was I?

  154. says

    Nerd @175

    Gee, what a naive, if you think all non-custodial fathers, especially those with new families, want anything to do with previous children…
    Jim, check reality before you post.

    I will do you a deal: I will start checking reality before I post when you start reading and digesting what I actually wrote before you reply.

    I NEVER stated that all non-custodial fathers would want anything to do with previous children. I explicitly stated this:

    Surely any father who would see benefit in being able to have a future relationship with a well adjusted adult child down the line would be the kind of parent who would want to be involved along the way?

    PZ had specifically made reference to the benefits of having a well-adjusted young adult 18 years later to have a relationship with. So we are not discussing all parents, we are discussing the typical male parent who WOULD want a relationship with his children.

    Jim

  155. says

    Giliell,

    http://www.thegloss.com/2011/11/03/sex-and-dating/liz-jones-stole-sperm-302/

    http://www.glennsacks.com/sperm_theft_ruling.htm

    Here are two accounts of many many accounts.

    PZ, Giliell, is it the case that Atheists do not read the bible? Refuse to read the bible? Or that scientists refuse to read the arguments of creationists?

    Because playing ostrich and refusing to read MRA sources is stupid, bigoted behavior. And it mainly just serves to out you as ignorant and partisan.

    Read Warren Farrell. Subscribe to Fathers & Families.

    Read Paglia, Cathy Young, Erin Pizzey, Christina Hoff Sommers, Noretta Koertege, Daphne Patai, Barbara Kay. Read them in the original Klingon.

    Be Skeptical. Be Intellectually Honest. Refuse to Bully. Subvert the dominant paradigm.

  156. says

    I try not to comment anymore but this topic compelled me. Let me tell you what is happening in my family.

    My grandfather was a rapist who molested the babysitter and then walked out. In the agreement (after strong arming my grandmother to testify in his defense on the rape charge of course) he maintained mortgage of the house but had to provide child support for his two sons. He decided to abandon the house and disappear. My grandmother who had never had a job at that point then had to quickly find work and continued to pay off the mortgage in the house she was technically squatting in. Flash forward forty years later and now Grandpa is back demanding the house back. She has paid off the mortgage herself but he has filed to have her evicted. She only gets to stay because papers were filed wrong. She never got a single cent of child support but now looks like she’s going to have to “compromise” by offering a few grand to make him drop the case. She lives with no heat now because the furnace broke and she refuses to fix it if there’s a chance she’ll lose her house. Oh yeah and the eviction noticed was filed right after she started treatment for cancer in hopes that she wouldn’t be able to spend the money or energy to fight it.

    So every single one of you entitled man children fuck heads can french kiss every inch of my ass. Take it form me who has had to live with the result of people like you, do your children a favor and just remove yourself from the picture. If you’re too big of an ass to be a fucking person either just disappear or just kill yourselves and give your children the gift of knowing they’ll n ever have to be burdened by your bullshit again. It’s probably the only good thing you could ever do by them.

  157. Nepenthe says

    @Oliver

    There are dozens of posts and thousands of comments made at /r/mensrights everyday.

    So? There are dozens of posts made at Stormfront every day. Doesn’t mean that they’re worthwhile.

    I tell you what. Why don’t you find a non-batshit post and bring it to the Thunderdome where we can… talk about it.

  158. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    when you start reading and digesting what I actually wrote before you reply.

    Gee, you act like your posts are always perfect in transmitting what you intended. Why do I think NOT?

  159. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Refuse to read the bible?

    I’ve read it twice, and recognize it as fiction/mythology. YOUR POINT BEING?

  160. says

    Nerd:

    I’ve read it twice, and recognize it as fiction/mythology.

    I’ve read it (cover to cover) more than twice, more than one version and in more than one language. I’m pretty sure most people here have read it at least once.

  161. Nepenthe says

    Read Warren Farrell.

    I’ll get right on that right after he retracts his horrific statements about date rape and incest. (Both awesome and exciting in his mind. And he would have gotten away with it too if it hadn’t been for prudish women and their talking dog!)

    I mean, usually rape apologist is more of a metaphor, but in Mr. Farrell’s case it’s a literal description.

    I know this probably makes me close-minded, but then again I don’t read books by proponents of slavery, child neglect, and shooting immigrants either. So I’m equal opportunity anti-bigot.

  162. omnicrom says

    Nerd of Redhead:

    I don’t think Olivercrangle even realizes what he’s writing. He’s asking Feminists to read MRA stuff like how Atheists read the bible. I’m not sure he realizes that he’s comparing MRA material to myths, if he had he probably wouldn’t have drawn attention to how both are fiction. He also seems to imply actually reading MRA stuff might make you a believer in the MRA worldview, which is an ugly place to be and weirdly like the claims that creationists make about reading the bible.

  163. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    He also seems to imply actually reading MRA stuff might make you a believer in the MRA worldview, which is an ugly place to be and weirdly like the claims that creationists make about reading the bible.

    If that is what he is doing, he is a total fuckwitted fool. He doesn’t think the uberskeptical eye won’t be turned to MRA OPINION that is as unevidenced as the babble? Sigh, just when one thinks it can’t sink even lower into idiocy…

  164. jefrir says

    Noelplum, what the fuck is your point? Because I’m pretty sure no-one here is trying to suggest that fathers should not be involved in the care of their children.

  165. DaveL says

    Yes, Giliell, I am here to tell you the costs for two little kids, below the age of 5, are not the same costs as for two adults, or one adult.

    I know this befuddles you and PZ both, but its true.

    Indeed, for presumably you don’t need to hire someone to watch you while you go to work, can use the toilet on your own, and don’t outgrow your clothes in a matter of months.

    What the hell is wrong with my wanting a Ford Mustang to drive around on the weekends pickin’ up chicks?

    Ah, I see. It’s that your toys cost so much more.

  166. rq says

    Wow. WOW!! I finally remember why I wanted children in the first place! I wanted my life to have meaning, because my children help me escape from my life!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH! Suddenly, my motherhood has become the easiest thing in the world, and I should think about divorcing Husband, because obviously I can be even happier – have the kids all to myself all the time, and get filthy rich on Husband’s child support payments! That’s the ticket.
    Now all I have to do is convince Husband to move to America, and I’ll be living the high life in no time.

    Now remind me why I went to school in the first place.

  167. Gregory Greenwood says

    Caine, Fleur du mal @ 118;

    Think… Take responsibility… Clean up after yourself…

    What, all at the same time? That’s not fair! You know we blokes can’t multi-task…

    ;-P

    Short form: Your penis, your precious fluids, your responsibility.

    *Channels whining MRAs everywhere*

    But that’s so mean! We can’t be held responsible for our penes – the white poison makes us do all kinds of stupid things. We should totes get a reduced responsibility defence or something. And it is not as though you are innocent, being all sexy-like and woman-shaped and stuff, thoughtlessly tempting us with with your irresponsible insistance on existing. Do you really have to do that all of the time? How are we supposed to resist? You have breasts, you know. Breasts and lady parts. What do you expect us to do, show restraint? The other male animals don’t have to show restraint. I don’t see you on the case of those male Bonobo chimpanzees. Why should we get treated like this when the other male mammals get a pass, huh?

    Afterall, it is entirely unreasonable to ask us to take simple precautions with our reproductive capacity when we live in a society where women will only face unwanted pregnancy, the very real possibility of being denied access to abortion services and necessary medical care because politicians and priests think a foetus ahould have more rights than an adult woman, and the prospect of trying to bring up a child while living in poverty because daddy thinks his preferred lifestyle is more important than the health, education and wellbeing of the children he fathered. I mean, what is a little risk of pain and death, denial of bodily autonomy, and crushing, needless poverty between friends? It is not as though you have to deal with the anguish of the white poison torturing you everyday…

    How can you heartless hellions treat us poor menz so harshly? It is not enough that you got the vote; now you want us to behave like responsible adults? Don’t you know how darn hard it is to be a man? Don’t you care? Can’t even one of you sperm-burgling, castrating feminazis feel our pain!? *Runs off, crying testerically*

    */Whining MRA*

  168. says

    A greater issue I had with it, and still have with it, is that any job change I make, and desire to go back to school, or change industries, anything that might require paying the kids less, but still, far far far above poverty and able to still live in North Berkeley (though none of us now live there) was always subject to veto by my ex wife who could say to the court, he can do X, but he has to pay us support at the prior wage.

    Oh, dear. Your personal options were more limited because you’re the father of two children? I am pained.

    Do you realize how you come across? It has nothing to do with politics. The way you talk about your children is so sad. I can only hope they never connect these posts to you, and that you can get past your anger and resentment and redirect the time and energy you’re expending here towards your relationship with them.

  169. says

    Gregory:

    I don’t see you on the case of those male Bonobo chimpanzees. Why should we get treated like this when the other male mammals get a pass, huh?

    Erm…a male bonobo will happily engage in sex with another male. I suppose you could consider that yet another option. ;D

  170. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Is anyone else hearing a sad trombone over the top of oliver’s posts or is that just me?

    I think its more like a Freedonian horn…

  171. says

    Ironically for me SC, last night I was reading a thread in which you had been attacked and rather viciously, so it’s quite amusing to see you here writing this…. Anyway,

    “Oh, dear. Your personal options were more limited because you’re the father of two children? I am pained.”

    Being forced to work a job in an industry that you find you dislike and that basically rips your soul everyday because that job pays more than a job you would prefer that would enrichen your life is not “personal options were more limited”

    Especially since at no time would my kids be actually impacted by a change of career. Instead of being paid $28,000 per year to raise them, which is well above what is needed for two kids younger than five to live in North Berkeley, they would probably have gotten only $20 – $22K per year. Still well above Nepenthe’s numbers determined earlier.

    So SC, instead of giving us flowery prose about how terribly I write about my kids, and how you hope for their sake they never connect this, why don’t you act like an adult that can write and give me specific examples of how what I have written is so terrible.

    Because the way I figure it, my kids growing up would be happier and do better with a father who enjoyed his work and his career while still ensuring they were secure, and thrived, than having a father who hated getting up everyday because it turned out his college notions of what his industry would be like were very far from reality.

    I cannot imagine you writing what you wrote to a woman in this position. You would be all over yourself, saying, yes, quit your life as lawyer/doctor/engineer and go back to school to get that art degree if you think you will be more fulfilled.

  172. screechymonkey says

    Poor oppressed, bullied, ad hominen’d Ollie wrote @93:

    Regardless, as typical Septic Feminists, you choose to derail and make personal attacks on me

    .. and I just got this new irony meter for Christmas! Hopefully, it’s still under warranty.

    (Incidentally, that’s not his only use of “Septic Feminists,” so it’s not a typo.)

  173. says

    @DaveL,

    “Ah, I see. It’s that your toys cost so much more.”

    Please go back and read that post, and the post it referred to. Because you flunk reading.

  174. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Because the way I figure it,

    Who the fuck cares about your unevidence OPINION, that of a loser MRA? Why do you keep showing us you immaturity, unresponsibility, and idiocy? Fess up and take responsibility for your actions…Or does that limit you acting like an adelescent on streroids?

  175. says

    @omnicrom

    Yes, you can read my statement that way.

    Or as was intended, Atheists are not afraid of reading the Bible, they know that reading the Bible is critical to intelligently criticizing it.

    Biologists are not afraid of reading Creationist or ID material, they know that reading the Bible is critical to intelligently criticizing it.

    Yet you so called “Skeptics” and “Feminists” are afraid of reading MRA material. Why is that? You cannot make intelligent critiques of it without reading it. All you can do is what Futrelle, PZ, and so many others do which is poke holes in strawmen, and bully people that disagree with you. And yes, that works for awhile, until someone does read and act with intelligence.

  176. Gregory Greenwood says

    olivercrangle @ 184;

    Because playing ostrich and refusing to read MRA sources is stupid, bigoted behavior. And it mainly just serves to out you as ignorant and partisan.

    Refusing to read rape apologia posted on known misogynist hate sites is bigotry now? For that to hold, it must also be awfully bigoted of me that I don’t read St*rmfront.

    Read Warren Farrell. Subscribe to Fathers & Families.

    Do you really want to use him as an example? Are you aware of what he has said? Of what he advocates? Of what a truly horrible excuse for a human being he is?

    Be Skeptical. Be Intellectually Honest. Refuse to Bully. Subvert the dominant paradigm.

    We aren’t the ones consistently refusing to back up our positons with evidence. As for bullying – has it occurred to you how your MRA talking points might effect the women here who have direct experience with spouses who refuse to pay child support and so leave those women in needless poverty? Have you thought that some such men might read what you write, and take validation for their abandonmnet of their responsibilities from your words?

    I also find it laughable that you consider what you are doing ‘subverting the dominant paradigm’ – any casual viewing of modern society demonstrates categorically that feminisam – the proposition that women are entitled to equality of interests and rights in society and before the law – is sadly far from the ‘dominant paradigm’. We live in a patriarchal society still riddled with entrenched misogyny as can be seen from the repeated attempts to deny women their bodily autonomy by restricting abortion access (and even access to contraception), by the ongoing travesties of wage inequality and the glass ceiling, and by the pervasive rape culture that saturates most media.

    How can feminism credibly be called the dominant paradigm in such a society?

  177. says

    @allegro,

    Jonathan Turley:

    http://jonathanturley.org/2011/02/01/illinois-court-rules-man-can-sue-over-deceptive-use-of-sperm-by-girlfriend-to-impregnate-herself/

    ” I just ran over a case that, while now a bit dated, is remarkable. The case involves a Chicago doctor who was forced to pay child support after his girlfriend, without his knowledge, saved sperm from oral sex and arranged to be impregnated with it. The case came to public attention after an appellate court ruled that Dr. Richard O. Phillips could sue Dr. Sharon Irons for emotional distress in the case.”

    Can I make the assumption you don’t believe Jonathan Turley is a member of the KKK?

    (Is there a limit to how many links a post can contain?)

  178. says

    http://jonathanturley.org/2008/01/26/new-jersey-court-order-man-to-pay-child-support-even-if-he-is-not-true-father/

    New Jersey Court Orders Man to Pay Child Support Even If He is Not True Father

    The New Jersey Supreme Court has upheld a lower court decision against a father who claimed that he should not have to pay child support to his ex-wife after discovering that the child was not his own. It is only the latest in a string of such cases.

    The case involves a 10-year-old girl and a divorced couple in Hunterdon County New Jersey. The father submitted evidence that paternity tests showed that his ex-wife had misled him and that she had conceived the child with another man. He wanted to compel the disclosure of the true father and to end his child support payments. Yet, in the lower court decision, New Jersey Superior Court Judge Stephen Rubin ruled that such changes would not be in the child’s best interest — the standard in such cases.It is a tough standard since it will often be in the child’s best interest to have no change in his or her recognized parent — or possibly replacing a paying “father” or a non-paying real father.

  179. says

    I cannot take seriously any longer ostrich feminists and ostrich skeptics that refuse to look at links or sources.

    It’s a bogus tactic. It’s dishonest. It’s derailing. It prevents dialogue and discourse. It assumes moral positions to leverage the argument.

    PZ Myers, as a leading skeptic you should be discouraging this ostrich behavior yourself.

  180. DaveL says

    Because the way I figure it, my kids growing up would be happier and do better with a father who enjoyed his work and his career while still ensuring they were secure, and thrived, than having a father who hated getting up everyday because it turned out his college notions of what his industry would be like were very far from reality.

    I cannot imagine you writing what you wrote to a woman in this position. You would be all over yourself, saying, yes, quit your life as lawyer/doctor/engineer and go back to school to get that art degree if you think you will be more fulfilled.

    By all means, change careers. If you’re so certain the $20K/yr you would be able to provide would still be more than enough to maintain your kids in a comfortable standard of living, what’s the dilemma? I’ve never yet met an old man who wishes he had spent more of his life in a soul-crushing job.

    Just don’t come to us and whine about how you choose to work a job you hate because the money is better.

  181. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Gee more fuckwitted non-sequitors from OC with his #210. If a real man doesn’t want to be a father, real preventive measures are in place. What a MRA loser in thinking this changes our OPINIONZ of its untruthiness in any fashion. Try saying “this is what I believe, and this (link) is the REAL evidence to back up my OPINION. Not waiting for this to happen, as the liar and bullshitter has been repeatedly exposed, and it takes more than once…

  182. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    PZ Myers, as a leading skeptic you should be discouraging this ostrich behavior yourself.

    Not one citation, ergo *POOF* dismissed as unevidenced fuckwittery. Welcome to reality irresponsible misogynist loser…

  183. Nepenthe says

    @oliver

    Still well above Nepenthe’s numbers determined earlier.

    Were we reading the same table? No, apparently not, since I forgot to link to it. My apologies. Doesn’t excuse your dumb though.

    So, in 1995 the per capita income in California was 24,498. Your adjusted payment would be 20k. Add that to your ex’s 40k, you have 60k. Divided by three, that’s 20k per head, well under the per capita income. And that doesn’t take into account cost of living. So… fail.

    Anyway, what do you think is fair? I notice that you’ve not answered.

  184. DaveL says

    Please go back and read that post, and the post it referred to. Because you flunk reading.

    I have read them, and understood them. They demonstrate a deep denial about the cost of raising children,

  185. says

    Greenwood,

    These are the statements you demand evidence for:

    “Maybe some women do not realize that the average child support payment is $5000 per year.

    Maybe some women have more than one baby and understand that fixed costs and variable costs of two children is not twice that of one child.

    Maybe some women understand how child support is apportioned as a percentage of income and might seek men that will be paying higher than average.

    Maybe some women are already living with parents, or are already living in subsidized housing, and this extra $5,000 per year is a meaningful amount of income.

    Citations needed in a big way.”

    You want citations and evidence to support for maybe statements about incentives and knowledge.

    You are derailing.

  186. Nepenthe says

    @211

    New Jersey Court Orders Man to Pay Child Support Even If He is Not True Father

    When you’ve raised a child for 10 years, you are the “true father”. Jesus. What did this douche say to his little girl? “Sorry honey, I’ve loved you for 10 years, but apparently we’re not genetically related, so you mean nothing to me anymore. Hope you don’t starve, but not really.”

  187. Jules says

    You know, I make more like $10K a year taking care of other people’s children.

    And I only do it for about 25 hours a week.

    Ladies, if you’re burgling sperm for dollars, you’re doing it wrong.

    I get to go home to my quiet place, draw a nice, hot bath, and sip wine in silence at the end of my day. And I’m making twice as much!

    I could donate eggs for more than $5K a year. Then I’d have babby and money but no responsibility!

    Seriously. Child support is the dumbest way of “making” money ever. Which is why no one actually does that shit.

  188. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Maybe some women have more than one baby and understand that fixed costs and variable costs of two children is not twice that of one child.

    Irrelevant distraction to reality.

    Maybe some women are already living with parents, or are already living in subsidized housing, and this extra $5,000 per year is a meaningful amount of income.

    Irrelevant distraction to reality.

    You want citations and evidence to support for maybe statements about incentives and knowledge.

    Those who make assertions without evidence are proven liars and bullshitters, and your inability/unwillingness to provide evidence tells the world your reliability, ie, liar and bullshitter. You LOSE…

  189. says

    @Nepenthe

    Huh? That per capita income number has absolutely nothing to do with how support is determined and very little to do with much income a family needs to live anywhere.

    Assuming they had any meaning, I am not sure how you even came up with your numbers, but you should probably make them all pretax numbers.

    The ex made $40K, and to pay $28K, I had to earn $45K for a total of $85K split three ways of about $28K. I still don’t know what you think those numbers have to do with anything.

    I did answer the question about what I thought would be fair. Go back and read it.

  190. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    I did answer the question about what I thought would be fair. Go back and read it.

    Why? You are a proven evidencless liar and bullshitter, so any repsonse you make is self-serving fuckwittery. No reality in sight….

  191. Gregory Greenwood says

    Caine, Fleur du mal @ 201;

    Erm…a male bonobo will happily engage in sex with another male. I suppose you could consider that yet another option. ;D

    Oh, yes – I can imagine how (given the strong overlap between misogyny and homophobia) most MRAs would respond to that observation…

  192. screechymonkey says

    Olivercrangle@210:

    Jonathan Turley:

    http://jonathanturley.org/2011/02/01/illinois-court-rules-man-can-sue-over-deceptive-use-of-sperm-by-girlfriend-to-impregnate-herself/

    ” I just ran over a case that, while now a bit dated, is remarkable. The case involves a Chicago doctor who was forced to pay child support after his girlfriend, without his knowledge, saved sperm from oral sex and arranged to be impregnated with it. The case came to public attention after an appellate court ruled that Dr. Richard O. Phillips could sue Dr. Sharon Irons for emotional distress in the case.”

    FYI, that actually isn’t evidence of anything more than that Phillips claims it happened that way.

    Turley doesn’t provide a link to the actual opinion, and the citation he mentions at the end of the post doesn’t seem to be to the opinion he’s referencing.

    But from Turley’s description, it sounds like the trial court ruled that certain of plaintiff’s claims weren’t legally sufficient, and the appellate court reversed in part, finding that the intentional infliction of emotional distress claims did state a claim but the conversion claims did not. (It sounds like this was a ruling on a motion to dismiss, in which the court assumes for the sake of argument that the plaintiff can actually prove his factual allegations.)

    But all that means is that Phillips is allowed to attempt to prove his case on those claims. There’s nothing in the excerpts Turley quotes to indicate that either the trial or appellate court made any finding that Phillips was being truthful or that Irons admitted to deceiving him.

    That may be the case, or it may not. But you can’t cite this case as an instance of actual “sperm-jacking,” only as an allegation of such.

  193. allegro says

    Can I make the assumption you don’t believe Jonathan Turley is a member of the KKK?

    You can make any assumption you want and clearly do quite frequently and in great quantity. You can also continue to utilize obfuscation and diversion to justify great leaping generalizations to justify your claims of male victimhood at the hands of evil women out to snatch men’s precious sperm en masse to obtain wealth, which appears to be the point you are trying to make. If there is some other point to it, please do educate us.

  194. omnicrom says

    Actually Olivercrangle I knew exactly what you were hamfistedly trying to say. And Failing to say.

    Presumably what you were trying and failing to say is that Feminists are too scared to engage the MRA people and read their books and rebut their arguments. As usual you are incorrect, or what do you call what what’s happening here in this thread every time you make a claim? You also apparently missed the delicious irony of lumping MRA literature in with Creationist literature. Correct me if I’m wrong but you seem to imply the MRA people have a point, so lumping them in with Evolution denialism and other religious buffoonery is both true and harmful to the point you seem to be trying to make.

    You said that Feminists are like ostriches burying their heads in the ground against arguments. Okay. Make an argument. A GOOD argument. Prove that Spermjacking is an actual problem not something that might have happened once somewhere. Prove that the MRA people who are terrified of women knocking themselves up to extort childcare from them have any ground to stand on. Prove that you aren’t just full of hot air. You claim that Feminists have been attacking strawmen, that they cannot engage in an honest argument with the MRA brigade, but you are the MRA representative in this thread and you have been making a piss-poor showing. If you think the MRA crew have a case to make then make it, put up or shove off.

  195. Gregory Greenwood says

    olivercrangle @ 218;

    These are the statements you demand evidence for:

    “Maybe some women do not realize that the average child support payment is $5000 per year.

    Maybe some women have more than one baby and understand that fixed costs and variable costs of two children is not twice that of one child.

    Maybe some women understand how child support is apportioned as a percentage of income and might seek men that will be paying higher than average.

    Maybe some women are already living with parents, or are already living in subsidized housing, and this extra $5,000 per year is a meaningful amount of income.

    Citations needed in a big way.”

    You want citations and evidence to support for maybe statements about incentives and knowledge.

    You are derailing.

    You used these examples as a basis to try to claim that the MRA position that women exploit the child support payment system for personal gain is reasonable. They are an important plank of your argument, and yet you still refuse to substantiate them with evidence. Every time you do so, you weaken your credibility still further. If, as your refusal to support your arguments suggests, all you have is your personal experiences and some nebulous hostility toward women in general – backed up with nothing more than vague anecdotes and outlier cases that fail to show the existence of any widespread trend or behaviour – then simply admit the fact. Then you can actually do some rigorous research and maybe garner a better understanding of the available evidence and a more credible position on this topic.

    Demanding evidence for extraordinary claims is not derailing; it is the very essence of skeptical, rational thought. You seem to be trying to wrap yourself in a shroud of ‘true skcepticism’ on this thread – I would have thought you would have known that.

  196. Nepenthe says

    @oliver 222

    Huh? That per capita income number has absolutely nothing to do with how support is determined and very little to do with much income a family needs to live anywhere.

    It might not have anything to do with how support is determined, but it gives you a baseline number of the average income per person in the state. But whatever.

    And I saw your “answer”.

    I don’t know what I *should* have been paying.

    This is not an answer, especially when this whole thread is you whinging about that number.

  197. carlie says

    oliver, why is it that you think your kids should have to live on less money per year for you to fulfill your dream rather than you living on less money per year to fulfill your dream? You know, sacrificing for your kids, the way actual adults do?

    Because the way I figure it, my kids growing up would be happier and do better with a father who enjoyed his work and his career while still ensuring they were secure, and thrived, than having a father who hated getting up everyday because it turned out his college notions of what his industry would be like were very far from reality.

    Oh, fuck you and the horse you rode in on. Having a fulfilling career that makes you happy is a luxury that only a tiny fraction of middle and upper class people enjoy. Do you have any fucking idea how many people in this world have jobs they don’t like? Jobs they hate? Jobs they have to sit in the car an extra five minutes every morning just to steel themselves to get out and walk in the door? Do you have any idea how many people have to string two or three of those jobs together just to make ends meet for themselves and their children? Boo-fucking-hoo. I think your kids would do better with a father who knows how to grow up and deal with the world as it is than one who constantly whines that the world owes him a happier life than the one he’s made for himself.

  198. nightshadequeen says

    For some context:

    About half (50.6 percent) of all custodial parents had either legal or informal child support agreements.

    Custodial parents receiving the full amount of child support due declined between 2007 and 2009, from 46.8 percent to 41.2 percent.

    Of the $35.1 billion in child support due in 2009, 61.0 percent was reported as received, averaging $3,630 per custodial parent who was due support.

  199. Rodney Nelson says

    I don’t know what I *should* have been paying.

    Why do I have the impression that any number greater than zero would be unacceptable to olivercrangle?

  200. says

    Ironically for me SC, last night I was reading a thread in which you had been attacked and rather viciously, so it’s quite amusing to see you here writing this….

    You’re making my head hurt. Please try to make a coherent point.

    Being forced to work a job in an industry that you find you dislike and that basically rips your soul everyday because that job pays more than a job you would prefer that would enrichen your life is not “personal options were more limited”

    It is, in fact. Being a parent is about enriching your children’s lives and letting them enrich yours. You appear to view your children as a burden and a constraint.

    Especially since at no time would my kids be actually impacted by a change of career. Instead of being paid $28,000 per year to raise them, which is well above what is needed for two kids younger than five to live in North Berkeley, they would probably have gotten only $20 – $22K per year.

    That’s an impact. They’re already impacted by having only one parent raise them. You evidently don’t feel that they need you to participate in raising them, and don’t show any interest in raising them. You don’t seem to see that as important for them or fulfilling for you. You haven’t said one thing about having a relationship with them; only complained bitterly that your choices are constrained and they cost too much.

    This is so foreign to me. I know several couples and people who’ve become single parents due to death or abandonment, and they’ve all made numerous sacrifices. It’s not that they don’t recognize that they’ve sacrificed some things, or that they never complain, but I just can’t imagine them talking about their children the way you do.

    So SC, instead of giving us flowery prose about how terribly I write about my kids,

    Flowery prose?

    and how you hope for their sake they never connect this, why don’t you act like an adult that can write and give me specific examples of how what I have written is so terrible.

    Why don’t you try this: Separate yourself from this thread for a while. Then come back to it and imagine you’re one of your children reading your posts and knowing the person who wrote them is their father. How do you think that would make you feel?

    I had an amazing father, who took a job making far less than he could have so that he could spend time with us, come to all of our games and performances, and just share in our lives. Most of the men I’ve known have been great parents (even those who’ve been bad husbands or boyfriends). It’s almost incomprehensible to me, this idea that a father would resent what he provides for his children or see them as a constraint or burden. I feel terribly sorry for your children that you see things that way.

    Because the way I figure it, my kids growing up would be happier and do better with a father who enjoyed his work and his career while still ensuring they were secure, and thrived, than having a father who hated getting up everyday because it turned out his college notions of what his industry would be like were very far from reality.

    I think they’d be happier and “do better” with a father who spent his time participating in their lives and focusing on them as people rather than complaining on the internet about how burdened and unhappy he is due to his having to “pay” for them and speculating about how they could do with less.

    I cannot imagine you writing what you wrote to a woman in this position.

    I would respond the same way to a woman writing the things you have.

    (I think I’m going to have to take a break from this thread myself. It’s giving me a knot in my stomach.)

  201. LorrieAnne Miller says

    The original poster PZ was referring to did have a real point. He just doesn’t seem to understand his own point. Most women are not going to use a man in the way mentioned. There are a minority of women who do lie and/or cheat to get pregnant though. I am unfortunate enough to know one very well. I think she is despicable and do not condone her actions in any way, but do acknowledge what she did. She out and out used deception to get pregnant. There is no other way to honestly describe what she did. Between the spousal payment the military requires and the child support the military requires, she lived alright, drinking it up for a couple of years at her formerly naive boyfriend’s (later husband) expense. She didn’t care that she was living in poverty. She just cared that she could get by without working and had money for cheap rent and cheap booze. He is now stuck raising a child he never wanted. Not a happy situation for anyone involved, mostly for the kid.

    That said, this type of situation appears to rarely occur and is not truly a gender based problem. Manipulators and users can be of any gender. All people should be on the watch for psychopaths and manipulators who want to use them. Some women do use men and some men do use women for their own ends as some people use other people. That’s not how most people I know live and to run around with a chip on one’s shoulder claiming all people of group x are scoundrels harms us all.

  202. David Marjanović says

    “I have improved that child’s life for 17 years now, and I shouldn’t have loved it in the first place because it might have come out of someone elses’s nutsack!”
    …and that’s your idea of a deep, telling argument? A fictional asshole who is pissed off that he missed out on the chance to abandon a child?

    That’s a telling argument, all right. I’ll leave the exact lesson as an exercise for the reader.

    You said it better than I did.

    Yes, they only use free range sperm floating about in the wild, I mean that stuff is never, ever attached to man in any way whatsoever. Nope.

    :-D Day saved.

    So that 100K after taxes was actually $62,000 dollars per year with a child support order of $27,600 per year or 45% of my income, leaving me with $34,400 per year in Berkeley / San Francisco to live on.

    …What happens if I say “boo fucking hoo”? I know Berkeley and SF are expensive places, but on that kind of money you could live in Paris. I wouldn’t even know what to do with that much money, other than donating it. Use it as wallpaper?

    Yes, yes, one kid gets screwed over and is told from the get go they aren’t worth as much as the first kid, ’cause everyone knows kids don’t mind that sort of thing at all

    …Well, it depends on the kid. I’m actually somewhat surprised by your perspective. I never minded being handed down clothes from my uncles and occasionally my dad for 20 years or more (I still wear a few of those, at the age of 30). It would be a waste to throw perfectly good clothes away.* :-| If my younger brother minded, not to ever say so would be completely out of character for him; he quarrelled a lot with me, just over other things. Gender-neutral clothes like pyjamas have been handed down to both of our sisters, and they’ve never complained either. – Admittedly, our lack of obsession with status symbols is unusual, and it’s normal to wear the same clothes to school for 2 or 3 days in a row where we come from (I’ve been told it’s not in the US).

    * …Of course, this assumes the clothes are actually still good. Each one of the 4 of us occasionally got completely new clothes.

    my mom, who thought that an additional $300/sem for a *nonsmoking* dorm was way to much for me, pretty much right after buying a $50k car for herself

    Christ, what an asshole.

    Why, they probably also provide those kids with their own room, because privacy.

    Not yet an issue for toddlers. (And later it depends on the kids.)

    blantant /ˈblāntnt/
    Adjective
    Completely lacking in subtlety, yet somehow simultaneously bland as Wonderbread.

    Thread won.

    Be Skeptical. Be Intellectually Honest. Refuse to Bully.

    And Use Gratuitous Capital Letters.

    Sorry, couldn’t resist. What is your point with all that capitalization?

    “daddy daughter fun time”

    …Argh.

    Now remind me why I went to school in the first place.

    Because that’s the best place to ambush potential husbands, duh.

    (Sorry. We seem to have been deprived of Comic Sans.)

    Can’t even one of you sperm-burgling, castrating feminazis feel our pain!?

    Obligatory link.

    Do you realize how you come across? It has nothing to do with politics. The way you talk about your children is so sad. I can only hope they never connect these posts to you, and that you can get past your anger and resentment and redirect the time and energy you’re expending here towards your relationship with them.

    Seconded.

    I cannot imagine you writing what you wrote to a woman in this position. You would be all over yourself, saying, yes, quit your life as lawyer/doctor/engineer and go back to school to get that art degree if you think you will be more fulfilled.

    …As far as I can see, you could actually afford doing that. Just saying.

    (Is there a limit to how many links a post can contain?)

    Yes, 5.

  203. says

    Along with innumeracy (and, judging from our own little MRA, a complete lack of reading comprehension), I don’t think these guys have any clue what even the most basic child care costs. Unsurprising, as they seem to have little to do with the day-to-day realities of raising children, even the ones who have them. I know several women who are on (or have been on) welfare. All of them would rather have been working. All of them, every single woman, could not work because the wages from whatever minimum-wage job they could get with only a high school diploma or GED (if that) wouldn’t have come close to covering the cost of childcare. It literally would have cost more to put their children in daycare than they could have earned at work, with nothing left over for food and rent. And since their welfare benefits would have stopped when they started working (regardless of how little the pay was), that meant they couldn’t work at all, at least until their children were in school. (With the exception of food stamps, but I know that some politicians want to change our state laws to make them more like they are in other states, where even your food stamps end as soon as you start getting any income at all.)

    5,000 a year for a child under the age of five? Couldn’t even come close. I’m in the San Francisco Bay Area, so I know cost of living is higher here, but I have been trying to help a good friend of mine find child care for her three kids (age 4, 2, and 11 months) so she can work and go back to school. Even the absolute shittiest day care (we are talking about a place so awful that we both knew within seconds of visiting that she could never leave her kids there) would have ran 200.00/week per child (there was a discount for more than one kid, but added expenses because two of her kids are still in diapers, so that’s what the cost worked out to). The good places, the centers with plenty of workers, toys, educational activites, good nutrition, and accountability are thousands of dollars per month. Yes, there are low-income day care and pre-schools, but they all have waiting lists that run years.

    And no, she’s not on the baby gravy train, because her children’s father is siting in San Quinton prison. She and the kids lived in our living room for nine months (and we have a tiny 1200 square foot house with 5 people already living here, but they desperately needed a place to stay) until she got into transitional housing, because he was arrested and she lost her place to live just two weeks after the last baby was born. And that delivery? She didn’t have any pain medication, not because she was trying to be brave, but because she couldn’t find childcare for her other children, so after she went into labor, she had to stay home, breathing through the contractions while watching her kids until her sister finally came home from work and could watch them for her. They had to rush her to the hospital in an ambulence (couldn’t afford a taxi, she didn’t have a car, and there was no way she could walk to the bus stop) where she gave birth alone, unmedicated because the baby was practically crowning by the time she arrived and there wasn’t any time to give her something before he was born.

    I gotta show her this entire discussion. I’m sure she’ll find it hilarious. Or infuriating.

    /anecdote. Yeah, I know, it’s a personal story, not evidence. But I gotta say, maybe it’s just that I’ve only met the special, particularly brave, loving, strong mothers, but all the single mothers I know worked their asses off for their kids, did whatever they could to make ends meet, and survived on very little (the lucky ones; most of them survived on nothing) from the fathers of their children. I don’t doubt that there are women who try to milk every last dime from their ex, or men who get screwed by the system. I doubt that it is anywhere near as common as portrayed.

    And listening to a guy whine about the piddly child support he pays while insisting that his kids should just survive in the most meager fashion possible and anything “extra” is wrong makes me physically ill, seriously. That is the much more common situation, I find. (BTW, thanks for brilliantly proving our point, dude. You are Exhibit A in the case of Sexism Exists and Women are Still Fucked by Society (and Biology) vs. Dumbass MRA.) I really hope that your kids are too young to get on your computer and see the shit that you’ve said about them. I hope they never find out how little you care about them. Fucking tragic. Thankfully, reading between your bullshit, it seems like their mother cares about them and is trying to do her best for them; I hope that they have at least one parent that shows them love, devotion, and sacrafice.

  204. says

    Sweet Jebus. A reasonable poster. It only took 233 posts.

    That’s the only reasonable post? Why, Lachlan? Because she provided a personal anecdote stating she knew a woman who was manipulative and a lousy parent? So what? I’m pretty sure almost all of us can point to at least one example of a lousy, manipulative person who happened to be a parent, too.

    This isn’t about anecdotes, though. It’s about lying MRA douchecakes who are doing everything they can to manipulate men into being paranoid. Golly, how about that.

  205. says

    EEB:
    You hit it spot on with the cost of daycare. I quickly found out that it’s cheaper for me to quit my job than to put the Darkling into (licensed, good quality) daycare. I didn’t earn a ton of money– I wasn’t broke, either– but day-umn.

    Of course, we’re lucky that we’re not trying to wring support out of a cheap, selfish asshole like our Ollie here. I don’t know what I’d do with a baby and a deadbeat.

  206. Lachlan says

    Caine @ 238.

    This isn’t about anecdotes, though. It’s about lying MRA douchecakes who are doing everything they can to manipulate men into being paranoid. Golly, how about that.

    Well, you didn’t have to be so kind as to provide me an example of an unreasonable post! There is plenty of that above, but thanks anyway.

    Reading this thread is like watching a football game. Go Team Feminist! Go Team MRA! Boo other team! It’s just irrational tribalism. I used to think we atheists were above it, and that all (or most) atheists arrived at their atheism through a firm grasp of the rational. How wrong I was.

  207. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Why do I have the impression that any number greater than zero would be unacceptable to olivercrangle?

    Actually, any numbrer where he didn’t receive compensation was unacceptable…

  208. Ing:Intellectual Terrorist "Starting Tonight, People will Whine" says

    Do you realize how you come across? It has nothing to do with politics. The way you talk about your children is so sad. I can only hope they never connect these posts to you, and that you can get past your anger and resentment and redirect the time and energy you’re expending here towards your relationship with them.

    Trust me from dealing with my father and grandfather the best thing he could do is cut off all contact and stay the fuck away.

    Relationships with people like this are hurtful and stressful. After 20+ years I’ve finally decided to stop trying with my father and all I can feel is relief.

    Reading this thread is like watching a football game. Go Team Feminist! Go Team MRA! Boo other team! It’s just irrational tribalism. I used to think we atheists were above it, and that all (or most) atheists arrived at their atheism through a firm grasp of the rational. How wrong I was.

    Oh you little fucking bastard. Stick your head up your ass and clench until you’re Marie Antoinette you entitled selfish fuck

  209. Ing:Intellectual Terrorist "Starting Tonight, People will Whine" says

    Hey you know what assholes? Both me and my partner are children of people like this? If you even fucking care what it’s like to be either dependent on support that never comes or attached to an emotionally abusive man child you can just ask.

  210. vaiyt says

    It’s just irrational tribalism.

    How’s the view from up there on the fence? Is the air so light that your brain functions are impaired?

  211. allegro says

    Reading this thread is like watching a football game.

    It was rather, wasn’t it? If by a football game you mean an elementary school team, team MRA, playing an NFL team, team Reality. It was quite unbalanced what with the MRA team seemingly unable to identify the goal but we really should give the MRA team brownie points for persistence, I suppose.

    It’s just irrational tribalism. I used to think we atheists were above it, and that all (or most) atheists arrived at their atheism through a firm grasp of the rational. How wrong I was.

    So true! If we could just keep those evil women from stealing men’s sperm and all their money! Everywhere we look women and kids are taking such advantage!

  212. Lachlan says

    vaiyt @ 244.

    How’s the view from up there on the fence? Is the air so light that your brain functions are impaired?

    The fact that such a fence has been erected is the whole fucking problem. I found the willingness of LorrieAnne Miller @ 234 to take points from both sides to be thoroughly refreshing.

    allegro @ 245.

    So true! If we could just keep those evil women from stealing men’s sperm and all their money! Everywhere we look women and kids are taking such advantage!

    Gosh. How accurately and fairly you’ve characterised the point. The irrationality is obviously all on the MRA side.

  213. Ing:Intellectual Terrorist "Starting Tonight, People will Whine" says

    The fact that such a fence has been erected is the whole fucking problem. I found the willingness of LorrieAnne Miller @ 234 to take points from both sides to be thoroughly refreshing.

    Fuck. You

  214. allegro says

    Gosh. How accurately and fairly you’ve characterised the point. The irrationality is obviously all on the MRA side.

    Oh goodie, how pleased I am that you agree!

  215. Lachlan says

    Caine @ 249.

    Now there’s an insult with flair. Good to have you back, Ing.

    Telling people to kill themselves on the internet: flair!

  216. Ing:Intellectual Terrorist "Starting Tonight, People will Whine" says

    Telling people to kill themselves on the internet: flair!

    I’ll take full legal and moral responsability for anyone who successfully commits auto-sphincter decapitation, or as I like to call it asseppuku

  217. says

    Lachlan, you’re an idiot. You’ve proved you’re an idiot in multiple threads now. You also have a history of running away and not returning to threads wherein your so-called arguments keep failing*. Are we going to get yet another repeat show in this one? (Spare us an answer, take your idiocy and penchant for derailing, stuff ’em up your arse and go away. Ta.)

    *Yeah, yeah, the feminists were all mean to you, being logical and stuff. We know.

  218. Ing:Intellectual Terrorist "Starting Tonight, People will Whine" says

    *Yeah, yeah, the feminists were all mean to you, being logical and stuff. We know.

    Yes it’s outrageous how when someone demands a middle ground and honest consideration of slanderous absurd conspiracy theories people get mad. Why it’s almost as if some people have personal experience being burned by assholes there.

  219. Jules says

    It’s sad that a woman lied to a man in order to have a child that apparently neither wanted.

    As has been repeatedly pointed out, if he provided his own condoms that he kept in his own control, it would’ve been pretty hard for her to do that.

    Still a massive ethical failing on her part and still totally unfair to him, but far more preventable than what I went through (which was being overpowered and held down by my ex-husband; luckily I didn’t get pregnant from it, but that was certainly his intention).

  220. Ing:Intellectual Terrorist "Starting Tonight, People will Whine" says

    also we should totally give good honest open minded consideration to that idea that Jews are subhuman lizard people seeking to undermine the higher races, right?

  221. nightshadequeen says

    Lachlan

    Mate, arguing from the fallacy of the Golden Mean is not actually a valid argument.

    Please try again, with actual points, evidence, and citations.

    Also:

    Stick your head up your ass and clench until you’re Marie Antoinette you entitled selfish fuck

    If you seriously thought that a human being could actually do that, you…probably need some biology lessons, fast.

    TW for suicidal methods.

    Seriously. Telling someone to do something that’s comically physically impossible; that’s not telling someone to off themselves. Telling someone to off themselves over the internet would be something like “Go take a bottle of asprin” or “Go inject some potassium chloride, you useless fuck.”

    End TW

  222. says

    Telling people to kill themselves on the internet: flair!

    Oh, little douchecake. Yes, it’s awful, given the amount of people who commit suicide by inserting their head fully into their rectum, then have the amazing sphincterocity to decapitate themselves.

  223. Ing:Intellectual Terrorist "Starting Tonight, People will Whine" says

    If you seriously thought that a human being could actually do that, you…probably need some biology lessons, fast.

    Oh they know this. They’re just engaged in cargo cult ethics. “Um yeah that’s not nice you should be ashamed people could get hurt! I’m doing this right? What muscle do you flex to make the heart thing work? I think i got all the behavior down save for the cold emptiness of my soulless eyes”

  224. says

    It’s just irrational tribalism. I used to think we atheists were above it, and that all (or most) atheists arrived at their atheism through a firm grasp of the rational. How wrong I was.

    Why is it that whenever the subject is a social justice issue (feminism, in this case, but I’ve seen the same kind of thing in discussions about racism), disagreements, pointing out the errors in bad arguments, expressing disdain/anger/amusement at the people who Just Don’t Get It and delight in showing their ass, it all becomes tribalism? (Side Note: Can I just say for the record how fucking exhausted I am by that word? It’s up there with “bronze-aged ____” on the Words And Phrases I’m Tired of Reading in Atheist Discussions list I have going.) When we’re talking about, say, creationism or homeopathy, it’s suddenly no longer tribalism and becomes rational, important atheist work.

    Well, sorry dude, I think these types of discussions are a hell of a lot more important that yet another creationism vs. evolution fight (and I love those, don’t get me wrong, it’s why I started reading Pharyngula in the first place!). I know what affects my life, and the life of my friends, the most. Some dude believing that the earth was created after humans were brewing beer? Annoying, potentially dangerous in an abstract way, but ultimately, not all that important in the grand scheme of things. Some dude believing sexist garbage? Much bigger deal. And if you think I’m way off base, here, I invite you to look at the recent legislation and court cases regarding both this last year. Look at the number of women who now live in states where getting an abortion is either completely impossible, now, or incredibly traumatic. Look at the fact that we can’t get the Violence Against Women Act passed. Look at the rates of rape–and convictions for rapists–and see why I’m afraid of men who hate women, who don’t believe women and think they lie all the time (especially about rape!), who blame women for every fucking thing that happens. Look at the fact that a site that advertises it self as a place for thoughtful, progressive, good men feels comfortable posting articles in support of rapists, repeating victim-blaming myths and literally saying that rape is just an unfortunate consequence of partying (and even though a guy “accidently” raped a girl as a result of his partying, he doesn’t think it’s important enough to impact his good time). Hell, look at the personal stories I wrote about, the many women I know struggling to raise kids on their own in this society. And it all flows directly from fucked up, sexist, irrational beliefs about women that get carried to their tragic, logical conclusions in the world. Yeah, it’s important to make sure people understand the truth about the world, and I will always be up to fight creationist nonsense. But I know what impacts my life, and the lives of women around me, the most dramatically; I know what causes the most pain. You do, as well, if you look at it honestly.

  225. Lachlan says

    nightshadequeen @ 257

    Mate, arguing from the fallacy of the Golden Mean is not actually a valid argument.

    I’m not suggesting that the truth lies in the exact middle. I’m suggesting that both sides make decent points, and that women and men get fucked by child support laws. Neither side seems able to admit this, choosing instead to pick their side, stick to it, and barrack like it’s a football game. Silly tribalism. You see exactly the same thing in politics, which is why I can’t stand politics.

  226. nightshadequeen says

    I’m suggesting that both sides make decent points, and that women and men get fucked by child support laws.

    I’d like you to make a specific example of each.

  227. Ing:Intellectual Terrorist "Starting Tonight, People will Whine" says

    I’m suggesting that both sides make decent points, and that women and men get fucked by child support laws.

    That is not what’s happening you stupid shit.

    And how are you typing? Shouldn’t you be proving how horrible I am by offing yourself via paradox?

  228. says

    @Lachlan

    So true! If we could just keep those evil women from stealing men’s sperm and all their money! Everywhere we look women and kids are taking such advantage!

    Gosh. How accurately and fairly you’ve characterised the point. The irrationality is obviously all on the MRA side.

    Um. How would you characterize the point?

  229. Ing:Intellectual Terrorist "Starting Tonight, People will Whine" says

    Silly tribalism.

    You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means

  230. says

    EEB:

    Look at the rates of rape

    Oh, that won’t work. We’ve had all manner of people bringing up the likes of Warren Farrell lately, conveniently one of those “feminists” who holds that rape is actually unwanted sex, which isn’t actually rape. In other words, us silly women (including those of us who have been raped) don’t know what we’re talking about.

  231. Janine: Hallucinating Liar says

    Lachlan, just because some women use deception in order to get a small gain does not mean that MRAs have a point.

  232. Ing:Intellectual Terrorist "Starting Tonight, People will Whine" says

    Lachlan is clearly not human. Their head is so far up their own ass they have to be some methane based life form…presumably from Uranus

  233. allegro says

    I’m not suggesting that the truth lies in the exact middle. I’m suggesting that both sides make decent points, and that women and men get fucked by child support laws. Neither side seems able to admit this, choosing instead to pick their side, stick to it, and barrack like it’s a football game. Silly tribalism. You see exactly the same thing in politics, which is why I can’t stand politics.

    So both sides are exactly the same with MRA v feminism and Dem v Rep in today’s politics? I don’t want to misunderstand your claim though that does seem to be the point you are trying to make. Is that correct?

  234. shala says

    Okay let’s read Warren Farrell:

    http://manboobz.com/2012/11/21/what-mens-rights-guru-warren-farrell-actually-said-about-the-allegedly-positive-aspects-of-incest-note-its-even-more-repugnant-than-that-sounds/

    Oh god do I really have to read more?

    Well, I’m nothing if not horribly masochistic when it comes to hacks. I was planning to pick up some books on economics suggested by Tis Himself in some other threads within the next few weeks, but maybe I could pick up The Myth of Male power too. Except no, I’m not going to have a single dime contribute to Warren Farrell. I also don’t want to be caught dead reading anything of his in a public library.

    well fuck it, it’s not like there’s any other way I’m going to be able to read the “wondrous” works of Warren Farrell without spending money, and I doubt I can just ask an MRA to give me the damn thing. I will soon embark on an epic waste-of-time safari across the Canadian wilderness to see if my local library has one of his books, read a chapter, and post my thoughts here afterwards.

    If I have really nothing better to do Saturday, that is. Can I get my time refunded if I want to burn a book after reading some of it?

  235. chigau (違う) says

    Ing

    I’ll take full legal and moral responsability for anyone who successfully commits auto-sphincter decapitation, or as I like to call it asseppuku

    I hope you will take responsibility for the nose-beer all over my netbook.

  236. Ing:Intellectual Terrorist "Starting Tonight, People will Whine" says

    Dem v Rep in today’s politics

    Let me also point out that this itself is moronic. No both sides are not the same and no they are not both as eager and willing to engage in certain tactics

  237. Ing:Intellectual Terrorist "Starting Tonight, People will Whine" says

    I hope you will take responsibility for the nose-beer all over my netbook.

    No. You knew the risks. if you were afraid of that you should have condomed your nose

  238. shala says

    Ing and Shala? It’s like Xmas came late!

    :D

    I have been working so. Damn. Much. Lately. I need more Pharyngula time!

  239. Ichthyic says

    I’m not suggesting that the truth lies in the exact middle.

    …just somewhere very close to it?

    here, because it is the single biggest fallacy committed by Americans, and not uncommon elsewhere:

    http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/middle-ground.html

    or if you prefer wiki:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation

    sometimes, one side IS just wrong. an appeal to moderation is an appeal to failure to find the optimal solution for a given situation, and this is especially so with politics.

  240. Ing:Intellectual Terrorist "Starting Tonight, People will Whine" says

    A month ago, a tree in Bill’s yard was damaged in a storm. His neighbor, Joe, asked him to have the tree cut down so it would not fall on Joes new shed. Bill refused to do this. Two days ago another storm blew the tree onto Joe’s new shed. Joe demanded that Joe pay the cost of repairs, which was $250. Bill said that he wasn’t going to pay a cent. Obviously, the best solution is to reach a compromise between the two extremes, so Bill should pay Joe $125 dollars.

    Good example of the fallacy being used. Yes even if both sides have some degree of point, it does not follow that both are right and both are wrong. One of them is an assholeish position.

  241. Ing:Intellectual Terrorist "Starting Tonight, People will Whine" says

    Or another good example. Dipshit aboved used the term “Barrack” in association to a football game. I thought this was a mixed metaphor because Barrack has nothing to do with sports,

    bar·racked, bar·rack·ing, bar·racks
    To house (soldiers, for example) in quarters.
    n.
    1. A building or group of buildings used to house military personnel. Often used in the plural.
    2. A large, unadorned building used for temporary occupancy. Often used in the plural.

    However, I looked it up and saw there was an almost exclusive Australian and British usage

    1. Chiefly British To jeer or shout at a player, speaker, or team.
    2. Australian To shout support for a team.
    v.tr. Chiefly British
    To shout against; jeer at.

    Clearly since both sides have points it would not at all be asinine for me to mock them for a mixed mataphor right?

  242. Nepenthe says

    Lachlan

    I’m suggesting that both sides make decent points, and that women and men get fucked by child support laws.

    And when I punch you in the face, your zygomatic arch bruises my fingers while it’s breaking. So really, it’s bad for both of us. There’s really not a lot of room for equivocation here. 100 women getting fucked over is not equal to one man getting fucked over. Women are worth at least 3/5ths of what a man is worth!

  243. Ing:Intellectual Terrorist "Starting Tonight, People will Whine" says

    1 thought women were about worth 75 cents to a dollar of what a man is worth?

  244. pryopizm says

    While MRA’s are pretty darn moronic; I’d like to know how they’re getting such a good deal on child support. My idiot brother (and it is his own stupidity that brought this upon him) pays over $8,000 a year. But then, as I just typed this, I realized it’s for two kids. And that’d be $4,000 each. So, I guess…never mind.

    Still gonna press submit, though. Maybe my poor thought process will be good for a laugh.

  245. says

    pryoprizm:

    Maybe my poor thought process will be good for a laugh.

    I don’t think anyone will laugh. Unfortunately, the care of children is not well handled in the U.S., and the situation is dire for a lot of single parents and for divorced parents who are both active in the care and financing. I think child support payments hit hard for those making them because they are a lump sum, rather than “a bit here, a bit there” when it’s a couple trying to make ends meet in regard to childcare.

  246. says

    We’ve had all manner of people bringing up the likes of Warren Farrell lately, conveniently one of those “feminists” who holds that rape is actually unwanted sex, which isn’t actually rape.

    1) Warren Farrell is a feminist? When did that happen?

    2) Unwanted sex isn’t rape? WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN?

    I am obviously way behind. And missing a lot by usually skipping the comments. Obviously, if I want to stay informed about the newest lady developments, I better start reading the comments section at Pharyngula.

    Oh, and re: unwanted rape/sex (sorry if this is OT): When I was angrily telling my dad about a local case of a cop stopping women and demanding sexual services in exchange for not arresting them or falsifying a ticket, I was informed that I was confused, such a situation isn’t rape. It’s not even assault! After all, the women had a choice, she could have said no and taken the ticket or arrest and sorted it out later (the fact that at least one of the women had children and all were poor obviously didn’t figure in). When I asked him what the difference was between what the cop did and what happened to me (I was threatened with a knife and followed the rapists instructions; he didn’t hold me down or use much force, fear of the knife–and my own dissociation–kept me still and silent throughout the assault), because, after all, it was my choice, I could have just let him slit my throat, Dad said that I was actually insulting rape victims (!) by calling what that cop did rape. So I guess I should apologize for getting angry, now, and tell him he’s right, those women just engaged in a little “unwanted sex” which is totally different from rape. Right?

    **stabbity**

  247. Ing:Intellectual Terrorist "Starting Tonight, People will Whine" says

    @EEB

    Thank goodness your dad was there to explain the situation he has never been in

  248. says

    @Caine, Fleur du mal:

    Hits hard for the parent recieving them, too, when they don’t come in or are really late. It takes a long time (well, what seems like a lot time if your fridge is empty) to go to court and force the issue. If you’re counting on a check coming in on the 15, so you’ve spent the whole paycheck on food, rent, utilities, etc. by the 14, and the check doesn’t come, you are screwed, and it there is little recourse. It’s a very risky, scary position to be in for a lot of people.

  249. Anri says

    Biologists are not afraid of reading Creationist or ID material, they know that reading the Bible is critical to intelligently criticizing it.

    Um, they’re generally not afraid of reading it per se, they’re unhappy with wasting their time reading egregious bullshit when they could be reading things grounded in fact.

    And ‘intelligently criticizing’ the bible is pretty simple: “Snakes can’t talk. You’re welcome.”

    Now, would you care to compare your carefully selected references with yet another clearly bogus source? Astronomers reading astrology? Neuroscientists watching Ghost Hunters? Park Rangers watching Yogi Bear cartoons? C’mon, give us another terrific analogy, please!

  250. Amphiox says

    Sweet Jebus. A reasonable poster. It only took 233 posts.

    The only things this tells us Lachlan are

    1. You have no idea what “reasonable” means.
    2. You can’t count.

    and

    3. Your understanding of the biochemistry of sugars is sadly deficient.

  251. says

    EEB:

    Warren Farrell is a feminist?

    Ooops, my bad. Mixed him up with Schwyzer. Men in the “anti-feminist” thread kept bringing up Farrell as a person to read as he had really excellent points and reasons that feminism just doesn’t work, it isn’t what it says it is, etc.

  252. Nepenthe says

    @Caine and EEB,

    Given the amount of hype his NOW leadership and other feminist credentials are given on his wiki-page* and website, I think he probably considers himself a feminist.

    I just read on his website that women should “take [their] eyes off doctors and consider nursing” because only female nurses are allowed to touch patients of either sex.** So that’s pretty feminist. I mean, how many women consider nursing as an alternative to being a physician?

    *Normally I would be skeptical of such a claim on the ‘pedia, but since we’ve had an infestation of Farrell devotees I think the article is pretty slanted towards “woohoo Warren!”.

    ** I imagine this would be news to the lovely male nurse who took care of me when I was in the hospital a few weeks ago. (I heart him because he gave me nice drugs. It’s okay that he blew the IV.)

  253. katenrala says

    My Father is a MRA.

    He cheated on my Mother and bought his girlfriend a truck while the family was struggling, fortunately, or he did it deliberately to hurt my Mom, he left out the receipt for it where she could find it. He had absolute control of the finances and took my Mother’s paycheck from her every time she got it, and raided her savings and she couldn’t even check on her money when she lived with him.

    I was 5, but old enough to remember everything that went on between Mom and him till they divorced. My Mom has also explained the ways he abused her before I was old enough to remember and before I was born, something she refused to talk about till my Father turned on me as they kept a rule between them that they would not let their children know how they thought of each other and what their problems with each other were.

    He stopped paying child support when my Mom moved us out of state and currently owes her $45k.

    I was living with him for ten months starting at the beginning of 2012 to get cancer treatment in California and learned once and for all that he really doesn’t give a shit about his kids. He made it clear that I was a burden to him and wiggled out of caring for me, fed me improperly (1 meal a day), and told me straight up one of the times when I needed to go to the ER that his football game mattered more than my health and so just dropped me off and left me alone in the hospital. I was totally dependant on him because I can’t care for myself in the state I’m in. He also let his sister who lived in the same house abuse me for those 10 months. Turns out that my Aunt enjoys harassing sick and dying relatives to boost her ego. My Father would not stick up for me against her so I had to fend her off myself and my depression got so much worse during that time.

    During those 10 months he and his two sisters decided to sell their parents’ house that they inherited and my other decent Aunt let my Mom know that this was basically her only opportunity to get that money that my Father owes in child support, so my Mother started legal proceedings against my Father. They sold the house for $600k and my Father got $200k and instead of simply paying, still has been doing everything he can to not pay what he owes and silenced my Aunt who was helping my Mom.

    One day he snapped and used me as a proxy for my Mom and yelled and screamed at me about what he owes, which he believes wrongly that he doesn’t owe, argued with me about it as if I was her, and when I gave him the moral argument that he should have helped his children even just financially when my sister and I were growing up, he denied it and said that since we weren’t living in poverty growing up (‘cuz as a single mother my Mom worked her ass off for her kids and got a degree through night-school to get a decent job) it didn’t matter that he didn’t pay and just screamed litanies and insults about my Mother at me so loudly that someone called the cops to check out what was going on.

    Until that point, even though I knew he was trashy for not paying his child support, I thought he still cared about his kids in a way, but he proved that he doesn’t and it was one of the most painful betrayals of my life.

    He’s typical MRA scum: he sees his children only as his property or things and getting angry with my Mom for her getting custody and thus taking his things away from him; he views women only as orgasm dispensers and cum receptacles; and he’s why I’ve hated misogynists and MRAs since I was a child even though I didn’t know that such types of people existed in such a category as MRAs and misogynists till I learned about them on the internet.

    I don’t want him at my funeral.

  254. says

    @katenrala

    Christ. I am so sorry that you went through that. I’m disabled, completely dependent on my folks right now, in and out of the hospital. It’s a shit situation, and I can’t imagine dealing with that and all the horrible stuff your dad put you through at the same time. I feel depressed a lot, I feel like I’m a just a leech and a burden on my parents, but I’m lucky that they constantly tell me that it’s not true, that they want to help me and that’s just what family does, they take care of each other. Having those feelings actually reinforced by my parents…I don’t know how I’d handle that, I don’t know if I’d be strong enough. I have a hard enough time forcing myself to keep going even with all their love and support.

    My dad is a racist MRA. (He would deny that, though.) I have recieved plenty of lectures about how hard it is to be a white man in this country, how feminism and civil rights have destroyed our country, even been told that I (and almost all women) carry some of the responsibility for being raped. But I know that he loves me. I know that he would die for me, that he supports me, that he does want the best from me (even if his idea of what is the best and mine differ quite significantly). Sometimes it’s very hard to deal with all of his bullshit. Thank you for reminding me that I’m actually quite lucky.

  255. katenrala says

    @Lachlan

    I’m suggesting that both sides make decent points, and that women and men get fucked by child support laws

    Men and male persons have more power than women and female persons to make the laws, that some men and male persons suffer at the hands of men and male persons does not make women and female persons responsible for that hurt.

  256. Cyranothe2nd says

    I’m a non-custodial parent and I gladly pay child support because IT IS MY FUCKING DUTY AS A PARENT. I don’t expect a cookie for doing the bare minimum that I should do to feed and clothe my own child. I consider it my moral obligation to pay child support, fulfill my custody agreement and to do everything in my power to get along with my ex and co-parent my daughter.

    Oh, and I’m a mother.

    Fuck these immoral MRA pricks.

  257. katenrala says

    @EEB

    Thank you very much for your support.

    May I ask: did you recently become disabled?

    I’ve been disabled for 3 ½ years since I got cancer and lost my arm to it and I still struggle with feeling like a burden to my Mother, though she tells me emphatically that I’m not and it helps that I know she honestly loves me.

    About handling things… I wouldn’t say that I am handling things healthily really, I’ve just somehow learned to put up with awful things and maybe it helps that my mind has been a little cracked ever since accepting my mortality and the loss of everything I wanted to accomplish and get out of life; I honestly hear voices but they don’t say bad things, I just know they aren’t my willful thoughts that I can normally track and a little part of me always laughs and laughs while the rest of me cries or is suffering from a massive pain attack.

    I think maybe I can also put up with things because I have this horrible sense of black humor about things that happen to me; have taken the loss of my arm as a license to take pride in my accomplishments and be confident in myself instead of hiding from people and being shy and anxious in public like I used to, as I’m autistic, before I got sick; and I think having an exit strategy on my life allows me to deal with the worst in the meantime as I know how painful the cancer can get when the pain it causes flares up terribly and I absolutely refuse to let it take me, and instead will OD on my painkillers and sleeping pills when my time comes. Having such a plan is reassuring and comforting to me even though I tear up a bit when I think about it.

    I also do art and creative writing and work my pain into it, I think that helps day-by-day the most as my fantasy worlds both let me escape myself and explore myself abstractly.

    I hope things get better for you. Living in hospitals really sucks.

  258. crayzz says

    @EEB

    The typical story I hear about Warren “Shitbag” Farrel is that he was a feminist until he saw the light about all those evil feminazis. Pretty much a perfect parallel of Kirk Cameron’s* bullshit “I used to be an atheist” shtick.

    I notice, as of 1:30 am, my time (central Ontario), both Lachlan and OC have fucked off pretty thoroughly. I am slightly saddened, as I enjoyed watching them immolate themselves (particularly OC).

    *On a side note, I literally forgot Cameron’s name. Has he really become that irrelevant? :D

  259. Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞ says

    Ok, so I spent today cheating on PZ with Ed, and missed this thread. I am only up to comment 40 but my ‘holy what the fuck was that good god damned bullshit’ meter dialed up past 10. It can only get worse from here I guess.
    @40: thinking. You are doing it in the not right kinda way.

  260. says

    @katenrala

    May I ask: did you recently become disabled?

    Almost two years ago, exactly. Dec 5, 2012, my intestines ruptured. I was very lucky, because I was already at the hospital with an ulcer (which they assumed was the reason I was puking up copious amounts of blood). If I hadn’t been down the hall from an OR, I would not be alive. As it was, I almost nearly bled out, lost all but 3 feet (ish) of my small intestine, got Sepsis and about every other infection known to mankind (then developed a yeast infection in my bloodstream from all the anti-fungal, antibiotic shit they were pumping in me) and had 7 surgeries in the first 8 days. Over the next couple years, I had 8 more abdominal surgeries (just had lucky #15 in Oct!) as they tried to piece me back together (saw an x-ray, recently, and it looks like a three-year-old playing with an anatomy puzzle). Did the math last month because I was bored, and it turns out I’ve spent about 56% of the last two years in the hospital or skilled nursing facility. Dec-July I was in the hospital the entire time; after that, I’d be home for a month, in for a couple weeks, home for another couple months, in for a month, and that’s the pattern we’re still in. They’re hoping this last surgery might fix the problem…but I’m also probably going into the hospital tomorrow, if things don’t improve, so I take that with a whole bag of salt. (I haven’t been able to keep down solid food or my medication in a week, and today I stopped being able to hold down liquids, so that’s an issue. I do my best to stay out of the hospital, and usually I can handle things on my own, but I know not to let dehydration and malnutrition get out of hand. Last time, I ended up getting admitted because I let my potassium levels get so low that I nearly gave myself a heart attack. Got several lectures from the doctors about never doing that again, and one of my favorite nurses really went off on me, saying she’s never seen levels that low on someone who lived. Since I really like her, and she actually started to tear up when she was talking to me, I’m going to listen and not do that again.)

    I’ve just somehow learned to put up with awful things and maybe it helps that my mind has been a little cracked ever since accepting my mortality and the loss of everything I wanted to accomplish and get out of life

    That is so hard, and I’m kind of struggling with the same thing. You know, acceptance. My therapist tells me that’s what I have to work the hardest on, right now. So I’m not dying, but I’m also not going to get better. I will always have short-gut syndrome, issues with digestion, issues with pain (a bunch of nerves and other things–sorry, I don’t really understand this part too well–got damaged during all the surgeries, or maybe the initial trauma, so I have very, very bad pain flair ups at times, like I’m on huge amounts of liquid morphine and it still isn’t enough bad), issues with exhaustion stemming from my body’s inability to absorb nutrients, and probably other things. I might not ever be able to drive a car again, because I tend to faint with some regularity. There may come a point where I will have to start using IV feeding (again) if this new surgery doesn’t work and I go back to not being able to eat. If that happens permenantly, it will significantly lower my lifespan. If any more of my intestines breaks (a possibility, I’ve lost several more cms since the surgery as pieces become necrotic) I will be on IV food forever, with all that brings (shorter life, for one). I’m trying to make peace with this, and realize that my life is not going to be what I thought. I’m not going to be able to do the normal steps of go to college, get a degree, get a job, start a family…at least not for a while. I’m 26 and I still live with my folks, totally dependent on them. The 400.00 from social secuirty is not enough to live on my own, barely enough to cover the essentials that I need. And that’s the hardest part. I feel useless. I feel like a parasite. That I take and take and don’t give anything back to society. Literally millions of dollars were spent to keep me alive…for what? What can I give back? What’s the point? I often wish that the doctors hadn’t worked quite as hard to save my life.

    I am trying to find a new purpose, a way to contribute. It looks like writing, actually…if I won’t be able to teach history, my old dream, maybe I can write history books? Or even do youtube videos? That’s what’s floating around in my head right now. But I want to do something to contribute to society (and hopefully find a way to be financially independent or at least help my parents out instead of feeling like all I do is take and take).

    Having such a plan is reassuring and comforting to me even though I tear up a bit when I think about it.

    I also have an exit strategy. I helps me cope, as well. I don’t share it with anyone, though, because I know how much it would upset my parents and deeply hurt them. They just woudn’t understand. But I have a good friend (she also has severe medical problems) who understands my wishes and will help me if the time comes. I also have a very strict advanced medical directive on file at all the hospitals in the area that outlines everything clearly (I worked with a social worker to make it perfect) so everyone has my DNR order and all. It does give me peace, and a sense of control. When I’m going through the severe pain or the gross, humiliating things that now are just a normal part of my life, I know that I’m doing so because I choose to do so. And I know that when it’s no longer worth it to keep enduring it all, I have a plan, and I can choose to say “no”. But it’s hard not being able to talk about it with anyone. My folks don’t know because it would break their hearts. A friend that I told got very upset, yelled about how ungrateful I was, tried to tell me about how much God loved me (after telling me that if I killed myself I might go to hell), and topped it off with my absolute favorite cliche: “God won’t give you more than you can handle” followed by “With God, all things are possible, and all things work out to the good of those who love him.” Now, I don’t know if there are more offensive, more infuriating things to tell someone who is struggling with a chronic condition, but they have to be pretty high on the list. Since then, I’ve never talked about it with anyone since. It’s such a relief to find someone who understands! Thank you again!

    Thank you for sharing your story. Again, I’m so sorry you’re going through this, but I’m glad that you have a supportive mother. Aren’t they wonderful? I don’t know what I would do without my mom! She drives me up a wall, sometimes, and she doesn’t understand so sometimes she says and does things that really hurt, but I know that she loves me and would do anything for me. She keeps me going.

    If you ever need to talk, or just want someone that understands a little of what you’re going through to listen when you need to cry or scream or rant at the fucked upness of it all, feel free to email me. My facebook page is here and my email address is easily found through that. Or you could also feel free to friend me, if you want. :)

  261. says

    EEB:

    I feel useless. I feel like a parasite. That I take and take and don’t give anything back to society.

    The hell with that nonsense! Both you and Katenrala contribute here and do so beautifully. Yes, it’s “just posts on the internet”, however, the internet is people. The internet is society. Never make the mistake that what you write gets sucked into a vacuum where it has no effect on people. Nothing could be further from the truth.

  262. says

    Oliver Crangle

    Here are two accounts of many many accounts.

    Lol
    And now we’re supposed to cry out over this horrrible common crime on accounts of a tabloid article and an MRA blog? That’s a veryfied source now? Apart from that, even if those two cases were actually true, it tells you that there’s two idiot women out there, not that this is a widespread problem.
    BTW, I have a solution for those men, apart from vasectomy:
    Sue for custody. Make clear that person is not fit to raise a child and do so yourselves. Who sensible human being would leave their own children in the care of such a monster?

    http://jonathanturley.org/2011/02/01/illinois-court-rules-man-can-sue-over-deceptive-use-of-sperm-by-girlfriend-to-impregnate-herself/

    Wow, you seem to have managed to find one actual case, congratulationsAlmost managed to find a case. Out of how many births per year in the USA exactly?
    Now, tell me, if there was a case of somebody being killed by a pig falling out of the sky, would you think that falling pigs are a general problem?

    Yet, in the lower court decision, New Jersey Superior Court Judge Stephen Rubin ruled that such changes would not be in the child’s best interest — the standard in such cases.

    Those bastards, thinking about the children!
    Or actually thinking that somebody who was a father for that child for 10 fucking years actually qualifies as father in all things important.
    But no, that’s not what you folks are concerned with. All you care about is your money and your sperm. The child who held out their hand when they made their first steps, who called you “dada” and smiled, who fell asleep in your arms, who rode on your shoulders, who loves you with that fiercely loyal love that only children feel for their parents, they don’t matter fuck to you. You’re ready to dump then without thinking twice because they don’t carry your precious genes.
    Assholes.

    Being forced to work a job in an industry that you find you dislike and that basically rips your soul everyday because that job pays more than a job you would prefer that would enrichen your life is not “personal options were more limited”

    Poor old black cat. So, you basically thought that having children was the same as being child-free with the additional bonus of driving them around in a Ford Mustang. Boo-fucking-hoo.
    There’s something in the adult world we call responsibility. It means we’re limited in our choices. Deal with it.
    Also, there’s another option: Change to a job you enjoy more, earns less, keep up your payments and make do with less. Since a different job would be so fulfilling, you wouldn’t mind, sure? But no, I remember, you don’t ant to face any consequences for your decissions, you want your children to face those consequences, and your ex who can pick up the bill, because who cares for what she does already and the needs she might have?

    Because the way I figure it, my kids growing up would be happier and do better with a father who enjoyed his work and his career while still ensuring they were secure, and thrived, than having a father who hated getting up everyday because it turned out his college notions of what his industry would be like were very far from reality.

    Problem is that they have a father who thinks that a Ford Mustang is more important than the younger one getting a few new shirts once in a while or each one of them getting a bedroom as they grow older.

    Tell us, Noelplum, which ones are the normal men? The 50% who keep in contact with their kids or the 50% who don’t

    rq
    Don’t tell me you married out of something like love and that you didn’t care too much about his paycheck? Totally impossible, because that’s all women ever care for.

    Jules!!!
    Pouncehug!

    David

    Admittedly, our lack of obsession with status symbols is unusual, and it’s normal to wear the same clothes to school for 2 or 3 days in a row where we come from

    You must have been a remarkably clean kid :)*
    OK, I admit to doing the same in highschool, once I was out of the muddy-puddles age. I didn’t mind hand-me-downs much either, but once in a while it was really important to have some item or other that I actually picked myself instead of my sister having picked it.

    *The legend goes that my mum once remarked to my friends mum (me lived in the same street) that my friend looked cleaner when she came home from school than me when I went there…

    Caine

    That’s the only reasonable post? Why, Lachlan? Because she provided a personal anecdote stating she knew a woman who was manipulative and a lousy parent? So what? I’m pretty sure almost all of us can point to at least one example of a lousy, manipulative person who happened to be a parent, too.

    Well, how much time do we have?
    I mean, would it make Lachlan and Oliver happy if I started with the three shitty mothers anecdotes and then went on a long list of shitty fathers? Or could we just use statistics and stuff? I mean…

    Lachlan

    The fact that such a fence has been erected is the whole fucking problem. I found the willingness of LorrieAnne Miller @ 234 to take points from both sides to be thoroughly refreshing.

    Yeah, she came up with an annecdote and then acted like this had much to do with the point in discussion. Refreshing…

    Telling people to kill themselves on the internet: flair!

    Yes, because that really was something realistic, something that actually happens. I guess you would think that “I take a pink cotton ball and throw it at you until you bleed” is a credible threat.
    Language, you’re still doing it wrong.

    that women and men get fucked by child support laws.

    Those evil bastard babies and their insatisfiable needs, leeching off poor innocent adults.

    nightshadequeen

    If you seriously thought that a human being could actually do that, you…probably need some biology lessons, fast.

    I would suggest he tries highschool again, his failings are many.

    EEB
    First, I’m sorry what happened to you and that your dad was an ass. You also rock his thread.

    Hits hard for the parent recieving them, too, when they don’t come in or are really late. It takes a long time (well, what seems like a lot time if your fridge is empty) to go to court and force the issue.

    I have a friend whose ex pulled all kinds of shit, actually illegal shit and a lot of fucking harassment. The case was clear as glass: married couple, her being a housewife without own income to care for the children age 2 and 4 back then with him having a good job that had payed well for all of them until they split up. So he simply stopped paying anything, so from one day to the other she didn’t have a penny to feed the children. It took her over two years to finally get a title that meant the child support for at least one kid could now be deducted directly from his paycheck. I guess she could have given blowjobs to cops in the meantime.
    I’m also waiting for MRAs claiming that women owe men money for blowjobs because they get free protein…

    Literally millions of dollars were spent to keep me alive…for what? What can I give back? What’s the point? I often wish that the doctors hadn’t worked quite as hard to save my life.

    Here on planet Pharyngula people’s lives aren’t meassured in dollars. You’re worth it cause you’re a sensitive and sensible human being. Fuck money.

    katenrala
    I’m so sorry.
    For everything, for your shitty father and your bad health especially.
    I’m just, well, out of words to express it.

  263. jefrir says

    You know how olivercrangle was whining about how those figures in the wikipedia article were for one child, and the second would be cheaper? Well, looking at the original report, the figures are actually explicitly based on a two-child family – you have to multiply by 1.25 to get the amounts for an only child.

    So congratulations olivercrangle, you are paying a little over half the average expenses for families in your income bracket, while earning nearly three times as much as your ex. And the pitiful amount you have left over is higher than the average income where you live, and around twice the amount I earn, on which I survive quite comfortably. You have my deepest sympathies.

  264. rq says

    Giliell
    It was totally the paycheck. The one that lets us scrape by and have dreams of a house one day. Totally. Although if we tried it all on only my paycheck, I’d be an even more awesomer mother because the sacrifice would show a lot better because I wouldn’t be leeching his money and I would manage to starve myself and the kids. Bonussss!!!

    Also, I think oliver’s math fails somewhere around 222, but I can’t be sure. Something just doesn’t quite add up with things he said previously.

    Anyway, I’m rather proud to be an Ostrich Feminist, if it gets the likes of olivercrangle and his buddies all riled up about people not reading their educational material.

  265. jefrir says

    Also, I think oliver’s math fails somewhere around 222, but I can’t be sure. Something just doesn’t quite add up with things he said previously.

    Well, at a minimum he’s complaining about how high his ex’s income is before tax and about how low his own is after tax when his is still the higher per-capita amount.

    At least he’s not quite as stupid as the guy we got last year who claimed that kids are cheaper to raise than cats. Now that was truly special.

  266. rq says

    What??
    Have cat. Have kids. From my poor anecdotal evidence, I say the cat wins, if you want to save money.

  267. Matt Penfold says

    Also, I think oliver’s math fails somewhere around 222, but I can’t be sure. Something just doesn’t quite add up with things he said previously.

    I was surprised by how much tax he was paying, given how the US is supposed to be the land of low taxation. The near 40% rate he was paying is European level taxation, but of course in Europe we get more for our tax.

  268. Gnumann+, something borrowed, something gnu... says

    I was surprised by how much tax he was paying, given how the US is supposed to be the land of low taxation. The near 40% rate he was paying is European level taxation, but of course in Europe we get more for our tax.

    Aye with that income (and no deductibles) he would have an effetive tax of aprox 30 % in my neck of the woods. And my neck of the woods is officially Socialist Hell in USian politics.
    And for that he would have gotten nearly free healthcare, a workable state pension, paid sick leave (1 year nearly fully paid), paid parental leave (not that I hope he procreates any more) and a lot of other benefits. (Of course, there’s the slight matter of 25 % VAT compared to low USian sales tax and some other details, but still)

  269. Arren, idée fixe oblique says

    @ EEB

    Why is it that whenever the subject is a social justice issue (feminism, in this case, but I’ve seen the same kind of thing in discussions about racism), disagreements, pointing out the errors in bad arguments, expressing disdain/anger/amusement at the people who Just Don’t Get It and delight in showing their ass, it all becomes tribalism? (Side Note: Can I just say for the record how fucking exhausted I am by that word? It’s up there with “bronze-aged ____” on the Words And Phrases I’m Tired of Reading in Atheist Discussions list I have going.) When we’re talking about, say, creationism or homeopathy, it’s suddenly no longer tribalism and becomes rational, important atheist work.

    QFT. This reminds me of a falling-out awhile ago at Glenn Greenwald’s old Salon haunt, which shook me out of the habit of haughtily throwing ‘tribalism’ around. (Unfortunately the general consensus there was in the opposite direction.) Ultimately, it’s a lazy and loaded term that seems to function first and foremost as mere self-aggrandizement (i.e., castigating those other people who actually care enough about an issue to make impassioned claims in no uncertain terms).

    The commenter there who brought me around had some insightful things to say on the use of ‘tribalism’ as a slur.

    (Sorry for the tangent.)

  270. carlie says

    He might be including social security in the amount of taxes he pays. No matter how low your income bracket is, social security still takes a large bite out of your paycheck. But that doesn’t matter for his argument, because the same taxes are being taken out of his ex-wife’s salary too.

  271. says

    Arren:

    (i.e., castigating those other people who actually care enough about an issue to make impassioned claims in no uncertain terms).

    But the people doing the castigating aren’t tribal!!1! Ever. It’s used the same way as agenda is now being used, and I’m damn tired of that one, too.

  272. says

    Carlie:

    But that doesn’t matter for his argument, because the same taxes are being taken out of his ex-wife’s salary too.

    Oh, that doesn’t affect him, so it doesn’t count.

  273. Gnumann+, something borrowed, something gnu... says

    Carlie:

    He might be including social security in the amount of taxes he pays

    Just for the record: Social security payments was included in my tax example fropm socialist hell. Without them, it goes down to about 22 per cent.

  274. Matt Penfold says

    He might be including social security in the amount of taxes he pays. No matter how low your income bracket is, social security still takes a large bite out of your paycheck. But that doesn’t matter for his argument, because the same taxes are being taken out of his ex-wife’s salary too.

    Even so, the combined deductions from his salary are very similar to what someone on a similar salary would pay in the UK.

  275. Arren, idée fixe oblique says

    @ EEB & katenrala

    …..I have no sufficient words. Thank you for the reminder of what real courage is. Please accept the humble sympathy and appreciation that are all I have to give at this moment. I must admit to tearing up reading your stories, then having the fire of confrontation within me re-stoked insofar as loudly resisting the continual dehumanization and false framing of governmental assistance perpetrated by so-called conservatives here in the U.S.

    EEB, your articulation of points in this thread has been nonpareil. Everyone who’s read this thread is enriched by your writing alone. In a just world, you’d be able to further study and continue to refine this expression for the benefit of all. It’s a shame we live in a society where ‘civilized’ rapacity and economic exploitation for the benefit of few are the raisons d’être.

    (I apologize again for over-effusiveness and wandering off-topic, but for whatever reason your posts have made me temporarily lose what little self-restraint I have in what I feel is a justifiably emotional response. I’d guess that the Lachlans of the world will judge this Most Unreasonable…..)

  276. katie says

    Given you can get a couple grand easily for donating eggs, without all the nastiness of pregnancy and actual parenting, I’m going to go with, yes, MRAs are inclined to innumeracy.

  277. Gnumann+, something borrowed, something gnu... says

    Given you can get a couple grand easily for donating eggs, without all the nastiness of pregnancy

    Have you ever tried egg donation? It is not without nasty crap I can assure you (but at least it’s shorter than pregnancy and with less risk of dying).

  278. loopyj says

    Crangle: You fail at being a human being.

    You fail at being a human being because you refuse to acknowledge that child support payments aren’t merely to cover the cost of feeding and clothing and housing your child. Activities and entertainment, private school education if that’s desired, vacations and school trips, regular savings for post-secondary education, equipment and uniforms for sports or hobbies, lessons and camp, Christmas and birthday gifts, the costs of having friends and socializing – all of these things cost money.

    You fail because your complaints have been about the extra financial burdens on non-custodial parents, rather than how desperately you regret not having fought harder for at least shared custody or greater visitation. (Where I live, the support-paying parent gets to claim a tax credit on the amounts they pay, while the custodial parent has to pay income tax on the amounts they receive. Also, in the past 20 years or so, custody has been granted fairly equally to both mothers and fathers, with shared custody becoming increasingly popular.)

    You fail because you don’t think that you should have had to pay a premium for the extra demands on your ex-wife’s time and energy that raising your children as a single parent cost HER.

    I know several men who are separated from the mothers of their children, but who are happy to remain legally married for the time being and establish custody/support/visitation through mediation rather than divorce because they’re trying to do what’s best for their family, and remaining married allows the mother to stay on the father’s health insurance and they’re okay with that because they know that what’s good for their child’s mother is good for the child.

    You fail because you think we should praise you for keeping your children out of poverty. You fail because rather than talking about how proud you are that you were able to give your children a good standard of living, you just bitch about how unfair the calculations were and how the courts forced you to be financially responsible for your children rather than allowing you to decide how much of your income they should receive and requiring your wife to provide itemized receipts to prove that none of her portion of the light bill was being paid by you.

  279. says

    Not that it adds anything to the discussion, but Germany has decided that children (up to 6 years old) of unemployed adults are worth keeping alive at €219 per month. That’s $4100 per year. What do kids in that situation get in the US?

  280. Esteleth has eaten ALL the gingerbread! Suck it! says

    Not that it adds anything to the discussion, but Germany has decided that children (up to 6 years old) of unemployed adults are worth keeping alive at €219 per month. That’s $4100 per year. What do kids in that situation get in the US?

    Um.
    Food stamps, if the custodial parent doesn’t have a drug-related criminal record.
    Health insurance through S-CHIP.
    I think the custodial parent can get higher TANF payments, but don’t ask me for a dollar amount.

    But I think that’s about it.

  281. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    What do kids in that situation get in the US?

    Since divorce is handled by the states, there are at least 50 versions of what can happen. For example, some states will differentiate between higher cost-of-living regions (usually urban), and regions with lower costs (usually rural).

  282. Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞ says

    (to be read in a Southern US accent):
    I do declare, you mean people (by way of treating with disdain those who complain about child support while saying nothing nice about their kids), bullying (by way of asking for citations), ostrich feminists (I simply must be doin’ this MRA thang wrong, bless my heart, because I don’t know wut this here phrase means) are just a’ derailing with your intellectual dishonesty and refusal to read the evidence olivercrangle has been dumping everywhere. Why, it’s enough to make my precious lil wee wee shrivel up in horror. The lil guy just cannot handle all the ad homs. It’s getting so an honest MRA can’t just wander around the internet and say hateful things about women without facing criticism anymore.
    WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO?

    I ASK YA, WHAT ABOUT THE MENZ?

  283. Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞ says

    I hope an FtB blogger writes about tribalism soon. I am seeing that word thrown around a bit and I wonder if people coughcoughlachlancoughcough know what is really means.

  284. Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞ says

    katenrala:
    I am so sorry you have such a horrible man for a father. You deserve so much better than that.

    ****

    olivercrangle:
    I hope one day you will understand how wrong you are. That you are more worried about paying less child support than the health and happinesd of your kids sickens me. You are on the same spectrum of horrible fathers as katenrala’s and you should be fucking ashamed of yourself.

    I’m fucking angry that pissant men like you get to have children and treat them so poorly, while I want children-badly-but among the many factors working against that, Florida doesn’t allow gays to adopt. Why people like you can be irresponsible and father children, then complain about having to provide support for them, while loving gay couples who actually want to raise a child cannot, just sickens me.

  285. daniellavine says

    @Lachlan:

    I’m not suggesting that the truth lies in the exact middle. I’m suggesting that both sides make decent points, and that women and men get fucked by child support laws. Neither side seems able to admit this, choosing instead to pick their side, stick to it, and barrack like it’s a football game. Silly tribalism. You see exactly the same thing in politics, which is why I can’t stand politics.

    I saw a few ridiculous denials that any woman ever tries* to take advantage of men in such ways. However, this thread is not about how both sides are getting screwed over. It’s about how MRA’s are whipping themselves into a frenzy over a largely imaginary problem. In such a thread, it’s quite a fair point to demand evidence that any significant number of women are getting pregnant to get those fat child support dollars. You admit that the truth probably doesn’t lie directly in the middle:
    well, crangle was trying to say that the truth lies way over on the MRA side and everyone else was demanding some, ya know, evidence.

    I specifically asked crangle to quantify the argument: to find the approximate rate of compliance with child support payments, the average amount of a child support payment, to multiply, and compare to any amount of money a woman is likely to make by “spermjacking” and taking the guy to court. How is that not a valid or reasonable point? If we can admit that the answer isn’t “directly in the middle” then isn’t this the sort of detail we should discuss to figure out where the truth is precisely?

    I think the suggestion that we quantify the argument instead of going on and on about oliver crangle’s miserable little life was quite reasonable. But you seem to disagree — you only found a comment reasonable when it specifically cited an instance of a woman taking advantage of a man. That suggests to me that you’re really just looking for arguments that support your side, not to bring the discourse up by trying to get emotions and moralistic arguments out of it and slapping some real-world numbers in there. In other words, by claiming that’s the only reasonable comment in the thread you seem to be engaging in some sort of tribalism.

    Otherwise you’ll have to explain to me why quantifying the damage done by those evil spermjacking women and comparing that to the MRA claims made in the OP is “unreasonable”. I just don’t see it. The only conclusion I can make is that you’re actually being kind of unreasonable in accusing people of “tribalism” merely for taking quite dubious MRA claims (that this is a serious problem facing society) with a bit of skepticism.

    *Fairly certain any woman who tries to take this route to fame and fortune will be sorely disappointed by the results.

  286. vaiyt says

    I found the willingness of LorrieAnne Miller @ 234 to take points from both sides to be thoroughly refreshing.

    Let’s see… an anecdote, followed by evidence-less assertions, denial, and then a strawman of our position. I can see why you liked that post so much.

  287. daniellavine says

    @vaiyt:

    Exactly. Lachlan does not seem to be purely motivated by reason in asserting that’s the only reasonable comment in the thread.

  288. allegro says

    I’m fucking angry that pissant men like you get to have children and treat them so poorly, while I want children-badly-but among the many factors working against that, Florida doesn’t allow gays to adopt. Why people like you can be irresponsible and father children, then complain about having to provide support for them, while loving gay couples who actually want to raise a child cannot, just sickens me.

    This. My late husband and I were childless by choice since neither of us felt we were parent material. We recognized that raising kids was a serious and difficult responsibility and that if you don’t deep down WANT that commitment then for the love of those children, don’t have them. Instead, support those who do want those children, who will give them the love, support, and lives in which they can thrive to grow and become wonderful people who enrich us all. That loving LGBT people who want to be parents are denied the opportunity and the children who could thrive under their parentage are denied those wholesome, healthy lives and futures is sickening.

    I hope in the near future that you will be able to adopt as many children as you desire and can support.

  289. nimuae says

    Here are a few numbers to chew on from the Census Bureau, titled

    Table 568. Child Support—Award and Recipiency Status of Custodial Parents:
    2007


    Take note that the amounts used in the table are[In thousands except as noted (13,743 represents 13,743,000). Custodial parents 15 years and older with own children under
    21 years of age present from absent parents as of spring 2008. Covers civilian noninstitutionalized population. Based on Current
    Population Survey; see text, Section 1 and Appendix III. For definition of mean, see Guide to Tabular Presentation]

    located here: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/social_insurance_human_services/child_support_head_start_child_care.html

    This supports the assertion that women do get more child support than men. Roughly, 83% of child support awards are women with fathers getting around 6% of child support awards. Of the custodial parents below the poverty line, approx 91% are women and approx 1% are male.

    The interesting part is when we start talking about incomes.

    The mean income of the women was $32,271. The mean amount for men was $46,574

    Mean child support received W/M 5,694/6,032

    Received NO child support mean income (w) 27,377 vs (m)40,712

    Without a child support agreement mean income (w) 23,242 vs (m) 46,659

    And, finally the percent of child support awards when paternity is established: approx 25%

    So, while it does look like women are much more likely to get (ie. Be the custodial parent) the rest of the numbers don’t indicate that, as a get rich quick strategy, women have a lot to gain financially from single motherhood.

    Chances are small that a woman is really going to chase down some manly man to harvest his sperm so she can sit home, eat bon bons, and watch soap operas. Sure, there might be a few specialized occasions where a class of people might be warned such as if you’re 22, middle class, male who was just drafted into a sports club making a bazillion dollars a year you might be a target.

    Or, you can be like Dennis Rodman and refuse to pay. http://aol.sportingnews.com/nba/story/2012-12-06/hall-of-famer-dennis-rodman-must-pay-500k-in-child-support

    Or, Terrell Owens: http://blogs.ajc.com/atlanta-georgia-sports/2012/08/08/t-o-s-contract-could-affect-child-support-case/

    He has 4 children with 3 different mothers.

    Finally, I’m often perplexed by the idea that women somehow know who is the father of their baby. When the ova is fertilized, the woman does not get a text message with who’s sperm managed to impregnate her. So, assuming a non-monogamous relationship, If she has sex with >1 man before and gets pregnant, then she probably has no idea who the father really is until the paternity test. The oft-mentioned Captain, who’s wife hinted the child wasn’t his, was quite gullible to believe that she knew the answer. At worst, he knows she might have been unfaithful.

    So, just for balancing, here’s an article on men who cheat on their wives during pregnancy:
    http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/love-sex-and-babies/201106/are-men-likelier-cheat-when-their-wives-are-pregnant

  290. No One says

    I love my daughter more than any amount of money. Through her I have learned the true meaning of love. Why any man would deny himself that pleasure is beyond me. My “ex” is the mother of my child, good, bad or wrong. Anything that affects her, affects my daughter and her happiness. Why would a man would deny himself the pleasure of a proper relationship with his children? Anger? Pride? Consumptive greed? Self loathing? Carrier? Ignorance? Immaturity?

    “Picking up chicks with a Mustang”. Shit… When a woman wakes me up with a cup of coffee, kisses me on the cheek, and says “You’re a good man”. That’s fucking gold… Mustang… grow the fuck up.

  291. nimuae says

    @allegro

    My late husband and I were childless by choice since neither of us felt we were parent material. We recognized that raising kids was a serious and difficult responsibility and that if you don’t deep down WANT that commitment then for the love of those children, don’t have them.

    My husband and I are also childless by choice. It always astounded me that, after hearing that we had no desire for a child, people would continue to push the idea of motherhood on me. “I’d like it if I tried it.” The deeper problem is, of course, that if we didn’t .. then we have little people who still have the same needs as if we did.

  292. nimuae says

    So, while it does look like women are much more likely to get (ie. Be the custodial parent) the rest of the numbers don’t indicate that, as a get rich quick strategy, women have a lot to gain financially from single motherhood.

    Ahem. What I meant to say is that mothers are more likely to get child support. But, as the income variance demonstrates, it’s hardly a get rich scheme.

  293. allegro says

    My husband and I are also childless by choice. It always astounded me that, after hearing that we had no desire for a child, people would continue to push the idea of motherhood on me. “I’d like it if I tried it.” The deeper problem is, of course, that if we didn’t .. then we have little people who still have the same needs as if we did.

    Oh yes, I heard that many times as well. “Once you have them, you will love them!” Why, because I’m a woman? And sure, I would love them but that doesn’t make me a good parent when it’s a job I do. not. want. Once you have a child, you can’t put it back. But we aren’t supposed to rock that stereotypical boat, are we? A women who doesn’t wish to have children is seen as quite suspect in our culture which forces many people to become parents who never really wanted to but are doing it because it’s expected. And we wonder why there are so many fucked up people in the world who never had the love and nurturing every child deserves?

  294. Nepenthe says

    @340

    Indeed. I don’t particularly like children now and I don’t have to clean up after them, alter my life for them, be responsible for them. I have no idea why the concept “I don’t want to have children. I would not be a good parent” is so taboo. It seems to be better to encourage people who aren’t sure that they want to have children to not than to encourage them to to have and hope.

    But supposedly I’ll change my mind. I’m too young to know these things. Blah blah blah.

  295. allegro says

    I have no idea why the concept “I don’t want to have children. I would not be a good parent” is so taboo.

    That one is easy. Being an incubator/child nurturer is our reason for existing, doncha know. Otherwise why would we have the lady parts? We can use our brains in between diaper changes if we absolutely MUST but just don’t let it get in the way.

    /sarcasm

  296. says

    JESUS FUCK!

    This is about KIDS! Holy shit you MRA assholes!

    You’re whining that you shouldn’t have to pay more money to help your KIDS! I’m not even a parent and I know if I had a child I’d do everything in my power to make sure that they had the best goddamned life they could ever have. Even if I had a kid with someone to whom I was not married or with whom I was not living, I wouldn’t fucking care.

    You treat children like animals – they can get off with a little less money, they don’t need school books and nice clothes and to be able to have entertainment and fun. Give them a box, that’ll excite them.

    Fuck, you people make me sick to my stomach. I’m actively crying for these children who are being used as a football in some game between a selfish asshole and someone who wants to care for their children.

  297. says

    @Arren, idée fixe oblique

    Oh, thanks for sharing! Now I have an actual reason to hate that word getting thrown around, instead of just knee-jerk, instinctive irritation! Handy! :)

  298. says

    Nimuae:

    My husband and I are also childless by choice. It always astounded me that, after hearing that we had no desire for a child, people would continue to push the idea of motherhood on me. “I’d like it if I tried it.”

    I’m childfree. Never wanted ’em, never had ’em. I don’t even like ’em. Even so, for decades I heard all about my “abnormal choice”, the most frequent question being “what if you change your mind!?”. I always waited a three beat, then asked “what if you change yours?” Works a charm every time, shuts them up cold.

  299. says

    @loopyj

    Thank you. Perfectly articulated all the rage I feel towards Douchebag MRA and the sadness I feel for his kids. When I tried to write something similar, it just turned out to be a keyboard mash with some profanity. Thanks for being much more coherant! :)

  300. says

    Anecdotal evidence proves zero, but can help to illustrate a point.

    Here’s a counter-anecdote to the olivercrangle one.

    A friend had one of those awful divorces that would make any MRA nitwit wag his tail with glee. The wife got the house and primary custody and child support payments then took up with an unemployed loser. The child support payments certainly did not go entirely to child support but also to the ex and her loser boyfriend. How did my friend handle this? He paid his child support, worked jobs he hated, then found ways to get money above and beyond the mandated child-support directly to his two children. As soon as one turned 18 his/her child support ended. Then he gave the money directly to the kid until a couple of months after college graduation. His eldest proved a bit more self-sufficient and lived independently immediately after college. His younger one needed more help, living with him for years while college age until he sorted out his life. He’s doing fine now.

    I never heard my friend complain about any money, time or resources he spent on his kids. He grumbled a bit about how his ex probably did not spend all the child support on them, but had he obtained a reduction any difference he would have figured out how to funnel directly to the kids. None of his behavior indicated that he thought someone should give him a medal for the way he handled of the situation.

    Note to OC: this is how human fathers typically behave. Just to give you a point of reference.

  301. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    This is about KIDS! Holy shit you MRA assholes!

    That attitude appears to be a good tell between responsible adults like you Katherine, and immature MRA whiners OC. They just can’t get past it is all about them.

    Now to go and spend some of our money on stuff the Redhead needs.

  302. says

    It always astounded me that, after hearing that we had no desire for a child, people would continue to push the idea of motherhood on me. “I’d like it if I tried it.”

    Christ, what a disgusting thing to say! It’s not like you can give the kid back after and be like, oh, ooops, turned out I still don’t want to be a parent! What do think is going to happen if you don’t suddenly get maternal once the baby pops out? What kind of life would that be like for their hypothetical magic kid?

    I know people who had parents (sometimes mothers, sometimes fathers, sometimes both) who didn’t really want kids but had them because they thought it was the right thing to do. That kind of attitude leaves life-long scars on kids, no matter how well you think you’ve hidden your aversion. I really admire people who are willing to buck all the societal pressure and do the right thing by not having children they know they don’t want. It’s astonishing that those people are the ones that often get called “selfish”, not the parents who had children just to fit in, or because that’s just what one is supposed to do, or to get their own little status symbol to dress up…that is true selfishness.

    Even my mom (and I know that she loves me) admitted to me, when I was older, that “I’m just not maternal” and feels really bad that she had such a hard time when we were growing up. We always knew that if we wanted hugs or cuddles, we went to dad, because Mom tried, but she just couldn’t stand much physical contact for long, and she never, ever initiated it. She was never the type to kiss us goodbye or rush to hug us if we were cyring. So Dad did all of that. I wonder sometimes, if she had gotten married now instead of 30 years ago, if she hadn’t been so involved in a church that pushed motherhood as the most important (and really, only) job a woman could do, if she would have still had kids, or at least the number of kids she had. She made the best with the situation (after all, she couldn’t very well send us back) but I know that it was very difficult on her, and she never, ever, felt comfortable or natural as a mother. Now that we’re all grown up (the baby in the family turns 18 in a month) she is much happier (she told me so), and much more comfortable around us. Some women just aren’t moms. That’s not a bad thing…unless those women then have babies anyway after being pressured into it.

  303. says

    Speaking as a mum who loves her brats to death:
    Don’t try this at home!
    No, seriously, kids are sweet, cute, wonderful, little balls of happieness, sacks of poop and puke, vampires, expensive and exhausting.
    As somebody who chose to have them and who is really commited to raising them, I know how much work it is and what an enormous amount of responsibility it is.
    If in doubt, NOT having children is the only responsible decission there is and I would never ever try to persuade somebody who doesn’t think they’d like parenting otherwise.

  304. says

    Just to say:

    The commentariat here are fucking amazing! I’ve been a regular reader for years, and have never ceased to be impressed by the quality of argument, and the sheer scale of wisdom, wit, and snark I’ve encountered. I’ve been corrected of my (former) tendency to use gendered insults (Caine, I’m look your way), and I’ve done a metric shit-ton of ‘catch-up’ learning on a broad range of social justice issues.

    I see a community of caring and supportive smartasses that truly fucking care about the world we share, and the people with whom we share it.

    You folks make the blogosphere, the world, and my life a much better place.

    Thanks.

    Oh, Ollie, hang your head in shame, you blinkered, self-absorbed, penis waving fuckwit.

    Best wishes, all.

  305. says

    billygutter01:

    I’ve been corrected of my (former) tendency to use gendered insults (Caine, I’m look your way)

    Hey, you did the hard part! Just so you know, I *always* click on a thread if I see you commenting, I’ve enjoyed your posts, always.

  306. says

    Jesus Christ, Oliver. It’s like you think you’re the only person ever who has had to work a job they hate to support their children. I’ve never gotten a dime of child support, never made more than $25k a year and worked jobs at which I was routinely threatened with stabbing, rape or serious bodily harm to support my children. It’s like I’ve never put up with a touchy boss, or with no sleep because I worked several jobs, or with people trying to extort things out of me using my need to be employed.

    Poor baby, making $100k a year. Poor baby, ending up with over $30k, living in a rent controlled apartment. Oh the fucking humanity.

  307. Nepenthe says

    @Caine

    I always waited a three beat, then asked “what if you change yours?” Works a charm every time, shuts them up cold.

    It’s not advised to try this on one’s parents. :-(

  308. says

    Also, Oliver, if I had another $5k a year (let alone $28k), I wouldn’t have had to trade my body for a place for us to stay. You want to talk about feeling violated, asshole?

    Try having to fuck someone to keep a roof over your head and your children’s heads (and cook, and clean, and work, and go to school, and take care of the kids, and put up with your partner’s enjoyment of being able to extort you to do things you don’t want to). Talk to me when you’re having to fuck someone in a way which hurts you because they can threaten to kick you out if you don’t.

  309. Amphiox says

    If there’s one thing threads like this always demonstrate, is that MRAs like olivercrangle not only hate women, they hate children too.

    And they hate men who don’t hate women and children, too.

    Lower forms of putative human beings one rarely sees.

  310. Alex the Pretty Good says

    So Oliver, while I’ve been reading your post with constantly increasing horror, there are still some points I wonder about:
    * You complained that you couldn’t decide to change your carreer in such a way that you would only be able to pay child support unless your ex declared that she agreed to you paying less. You never said that she actually veto’d such a proposal. So here’s my question: Did you actually ever officially apply for a lower income position to “pursue your dream” and get blocked in doing so by your ex? If so, well that sucks, but you’re not the only one doing a job they don’t really like because they have financial obligations, and most of us are not so royally paid for it Mr. 1%. If not, why the hell are you complaining about a hypothetical situation.
    .
    * So you’re complaining about “the real cost of raising a 3 year and 5 year old in Berkeley” and comparing it to what you were paying which was “much more”. Did it ever enter your thick skull that the judge realised that your kids wouldn’t stay 3 and 5 years old forever? That the family might want to move out to a non-rent controlled place once the kids get too old to share a room?
    .
    * Going back to “living your dream” you said this happened in the mid 90s. We’re nearly 2013 now. That means that even the 3 year old should be legally an adult by now. You’re free of paying child support now, aren’t you? What’s stopping you from living your dream now in stead of acting so butt-hurt about something that happened nearly 20 years ago.
    .
    * As for those articles you provided “proving” the risks alledged by the OP at Reddit.
    1st example (the woman admitting that she had tried to impregante herself) was a no-go. No actual fertilisation occured with “hijacked sperm”. Not actually a convincing argument.
    2nd example. The “she saved up sperm from oral sex” claim. The biologist in me nearly choked on his beer at that one. Do you know how hostile an environment our mouth is? Enzymes would have attacked the sperm immediately (It would actually be an interesting subject fo research … how much motility is left in sperm that has spent a minute in a human mouth.) and stayed with it while it was in some container for “later use”. You can colour me skeptical about that having been viable sperm by the time it could have reached an egg.
    You’ll also not that it was only the claim of somebody who wants to avoid paying child support, and that no actual proof has been given.
    .
    Yeah … not exactly convincing … except of the well-established fact that MRA’s can be real a-holes.
    .
    * Finally, you asked what would be a reasonable amount of your wages to pay on child support. Well, that would be what you would have paid if you hadn’t gotten a support. And based on the numbers you were provided about the average cost of raising a child in your financial bracket, I don’t think you have much to complain about.
    .
    As others have said, I hope your children don’t see this thread and realise you’re you. Something tells me they’ve already had enough disappointments in their father.

  311. allegro says

    If there’s one thing threads like this always demonstrate, is that MRAs like olivercrangle not only hate women, they hate children too.

    I doubt MRAs such as OC even think about others except in how those others affect them directly. I doubt they expend the energy to actively hate or love, just indifference. There’s a real narcissistic trend in their arguments that I have never seen waver. It’s all “me me me.”

  312. says

    Nepenthe:

    It’s not advised to try this on one’s parents. :-(

    I always knew I wasn’t wanted. If abortion had been legal at the time, there would definitely have been a changing of mind.

  313. Nepenthe says

    @Caine

    I’m pretty sure that my parents changed their mind after it was too late to give me back, thinking that aborting the unplanned me would be somehow less good than the having me. Well, they didn’t bargain on a “difficult child”. Oops. I only recently (in the past year) figured this out, so… I dunno. It’s just still eh.

  314. eucliwood says

    Yet some people DO seek CS to spend on themselves. Does take more than just money to raise a child. It takes actual time spending with the child and yknow, raising them. I’d also like to think that people would love for another parent to see a child and split the bill of watching them, yet there are people who honestly attempt to block the other from doing so.

    As for your implication that people’s child support should be paying for everything in the home to do with the child…um no… both parents should be working to support the child. Of course 5k isn’t enough to cover everything involving the child. 10k, double that, isn’t enough either, but there’s no “you’re the parent that pays for everything involving the child” and “you’re the parent that lives in the house the child also lives in and their main watcher” arrangement.

    I’d be outraged if a mother was forced to pay for everything involving the child while the other got to be a partial stay at home dad, so why should I support the father doing so? Btw, have you heard of the celebrity (was it halle berry?) that’s being forced to pay millions in child support? What’s up with that?

    There are low ass child support rates… DEFINITELY. But they aren’t low because they don’t make the other parent not-pay for ANYTHING. Geez.

  315. says

    eucliwood:

    Yet some people DO seek CS to spend on themselves.

    If they have care of the child, they really don’t. A custodial parent using a bit of that money to buy a new piece of clothing or have a night out or whatever isn’t this huge fucking deal MRAs like to make it out to be. Parenting is damn hard work (pretty much the hardest there is) and the mental and emotional wellbeing of the custodial parent is important too.

  316. Ing:Intellectual Terrorist "Starting Tonight, People will Whine" says

    @Caine

    Also unless you’re isotope marking bills I’m not sure how you would even demonstrate what was spent how. Or even care unless there was neglect. It’d be robbing Peter to pay Paul

  317. John Morales says

    eucliwood:

    As for your implication that people’s child support should be paying for everything in the home to do with the child…um no… both parents should be working to support the child.

    But that both parents should be working to support the child was never in dispute, and neither was there any such implication — child support is just that: a legally-required addendum as a very mininum.

  318. says

    Ing:

    Also unless you’re isotope marking bills I’m not sure how you would even demonstrate what was spent how. Or even care unless there was neglect. It’d be robbing Peter to pay Paul

    Exactly. Most people take a CS payment and it goes right into their budget and out from there. Which makes people like Ollie, who want every penny of theirs accounted for all the worse.

  319. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Poor fuckwitted loser OC, couldn’t be bothered to respond here, but whined about its being treated like the scum of the Earth it is here. Absolutely no honesty, integrity, an character.

  320. Amphiox says

    A happy, healthy mother is something that every child deserves.

    A few dollars spent towards this end is a completely legitimate use of child support funds.

  321. nimuae says

    @eucliwood

    Yet some people DO seek CS to spend on themselves.

    Have you been paying attention? I pointed out @336 some numbers on child support from the 2007 census bureau.

    The mean income of the women was $32,271. The mean amount for men was $46,574

    Received NO child support mean income (w) 27,377 vs (m)40,712
    Without a child support agreement mean income (w) 23,242 vs (m) 46,659

    That means that the mean income of women was 66% of the mean income for men, leaving a disposable income of $16,303. I find it only fair that the woman gets at least that much a year for her disposable income to keep herself dressed, sane, and happy.

    It also means the mean income of women that received no child support at all was 67% or a difference of $13,335 to men. Again, it’s just as wrong for women to avoid child support but they are not being given an unfair advantage in general.

    The mean income of women without a child support agreement was 49.81% a staggering $23,417.00

    Oh, and let’s not forget the poverty statistics:

    Of the custodial parents below the poverty line, approx 91% are women and approx 1% are male.

    Seriously, the vague idea that some woman out there, somewhere is gaming the system to gain an advantage, does nothing to ignore the overwhelming statistics that women in the US are not getting a fair deal.

    Please cite the number of women reported somewhere that are gaming the system and compare them to the statistics above or some other credible source.

    For fucks sake….

  322. nimuae says

    eucliwood

    I’d also like to think that people would love for another parent to see a child and split the bill of watching them, yet there are people who honestly attempt to block the other from doing so.

    How many people do this? (broken down by reasons would be nice.)

  323. neuroguy says

    I’m hardly going to attempt to defend the ridiculous here. I do not know how representative it is of MRAs in general. The comments on that thread were not, to say the least, unanimously supportive.

    Child support awards are generally set at lower than the true cost of raising a child, MRA rhetoric notwithstanding. This is done in an attempt to avoid never-ending custody battles which would occur if the custodial parent received a windfall. Also, in most states, the award is set according to the parents’ total income and then divided proportionately; it’s not true the custodial parent is expected to provide nothing.

    Now one type of MRA perhaps doesn’t understand this – someone who got someone pregnant via a casual encounter and never lived in the same house as the child. But divorced MRAs with older children have to know this. So come on.

    I’m a custodial father and definitely spend more on the children myself than I would have been legally required to pay my ex-wife. Sure, if I didn’t care about the kids, I’d happily let her have them, since that would be easier and cheaper for me, but I don’t think I’d become so delusional as to imagine they could survive on air.

    Still, I can’t help thinking MRAs may have some valid points on some issues, of which I speak from personal experience. Yes, I’m aware of my male privilege. However, it does not extend into every and all aspects of life. Moreover, the extent to which some of it is “privilege” is highly debatable. For instance, I’m more likely to get away with being an ass at work and seen as being “assertive” rather than a woman who would be seen as a “bitch”. I know this. But this is only “privilege” to me if I in fact wish to behave as an ass, which I don’t. Moreover, the reason for this “privilege” is that women are seen as inherently more moral, empathetic, being a team player, etc., compared to men, and therefore men have lower expectations.

    To the point here, there is a moderate-to-strong bias against men being primary caretakers of children in our society. It’s assumed that men are incapable of emotionally bonding with children in the same way or as intensely as women. It’s assumed that women just simply care about children more than men; and this, not to socialization, but what is inherent in them as women (gender essentialism). This doesn’t matter at all to the stereotypically “manly” man who doesn’t want the job, but it does matter to the other men out there. And I, for one, find it quite offensive. Some of you will blame “patriarchy” for this and you will be right, but are feminists really fighting against this, or will the attitude be “please won’t someone think of teh poor widdle menz?” This is not an area in which patriarchal society grants men “privilege” or really cares, and if feminists don’t either, then yes there will be an MRM, and I will be a part of it.

    Like here for instance:
    @369:
    What about a happy, healthy father? OK to use a few dollars from child support funds for that?

  324. says

    Neuroguy:

    But this is only “privilege” to me if I in fact wish to behave as an ass, which I don’t.

    I think you know this is a load of bullshit. You still benefit from the privilege, whether you choose to act the ass or not. Don’t try so hard to be open to the stupid side, eh?

    As for what Amphiox said, yes, that was biased and wrong. The statement should have been parent, not mother. I note you completely failed to point out my post, which brought about the one you’re complaining about – the one at 363. I used ‘custodial parent’. Am I to assume you’re okay with that?

    I do think that single/custodial fathers face a lot of bias in every day child care. I’d like to think that’s getting better. I hope it is – I’d find it enlightening and welcome if you cared to write a bit about that, what specific challenges you face and troubles you’ve had in the care and raising of your children.

  325. Amphiox says

    As for what Amphiox said, yes, that was biased and wrong. The statement should have been parent, not mother.

    You know, I thought of that the moment after I submitted that comment.

    I wrote mother because the comment was intended to be a direct response to situation of custodial mother and MRA father complaining about child support (ie olivercrangle) but obviously did not make that context clear enough.

  326. says

    Amphiox:

    You know, I thought of that the moment after I submitted that comment.

    Yeah, I didn’t say anything because I was sure your focus was on all of Ollie’s bullshit, as he’s the one who was fussing over every single penny and wanting the accounting of said pennies.

  327. says

    As for your implication that people’s child support should be paying for everything in the home to do with the child…um no… both parents should be working to support the child.

    Well, guess what, the custodial parent actually works a lot to support that child. It’s that unpaid work we call parenting, cooking and cleaning. If we agree to split the financial expenses equally on both parents then the work should be shared, too, and if not possible, maybe the non-custodial parent should pay the custodial parent for half the time they’re putting into this (including 100% extra for work between 22:00 and 6:00, Sundays and holidays.) Guess normal CS is a much better deal…

  328. opposablethumbs says

    neuroguy, PHMT is part of the bedrock of common understanding around here. Obviously I agree – there are a great many ways that patriarchy hurts any man who does not fit/chooses to step outside the dominant paradigm of “approved” masculinity and male behaviour, as in your case. If only more men saw it that way, it might help loosen the hold these damaging attitudes have on our society and our lives!

    It’s still a privilege to be able to get away with behaving like an arse even if you choose not to, though – because you get to choose.

  329. Nepenthe says

    @Neuroguy

    For instance, I’m more likely to get away with being an ass at work and seen as being “assertive” rather than a woman who would be seen as a “bitch”. I know this. But this is only “privilege” to me if I in fact wish to behave as an ass, which I don’t.

    You’re also more likely to get away with actually being assertive, like when you ask for raises commensurate with your ability and profitability, rather than a woman who will be seen as a bitch and thus be paid less. You don’t have to actually be an asshole to benefit from this.

    Moreover, the reason for this “privilege” is that women are seen as inherently more moral, empathetic, being a team player, etc., compared to men, and therefore men have lower expectations.

    If society actually had lower expectations for men’s leadership ability, we would have women running society, so this is a b.s. rationalization. Women are seen as inherently more moral in the context of the home, which is why they are allowed to raise babies but not to to run religions, social movements, philosophy departments, and political parties. Women are seen as more empathetic in the context of the home, which is why they’re supposed to kiss boo-boos and not go into labor mediation. Women are seen as more of a team player in the context of the home, which is why they’re supposed to organize playdates and not SWAT raids. Unless this whole society thing is just affirmative action for men, who are being given the benefit of the doubt even though they can’t play well for others, I think your hypothesis is bull.

  330. carlie says

    Neuroguy – if women had more equality in the workplace (and every area of life), then it would be seen as more normal for fathers to take over more childrearing duty, and therefore it would be seen as more normal for fathers to be custodial parents. See how that works? It’s the fact that women are still supposed to be the home parent that keeps judges awarding women sole or majority custody.

  331. Tony the Queer Shoop (owner of the pink cotton ball of death) says

    Neuroguy:
    Yes, feminists do often fight against gender essentialism. You are right that women are treated as if the domestic arena is theirs, by virtue of their gender. However, thats about the only level of society they get control and even then, many people believe she should submit the the husband.
    Patriarchy is the system of male domination that seeks to “keeps women in their place”, but in the process of limiting duties to women, the sphere of influence for men is limited. Hence the phrase Patriarchy Hurts Men Too.

  332. neuroguy says

    @373:
    Please explain how I benefit from this privilege even if I don’t choose to behave like an ass. I’m willing to listen. Maybe post 377 is what you mean? Sorry, I didn’t see your earlier post; yes I’m OK with “custodial parent”.

    @374:
    Fair enough.

    @377:
    Yep I agree. My question is, though, should this be, or is this, (helping men step out of the stereotypically “approved masculine” role), part of feminism? If not, why not, given that such will loosen the hold of damaging patriarchal attidues?

    @378:
    Point taken about actually being assertive. I’ve noticed this in other contexts than asking for raises; I’ve noticed I automatically get taken more seriously when saying something in a group than a woman saying the same thing. I’ve also noticed, however, that the women in the group also take me more seriously!

    2nd paragraph: you seem to be conflating “leadership ability” with “morality”. Yes, I agree men are seen to possess more leadership ability, but not more morality, where things like empathy, etc., are seen to actually get in the way. If you’re the commander of an army, you’re not supposed to “empathize” with the enemy. You’re supposed to destroy them. It’s maybe not so dramatic if you’re instead a CEO, but still. You’re supposed to crush the competition, right? Right now “leadership ability” means take-no-prisoners, and don’t care about anyone else or society: neglect your family for the sake of earning extra profits, and who cares if you destroy the economy if you make a few extra $$$ (cf. the mortgage-backed security fiasco). Or at least it did; these were the type of people who ended up crashing the US economy a few years ago.

    @379: Absolutely, but the corollary is also true. If it were seen as more normal to fathers to be custodial parents or take over half the childrearing responsibility (in an intact family), then women would gain more equality in the workplace, not being saddled with the majority of the childcare responsibilities. I guess this is a chicken-or-egg question I don’t have the answer to. Anyway, I submit there can’t be really true equality in the workplace without true equality at home.

    @380: Yep I agree.

  333. Gen, Uppity Ingrate. says

    Neuroguy, just a quivk reply on your response to @377: yes, tnere are feminists who work on that. Check out xyonline and the works of Micheal Kimmel to staet with. On an ipad so no linky, but he’s a pioneer in the field and hiswork is excellent.

  334. Amphiox says

    Please explain how I benefit from this privilege even if I don’t choose to behave like an ass.

    You can accidentally act like an ass, be temporarily annoyed and snap something out of character, for instance, or due to miscommunication come across as an ass when you did not intend it. You will be afforded the privilege of having this laughed off, or ignored, or simply accepted as unremarkable. Your apology if you choose to make one, or find you need to make one, will be more likely to be accepted and taken seriously.

    A woman in the same situation is much more likely to get a permanent hit to her reputation. Or even be hounded relentlessly for the perceived transgression.

  335. Amphiox says

    The corollary to the above is that a woman in your situation has to be constantly on guard and self edit everything she says, and consider whether and how it might be misconstrued and misrepresented to make her appear to be an ass. The cost of even one accidental “ass” incident is much greater for her than for you.

    You on the other hand have much less to worry about. You will invariably be afforded more benefit of doubt, thanks to your privilege.

  336. says

    Please explain how I benefit from this privilege even if I don’t choose to behave like an ass. I’m willing to listen.

    It’s rather telling that you seem to be blithely unaware that you have a choice. That would be privilege working for you right there.

  337. Illuminata, Genie in the Beer Bottle says

    RE the “what if you change your mind?” thing. I’m child-free by choice. I totally dig kids – i love to babysit, I’m always holding babies at family parties to give the parents a chance to eat dinner, etc. And I love kids precisely because WHEN they start crying, puking, pooping etc, I can GIVE THEM BACK (when the babysitting time is over with, of course). I know it’s a selfish position to take and i don’t care. I like the fun part, don’t want to deal with the gross/upsetting/etc parts. This is why I don’t have children.

    but, when someone says to me “what if you regret not having them!” my answer is always the same: Then I’ll adopt. There’s quite a few kids out there needing homes. There’s millions of girls in China and India that no one seems to want. If I regret not having kids, and I can swing it financially, I’ll rest on my straight privilege and adopt some.
    ++

    Please explain how I benefit from this privilege even if I don’t choose to behave like an ass. I’m willing to listen.

    Because, the person giving you the raise will grant raises according to this aggressive man= good standard. You don’t have to be an ass to benefit, other men paved the way for you to benefit simply by being male.

  338. Illuminata, Genie in the Beer Bottle says

    P.s. reading the reprehensible and selfish way crangle writes about his own children, makes me want to go hug my dad for hours. My father is my hero, and disgusting selfish bigots like crangle make me re-realize how fucking lucky I am to have him.

  339. jefrir says

    Please explain how I benefit from this privilege even if I don’t choose to behave like an ass.

    Because the criteria for “behaving like an ass” is set really low for women, and includes behaviour that is considered not only normal but good for men – such as asking for a raise, or taking charge of a meeting or project, or providing effective criticism of other people’s work or ideas.

  340. carlie says

    P.s. reading the reprehensible and selfish way crangle writes about his own children, makes me want to go hug my dad for hours. My father is my hero, and disgusting selfish bigots like crangle make me re-realize how fucking lucky I am to have him.

    Me too. My father has never, ever once said a single word about the choices he had to make when I came along, ever. He has never once given any sign, verbal, nonverbal, etc. that having me wasn’t a fantastic thing that he loved every minute of. Yet, piecing together his life from what he and other people have told me, he had to give up a college track scholarship at a flagship university and stay in town and work at a steel mill when I came along, and then spent years in crappy jobs while he went to the local school one or two classes at a time to earn a degree in something he hated because he knew it would be a solid career. And I honestly don’t think he ever even thought about it the way oliver does – it’s just the kind of thing that can happen, and that’s how life is, and you roll with it and enjoy your family and that’s enough.

  341. a_ray_in_dilbert_space says

    Neuroguy: “Please explain how I benefit from this privilege even if I don’t choose to behave like an ass. ”

    Do you see that other men benefit–whether they behave like an ass or not? If not, then why are CEOs, elected representatives, NFL coaches…overwhelmingly men?

    If you are stopped by a policeman for speeding, is it more likely that he will be a white man or a black woman?

    If you appear before a judge in a lawsuit versus a hispanic woman, will the judge look more like you or your opponent?

    What is the likelihood that your boss shares ethnicity, culture, gender with you if you are a white man? A black woman?

    Privelege is not a simple thing. It doesn’t mean that all white men will be richer than Oprah. It doesn’t mean that it is impossible for a black man or a woman to become president. However, look at how Obama has been treated as president–from the “You lie!” incident in his first address to Congress to the birthers to the near universal opposition of old, white, rich men (there’s always Warren Buffet) in the last election. Privelege and power are different. Learn the difference and you will understand privelege.

  342. says

    Well, I was thinking about how poor Oliver Crangle’s situation would look like if he was still with his ex:
    The family would live in a 3 bedroom flat but the kids would still share because daddy deserves an “office” to play playstation in.
    Daddy would get stek for dinner while the kids get chicken (hey, above the poverty line!).
    Daddy would wear brand clothing while the younger still gets only hand-me-downs (above the poverty line!)
    The kids get old second hand bikes but dad gets the nice Ford Mustang.
    And if his wife thinks that they should get more then hey, she can totally use her income which is most likely already paying most expenses that are for the whole family together.

  343. nimuae says

    @neuroguy

    There are so many reasons why women get custody of the children.

    For example, if an unmarried woman gives birth, she is given sole custody – the reason being that she is certain to be the biological parent*. At 40.8% of all births, this is a healthy chunk. Once she is granted sole custody and sole caregiver it is harder (but not impossible) to wrest custody away.
    http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/unmarry.htm

    So, we’re already close to the half-way marker just with those situations.

    There are also situations when the couple makes their own agreement and, generally, those go in favor of the mother. I don’t have any statistics on contested custody and how men fare. Do you?

    *which is biologically based so it’s not changeable. Just like women have the capability of gestation.

  344. nimuae says

    @neuroguy

    Just to add that everything I wrote above supports your assertion that women do get more child custody. I just don’t know how much of that custody is disputed where men ‘loose’ in court.

    Which is also not to say there isn’t a major bias. Patriachy hurts men too.

  345. David Marjanović says

    *whole pile of hugs for katenrala and EEB*

    I’m with comment 307.

    And 308. :-)

    OK, I admit to doing the same in highschool, once I was out of the muddy-puddles age. I didn’t mind hand-me-downs much either, but once in a while it was really important to have some item or other that I actually picked myself instead of my sister having picked it.

    *lightbulb moment* See, I didn’t really get to pick anything. I had more like emergency veto power.

    I doubt MRAs such as OC even think about others except in how those others affect them directly. I doubt they expend the energy to actively hate or love, just indifference. There’s a real narcissistic trend in their arguments that I have never seen waver. It’s all “me me me.”

    I think you’re right.

  346. doubtthat says

    @46 oliverkrangle

    Was busy over the holidays, so this thread slipped away. Though it will likely not be read, all bullshit should be stomped out.

    First, of fucking course, dumbass, your child support payments are dependent on your income. Your ex’s income will also be factored into the equation, so the only way to generate massive support payments is through one party making a lot of money and the other being unemployed (most states will impute minimum wage to the non-working party in that scenario). The more you make, the more you’re going to pay, but notice the AVERAGE payment is $400/month. So, consider how much you paid, then consider how many people need to pay significantly less that $400/month to make that average work out.

    You also seem wholly ignorant of the cost of raising a child. You’ve offered surprisingly little detail, and my guess is that you will lie about the reality of the situation with little concern for reality. The largest cost of raising toddler is daycare. Even in my area, which has a low cost of living, it’s almost impossible to find a daycare provider for less that $1000/month. Two kids in California, and my guess is that most of your payment went straight to some sort of provider.

    Now, of course, you’ll answer with a thousand details about how you didn’t pay daycare…blah, blah. If you want to use your situation as an example of evil womenz stealing your hard earned money, then you need to send me the paperwork. I do know how these things go, I do know how state child support guidelines work, and there simply aren’t any cases (unless you have a terrible attorney, attempted to sneak out of the payments, or tried to represent your own dumbass) of women getting rich on child support.