OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
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User ID: 359
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
I feel like people are responding to something I didn't say.
What I did say: I would be ok with paternity tests becoming common place and routine as just a normal part of a hospital birth. In such a world, there is no reason to take offense. But in this world, a specific husband asking his specific wife is obviously offensive to her.
What I am responding to is stuff like this comment, where people feel like every father should ask this of his wife at every birth before agreeing to be on the birth certificate, regardless of any evidence of cheating.
If you ask your wife for a paternity test... your relationship is going to have problems after. So don't do it unless you already have problems.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
The problem is your wife is suspecting you're unfaithful. That is a problem! Yes, once that problem is there, then you have no recourse but to solve it.
But in this thread it seems people are recommending men make a habit of asking their wives for paternity tests with every child even if there is no real reason to be suspicious. And I can tell you, it would not go over well and neither should it.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
If I came out of a coma or had some head trauma that caused me to lose some time, and my husband earnestly presented a child to me as my own, then I would believe him.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
I do not have a natural guarantee that my husband is faithful to me. All I can guarantee is that I am faithful to him.
Also see my response here: https://www.themotte.org/post/3726/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/440420?context=8#context
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
the wife seething in jealousy for months
But see! This is the problem here. It'd be a sign that your wife is currently seething in jealousy! Your relationship is forever changed whether the test happens or not.
Let's look at the different worlds:
World 1: Wife does not ask for 'fidelity' test.
Possibilities:
- Wife believes you are faithful and you are in a happy marriage
- Wife doesn't believe you are faithful and your marriage is unhappy, but for some reason she does not request the test. Maybe she doesn't want to rock the boat, maybe she doesn't mind as long as you pay the mortgage, etc.
World 2: Wife asks for "fidelity test"
Possibilities:
- Wife doesn't believe you are faithful and your marriage is unhappy
The possibility where your marriage is happy is gone now. Your marriage is different and you can't go back.
Given the responses from the Male Motte, the most I can say is that male and female intuitions on this topic are just diametrically opposed.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
Are you married?
Let's say there was a test with 99% accuracy that would determine if you have had sex with someone else (maybe a genital swab of you and your wife that would identify bacteria from another women.) Your wife out of the blue demands that you take the test. The implication is that she suspects you have been cheating on her. You had a healthy relationship. You thought she trusted you. You never would even think of another woman.
Wouldn't this be off-putting to say the least? You thought you had one kind of relationship, one where it was you two, forever together, just you and her til death. And then suddenly it appears that she is in some other relationship, one in which you would cheat.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
If my husband demanded a paternity test for our kids, I'd be very offended. If he couldn't trust me that much, does he even want to be married?
But if it was just standard at every birth, I wouldn't care at all.
Maybe a state will normalize it for some reason and the rest will follow suit.
I suspect that we're moving in a different direction though. Many states are making the spouse of the mother is listed on the birth certificate by default, even if they obviously are not the father. For example, two lesbians end up on the birth certificate and that's affirming and cute under the Uniform Parentage Act (UPA). There seems to be a trend towards "intended parents" over genetic parent.
If intended parents matter more to the state than genetic parent, it doesn't make sense to start genetic testing. It would just be a triggering reminder that two women can't actually make a baby on their own.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
Better water and food quality.
Boron is mostly found in fruits and avocados, which are generally "middle-class and up fare" in America. Silica is found in fancier mineral water.
Maybe I'm wrong here but I get the impression that nail quality is worse for people in the lower classes, which is why they love their press-ons. Meanwhile, I noticed my nails getting more brittle as I aged and started drinking Fiji water a couple times a week and now have great nails.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
For myself, getting nails done was a thing that went along with fancy/formal occasions. We seldom went to a salon but we would make a big production of picking out nail polish that matched our dress and painting each other's toes/nails the day before a wedding or dance.
Someone who always has their nails done up strikes me as someone with too much time on their hands. Whether that's because they are upper class or living off the dole, it could mean either. Upper class people have more "taste" and make sure their nails don't clash. They also probably get more silica/boron in their diet and have stronger nails to start with.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
3d ago
No? Is this a common experience?
Yeah kinda. A software developer who is ill fitted to their position changes gender and then for a year becomes unfire-able.
Am I just really unlucky here?
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
3d ago
How old is your family? What percentage is under 25 years old?
You've never even had a coworker change gender on you?
Four of my examples are from Washington State, but one is from Texas.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
3d ago
If you have a large enough family, trans issues are going to happen to you at least once.
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One of my cousins became trans in high school. She didn't show any sign of being masculine as a child, was a very picky eater, wanted to marry a lead singer of a boy band to the point where she plotted killing his wife... and then a year later her mother was dying and she decided that men are better able to handle such awfulness and transitioned into a boy, hormones and all.
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We once pooled resources with my husband's friend to rent a house together and one of our friend's sons married a transwoman who dressed in a way that was really inappropriate all the time.
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Another of that friends' sons is super autistic, didn't finish high school, and decided recently that he's a woman.
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The last of that friend's children was raped as a teenager and decided to become a man in response. All three of these young adults suffered obvious physical and mental health challenges that were exacerbated by their belief they could improve their lives by trying to live as another sex.
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Now I have a family reunion coming up on my husband's side, and my sister in law messaged our family to say that her oldest son was transitioning, that her husband still used masculine pronouns and my sister-in-law used female pronouns, my nephew was still using the same androgynous first name and was wearing androgynous clothes, and it was up to us how we want to prepare our children to see their cousin.
Trans people are everywhere and each individual has to figure out what to do about it. How do you address them, do you encourage them or discourage them from transitioning, do you even feel a gender? A small group of people can't just change how all of society thinks about sex and language and think, "Why do people keep talking about us?"
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6d ago
I mean, if five minutes after pressing the button 40% of the worlds population started dying of radiation sickness and over the course of weeks to a couple months everyone slowly died that would be a sign it was the button.
No, I am a woman and I have only ever been intimate with my husband.
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