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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31758 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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It became equally understood that the very second of coitus (or even without it if the sperm is stollen). That absolutely an child conceived will result in the man's complete legal and financial ruin. That the legal system gains full power over every asset, skill, or income source, he has ever or might ever have, and that if he tries to evade legal """Responsibility""" (as if this something that would ever consider being applied to a citizen of one of the other 82 genders) his wages will be garnished, his assets forcibly confiscated, he may be imprisoned, and in many jurisdictions his passport might even be confiscated.

This is the part that leaves me flabbergasted. I've seen close friends have their lives left in utter shambles after being cheated on and left by a wife who decided that he was nothing more than a piggybank. Men who were allowed only a pittance of time with their children, despite having no criminal record/history of abuse/etc. That the modern, overpowered family court allows women to destroy the lives of decent men for absolutely no reason is a stain on our society, and will undoubtedly have more severe ramifications as future generations grow up saying "yeah there's no way I'm risking my life by getting married and ending up in a financial/emotional/spiritual dumpster like my dad".

It makes me physically angry sometimes that so much societal and conversational capital is spent on the most trivial "microaggressions" that supposedly-marginalized communities experience, yet massive legal aggressions with the demonstrated effect of driving men to suicide are only spoken of in hushed tones in the dark recesses of the internet.

Maybe those men should have understood more clearly that if they use their superior earning potential to convince women who would not otherwise sleep with them to do so, then "if one day when you've already used up most of your lifetime SMV on me you grow fed up with me, you can still smash the piggy bank" is part of the trade offer they are implicitly making. There is maybe a coordination problem if the market is such that most men need to make that offer (read: go for women who they can impress with money) to be able to compete, but apart from the possible market-based fixes (if most men are actually rational in making that gamble and we just hear disproportionately about the few that drew the short end of the stick: has something like alimony insurance been done?), I can't say that I've personally ever found it difficult to "date up" economically (though of course "up" is an especially big range if you are an academic).

I think that's a rather dated heuristic. In many urban centers, women outearn men.

And in those urban centers, they by and large still don't marry poorer men.

Maybe those men should have understood more clearly that if they use their superior earning potential to convince women who would not otherwise sleep with them to do so

It's not exactly often made explicit that this bargain is being made.

if one day when you've already used up most of your lifetime SMV on me you grow fed up with me, you can still smash the piggy bank" is part of the trade offer they are implicitly making.

If this is the trade on offer for something that absolutely must be done to perpetuate the species I suggest we change the offer because the alternative is perishing.

You ready to roll back the whole sexual revolution, or just the parts that hit your identity group?

I agree that the way the family courts treat men is pitch-black evil. The way a lot of men treat women is likewise pitch-black evil. We had a better system, but Horny Liberalism burned it to the ground in the name of sexual liberation. Well, you asked for it, here it is. There is no risk-free way to allow other people access to your brain, dick, heart and bank account, but allowing that access is a choice you make. Those who make poor choices have to pay for them, one way or another.

tough subject. incredibly corrosive. we are indeed all culpable for wickedness.

i'm reminded of one of the last good sermons i heard. no new ground here--the sins of the father are laid upon the children. parents sow, adults sow, children reap.

lasciviousness did push "sexual liberation" but it wasn't liberalism. it was aristocrats, de jure and de facto, who wanted to eat up whichever attractive commoner women they pleased and fear not the morning. they sowed that pitch-black evil. it lives on. the sex most participatory "perpetrates" the greater share of this evil (whatever that means), but people go with the flow. they always only ever do. they cannot recognize evil as such, they don't know how. look at who their parents were.

there is no righteous solution. these generations have reaped and now they cannot be made whole. artifice will tidily segregate and man will gain great productivity and be so much less for it.

I agree that the way the family courts treat men is pitch-black evil. The way a lot of men treat women is likewise pitch-black evil. We had a better system, but Horny Liberalism burned it to the ground in the name of sexual liberation. Well, you asked for it, here it is.

Absolutely agreed. Western men are equally as responsible for the current state of things.

There is no risk-free way to allow other people access to your brain, dick, heart and bank account, but allowing that access is a choice you make. Those who make poor choices have to pay for them, one way or another.

If only western society applied this logic to women as much as it does to men...

I've been seeing this rhetoric from certain factions of the right recently, but now I suppose it's being espoused by someone whose attention may be accessible to me—so maybe you can help me out understanding this one.

Who, pray tell, is the audience for this statement? Cads who are looking to get married and start a family? Married men who are looking to fuck around?

What is the thesis of this rant? "Sorry fellas, as long as there are promiscuous men out there, your married ass can't expect fair treatment from family courts."

I am deeply confused.

Who, pray tell, is the audience for this statement? Cads who are looking to get married and start a family? Married men who are looking to fuck around?

The intended audience is anyone dissatisfied with our current norms surrounding sexuality. The thesis is that sexuality is not a series of simple knobs that can be individually fine-tuned to achieve a desired outcome, but is rather a deeply interconnected, highly complex, and highly consequential social system that we cannot reliably conform to our whims.

The sexual revolution's thesis was that crusty old religious fuddy-duddies and repressed bigots had packed our sexual norms full of pointless, killjoy rules based on their own superstitions and hangups, and that once these were removed everyone could just do what felt good and be happy all the time. So they removed all the rules, a whole lot of people got badly hurt, and now they've had to reimpose new, worse rules and people are still pretty unhappy with the results. The claim here is that there are simple, obvious changes that will fix the problems and then everything will be fine. I don't think that was true before, and I don't think it's true here either. Risky sex is always going to be risky sex, no matter how we shuffle the risk around, and the inescapable fact is that all sex involves a significant degree of risk. There are solid strategies capable of seriously mitigating the problems people are pointing to here, but they involve living a Trad life that avoids divorce entirely, not attempting to "fix" divorce so it doesn't fuck people up, something I'm pretty sure it isn't possible to do.

That doesn't mean that none of the examples provided are probative; some of them display some degree of bias, and some are just straight-up badly decided. But I'm fairly confident that these specific issues of female rapists getting child support from male victims are very much edge cases, and while I entirely endorse fixing them, doing so isn't going to do a thing to help the much larger class of despairing men referenced in the comment I was replying to. The fact is that divorce is actually pretty awful, no matter how we try to shuffle its components.

If enough people recognize the failures of the current system, maybe we can as a society try for something better. In the meantime, people are better off accepting that the problem they're pointing to simply isn't going to get fixed, and start looking for workarounds.

That doesn't mean that none of the examples provided are probative; some of them display some degree of bias, and some are just straight-up badly decided. But I'm fairly confident that these specific issues of female rapists getting child support from male victims are very much edge cases, and while I entirely endorse fixing them, doing so isn't going to do a thing to help the much larger class of despairing men referenced in the comment I was replying to. The fact is that divorce is actually pretty awful, no matter how we try to shuffle its components.

But only one part of the argument is about how to "fix divorce". I agree it will never be a pleasant affair.

The other half is "Divorce policies are currently set up to be maximally awful for men and maximally beneficial for women. This is unfair." Your comment does not address this at all. That we may never find a risk distribution that will leave everyone happy is not a good reason to adopt a massively unfair one.

So they removed all the rules, a whole lot of people got badly hurt, and now they've had to reimpose new, worse rules and people are still pretty unhappy with the results.

Very much not a fan of the dude but relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/592/

The audience is dissatisfied young men. Maybe incels, maybe RETVRNers: what matters is openness to women-as-outgroup. The goal is rallying a bloc via distrust for that outgroup. You’re seeing this in right-wing spaces because more liberal ones have very strong antibodies against the general sentiment, for better or worse.

Your interpretation of the thesis is almost correct, but you skipped the premise of societal decay. It’s often paired with claims that females—not women—are the real hypergamists. Thus it becomes “sorry fellas, so long as society is willing to tolerate women acting like whores, your married/responsible/trad ass can’t expect fair treatment.”

There’s a lot to unpack about an almost Marxist version of this argument that’s popular on the far right. But I don’t think you have to bite that bullet to express dissatisfaction with the state of affairs.

The audience is dissatisfied young men.

Dissatisfied young women, too. The current situation makes us all wretched.

what matters is openness to women-as-outgroup.

...What?

Your interpretation of the thesis is almost correct, but you skipped the premise of societal decay. It’s often paired with claims that females—not women—are the real hypergamists. Thus it becomes “sorry fellas, so long as society is willing to tolerate women acting like whores, your married/responsible/trad ass can’t expect fair treatment.”

None of this is accurate. Your married/responsible/trad ass can absolutely expect fair treatment, provided you find a woman willing to treat you fairly, which absolutely can be done. I have in fact done it, and it is delightful. What you can't expect is fair treatment from a system that is, in general, breaking down. There is no way under current conditions for our system to adequately police sexual ethics for men OR women, because we broke too many of the necessary tools, and most of us value personal gratification over workable general rules. It was stupid to imagine that emotionally and sexually intimate relationships can be regulated the way one does parking violations, but here we are.

The problem with relationships is not "Females". The problem is that relationships are necessarily fraught, and we as a society removed most of the safety mechanisms. One can (and should, in my view) find pockets that voluntarily maintain those safety mechanisms. Otherwise, one should understand that there's a lot of risk lying around for everybody that the prevailing narratives resolutely paper over.

Unfortunately, a lot of people making these complaints are the same people helping to generate the risk. You aren't stuck in traffic, you are traffic, as the saying goes. Men and women both embrace Horny Liberalism, and then when the long-term effects manifest, imagine that they can patch the downsides without having to compromise their own desires. Foolishness, but humans were ever thus.

It’s often paired with claims that females—not women—are the real hypergamists. Thus it becomes “sorry fellas, so long as society is willing to tolerate women acting like whores, your married/responsible/trad ass can’t expect fair treatment.”

Maybe we should look up a word before we write an analysis. Your search bar is right there. Type hypergamy into it.

I looked it up, and it seems to fit. Relevant quotes from the first few links:

What point were you trying to make?

You are describing a fairly anodyne observation, that women are more social status conscious and care more about that in their partners, and using Urban Dictionary's almost unrecognizable definition and describing them as whores, which conflates hypergamy with being sexually loose for money.

I don't think many of the people you are describing would primarily think of women as whores. They would describe them as gold diggers. Or maybe they would describe them as whores. But not because of hypergamy. They are very distinct traits, even if they are both leveraging sex appeal for personal benefit.

“Gold diggers” would probably have been a better term, yeah. I somehow overlooked it, though I considered “mercenary...”

But I’ll stand by the appropriateness of “whores.” @FCfromSSC wasn’t just describing hypergamy, he was observing entrenched Horny Liberalism. Dismantling social institutions is absolutely associated with prostitution and vice in general.

You are describing a fairly anodyne observation, that women are more social status conscious and care more about that in their partners, and using Urban Dictionary's almost unrecognizable definition and describing them as whores, which conflates hypergamy with being sexually loose for money.

I think you're refusing to recognize term (meme) creep here. The Wikipedia definition of hypergamy may be "an anodyne observation that women are more social status conscious and care more about that in their partners," but I never see anyone refer to women and hypergamy where it isn't shorthand for "status-seeking whores."

(FYI, I'm not @netstack)

...using Urban Dictionary's almost unrecognizable definition and describing them as whores, which conflates hypergamy with being sexually loose for money.

Urban Dictionary is a perfectly fine source here, because it reflects the same attitudes and biases as the group we're talking about: they conflate hypergamy with being sexually loose for money because "dissatisfied young men. Maybe incels, maybe RETVRNers" conflate hypergamy with being sexually loose for money.

See The Red Pill Community Forum|What is hypergamy? How to Benefit from Hypergamy & Everything You Need to Know About Hypergamy. for a second example.

If you think their claims are incorrect or confused, then go ahead and argue that. They are making the claims, though.

Your link agrees with me. They even recommend a book called Gold Diggers and Sugar Daddies: The Red Pill Guide to Hypergamy by Player Mastermind.

@Gdanning claimed that increasing wages of women would lead to women more often becoming the person with the higher income in a relationship. It was in this context that I brought up female hypergamy, because if there is a higher systemic preference for income among women than in men, "closing the wage gap" doesn't solve. That @netstack decided to drag incelism into this discussion, might be useful rhetorically as it provides him with a punching bag, but doesn't have anything to do with my comment netstack linked.

It’s often paired with claims that females—not women—

Do you find the "female", even if paired with "male" and not "man", offensive?

are the real hypergamist

Women value potential for financial prospects more than men. See this study, page 7 of the PDF. In every of the 37 global cultures included in the study, human females valued "good financial prospects" more than human males did.

Sorry, I wasn’t trying to imply that your claim was incorrect. True statements are valid rallying flags.

females

I think your usage is appropriate.

There is a stronger form of the hypergamy claim where it represents a class interest, a cause rather than an effect. When “female” is used in that context, it is an attempt to sneak onto clinical high ground. I understand that’s not what you were doing.

I agree that the way the family courts treat men is pitch-black evil. The way a lot of men treat women is likewise pitch-black evil.

What puts men on edge is not that there are bad women around who will do bad things. It's the fact that the women who do bad things are aided and abetted by the legal and policy systems in place, and the fact that the harms they perpetrate are often actively enabled and worsened by these systems.

And some of these harms are really egregious. You don't have to be in a long-term relationship with a woman for the state to try to obligate you. You don't even have to be a consenting party to the act that results in conception. In the case of a woman using deceptive and coercive means to trap an unwilling man into fatherhood, the system will vigorously extract money from that man and hand it to that woman for 18 to 26 years.

In one such case (Hermesmann v. Seyer), the father was a minor child who was statutorily raped, and the court found him responsible for the financial support of the resulting child. Other cases of male victims of statutory rape being made to pay child support include Nick Olivas and Nathaniel J. In the latter case, Judge Arthur Gilbert stated that "Victims have rights. Here, the victim also has responsibilities."

The article "Fatherhood By Conscription: Nonconsensual Insemination And The Duty Of Child Support" also has a very good rundown of things (and while I do disagree with some of the moral positions the author takes, the cases cited within shine light on an issue that is rarely focused on). Regarding the question of whether a male victim of statutory rape is liable for child support payments should the rape result in a child: "[T]here are numerous cases in which an adult woman became pregnant as a result of sexual relations she initiated with a minor child. Nonetheless, despite the number of times this question has arisen, every single court has answered it in the affirmative - holding that, yes, the minor father is liable."

Then there are also completely nonconsenting adult male victims of female-perpetrated rape that have been made to pay child support to the mothers. For example, an Alabama man known as S.F. in 1992 attended a party at the home of a female friend, T.M, and was raped by T.M. when he was unconscious. He was held responsible for child support, and on appeal his argument that the court should relieve him of child support duties failed. And in another similar case, Daniel was a Wisconsin father who claimed that the mother, Jennifer, administered a date rape drug to him, and despite the jury concluding that his sexual intercourse with Jennifer was involuntary, he had to pay child support. Then there are cases like Emile Frisard's, where there was no rape, but the mother got pregnant by retrieving the father's semen from oral sex and impregnating herself with it, and in that case the court also upheld his child support obligation.

Meanwhile, here's what happened in the one case in which a court was called upon to decide whether a female victim of sexual assault was liable for child support. "In DCSE/Esther M.C. v. Mary L., a mother refused to provide support for her three minor children on the basis that they were “the result of an incestuous relationship with her brother,” and, as such, “it was not a voluntary decision on her part to have the minor children.” In ruling, the court did what no court has ever done when confronted with the child support obligations of a male victim of sexual assault - the court ruled that the mother may not be liable. According to the court, “[i]f the sexual intercourse which results in the birth of a child is involuntary or without actual consent, a mother may have ‘just cause’ . . . for failing or refusing to support such a child.”"

And the article notes that this is the case despite the fact that women have more options than men after conception - "they can later elect to abort the child or give the child up for adoption, thus terminating her parental rights. In contrast, a father cannot make those choices absent the cooperation of the mother." I'd also add the morning-after pill as another example of a precautionary measure a woman can take (if she is sexually assaulted, or she is afraid her partner has poked holes in the condom, etc). Men also lack this option.

Again, it is not that women can harm men that makes a lot of men wary. It's not even that women can get away with harming men. It's that the system itself, even when acknowledging that the woman committed an intentional and morally inexcusable act on the man, will enforce the continuation of that harm.

There is no risk-free way to allow other people access to your brain, dick, heart and bank account, but allowing that access is a choice you make. Those who make poor choices have to pay for them, one way or another.

You are essentially claiming that if family court and child support etc are biased against men, men have to take that risk into account and if they don't, whatever happens is something they assented to. But I think it is hardly a viable choice when the "choice" in question is between lifelong celibacy and opening yourself up to the possibility of getting completely screwed over by an incredibly broken system. To claim that being unable to tolerate the former situation constitutes a "poor choice" on one's own part is really quite unfair. And the point falls apart even further when you consider the fact that men (and boys) who have been raped or otherwise sexually taken advantage of by women have been forced to pay child support.

You are essentially claiming that if family court and child support etc are biased against men, men have to take that risk into account and if they don't, whatever happens is something they assented to. But I think it is hardly a viable choice when the "choice" in question is between lifelong celibacy and opening yourself up to the possibility of getting completely screwed over by an incredibly broken system.

Sex is risky in many ways besides the obvious. Yes, if you choose not to be celibate, you choose to take on risk.

If you hook up with a malicious actor, you might get screwed over. This is true for women just as much as men. The nature of the screwing might be different, but for every story of some poor fellow who got drunk at a party and wound up stuck with 18 years of child support, there are plenty of stories of women who got drunk at a party and wound up with a child and a deadbeat dad. Or a stalker, or an abuser.

Men and women can be extraordinarily shitty to each other. Without being a conservative myself, I think there is much to be said for the traditional concept of, you know, being careful and selective about who you hook up with. This does not, of course, guarantee that one doesn't wind up with a bad partner who screws you over in the end, but it greatly reduces the likelihood.

I have little sympathy for anyone of either sex who wants to go sow their wild oats and not be held accountable for the reaping.

@KulakRevolt's screed is as usual as entertaining as it is devoid of rigor or probity. It's just another fist shaken at society, another reason why we should burn everything down. And all the people with deep grievances against women coming out, as they always do in threads like these, are missing the point of child support, as they always do in threads like these. The point isn't to "hand your money over to a woman," it's to avoid having unsupported children who become the state's responsibility. You want to get your dick wet, you know there is a possibility of producing a child, and if it's not your responsibility (jointly) to provide for that child, then whose is it? I see no reason why anyone else who wasn't involved in the bumping of uglies should have to pay for it.

Sure, I see your edge case of one woman in one case who was held not responsible for children she was forcibly impregnated with by incest, and I'll agree that there's a certain inequity there when compared with your other edge case of one guy who got drunk at a party and woke up a father nine months later. The law isn't an algorithm, this is like comparing that one man who shot someone in Kansas and got a suspended sentence and that other woman who shot someone in Florida and got life. Even if we agree that the cases are roughly comparable, this does not mean the law treats women murderers more harshly than men and thus laws against murder are sexist and terrible.

None of the men moaning that it's unfair they can't sever parental responsibilities after a hook-up would be satisfied by a law carving out an exception for male rape victims.

  • -17

(Helpful reminder to the thread that even off Reddit, we still don't downvote for disagreeing!)

Pretty clearly we do!

(Seriously, has ever been so. There is no amount of pleading or haranguing that will make people stop doing it. Just as a certain number of people will always report others for disagreeing.)

The point isn't to "hand your money over to a woman," it's to avoid having unsupported children who become the state's responsibility.

And yet every single state in the US has safe haven laws where a woman can just hand away the kid after birth and is left with zero (0) consequences. The father doesn't even get to choose to keep the child, the mother can just hand it away. Those children become the state's responsibility as well but nobody cares about the hypocrisy.

Those children become the state's responsibility as well but nobody cares about the hypocrisy.

That's because safe haven laws are there to stop women dumping unwanted babies who will then die. They have different goals. Remember the legal system is not monolithic. It has been built by people with varying goals and ideas, who have assembled a patchwork of interlocking systems at different times, from different parties and different ideologies.

Having said that, do note, that the other parent may be able to petition for custody and in some states the State must specifically check with the other parent before revoking parental rights. It does vary by state. So it is not necessarily true that the father does not get to choose to keep the child.

That's because safe haven laws are there to stop women dumping unwanted babies who will then die.

Then why isn't their a provision to allow fathers to dump unwanted babies who will then die? If you're going to say it's because the mother may want them then the same argument also applies in reverse. And even given that some states allow the other parent to petition for custody, this isn't true in all of them.

Safe haven laws as far as i can tell don't specify which parent can use them. So men can use them its just much less common.

While many of these safe haven laws technically are gender neutral in wording, in many states unwed genetic mothers by default get custody. The unwed father has no such automatic right. He has to establish paternity and petition in court before being able to have rights over any child born out of wedlock. Mind, too, that women control information about and access to the kid and therefore can very easily block such a process.

As an example, Arizona's law states that "If a child is born out of wedlock, the mother is the legal custodian of the child for the purposes of this section until paternity is established and custody or access is determined by a court."

https://www.azleg.gov/ars/13/01302.htm

https://web.archive.org/web/20210506194043/https://www.azleg.gov/ars/13/01302.htm

This situation allows the mother to abandon the child or alienate him from it early on. On the other hand, if the father wants to avail himself of these safe haven laws which are technically open to him, he'll have to take the child out of the mother's custody - unlawfully - and in doing so he can be charged with custodial interference or kidnapping.

That previous Arizona law I cited also states that custodial interference is committed when someone "Takes, entices or keeps from lawful custody any child, or any person who is incompetent, and who is entrusted by authority of law to the custody of another person or institution." Anyone in violation of that opens themselves up to felony charges.

So while Arizona's safe haven law is on its face gender neutral, subject to the previous Arizona law I cited in my first comment, unwed fathers in Arizona who take the child out of the mother's custody to put it in a safe haven can still be prosecuted for custodial interference, whereas unwed mothers early on can unilaterally put their children in safe havens without anyone's consent and escape any prosecution because they are the default custodian until the father pursues access and custody.

Additionally, here's an adoption lawyer in a forum for legal advice answering a question about whether a father can give up a child to a safe haven without the mother's consent:

https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/can-a-man-access-safe-haven-laws-without-the-moms--3458852.html

"Do you want to be arrested? Because if you do, that is a sure fired way. When a woman gives birth and the parents are unmarried, the woman has presumed custody. If you did this you would be facing criminal charges as an unmarried father has no rights unless he pursues then in court."

And this article provides a generalised rundown of the situation:

"Though written in gender-neutral terms, many American states now effectively permit the abandonment of newborns to be undertaken solely by genetic mothers. These acts usually foreclose, without notice or a chance to be heard, any legal parenthood for genetic fathers who are fit and willing to parent and who may even have attained federal constitutional childrearing interests, as through, for example, marital presumptions. Genetic mothers can walk away from parental responsibilities early on in a child's life, whereas comparable desertions are usually forbidden for genetic fathers in cases where the genetic mothers maintain custody, as well as for genetic mothers once their children are a little older."

"While a genetic mother having child custody may employ Safe Haven laws to escape parental responsibilities, genetic fathers without custody typically may not walk away in the same fashion. They cannot escape child support obligations, even if they never attained childrearing rights. They cannot desert their genetic offspring, even if they were fooled into conception and were forgotten (or avoided) during the pregnancy and at the birth."

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/80506024.pdf

In other words, men are not able to access safe haven laws the same way women can in practice.

More comments

And I want to point out that this is how the conservative movement in the USA tends to see things. A man or teenaged boy who chooses to have sex is choosing to at least potentially make a baby. So is a woman, but most conservatives don't support abortion rights.

If you wanted to make a law that male rape victims can't be held responsible for child support, I suspect that the American conservative movement would go "ok, makes sense, but it's not the world's #1 problem". But this idea that sex can possibly be without commitment or "no strings attached" or whatever is absolutely foreign to conservative sentiment. Sex makes responsibilities. Some of those responsibilities are babies, sometimes those responsibilities are just to your partner, but they're always there and you shouldn't try to wiggle out of them.

All this is well and good, if we lived in conservative world absolutely men should take responsibility for their offspring. But we don't live in conservative world, we live in the hyper individualist progressive world where accountability is a dirty word and men are noticing that everyone else gets to reap the rewards of this tradeoff except themselves. All these universal values that we're supposed to stoicly bear when they're against our interests seem to turn to sand the moment a situations comes up when they might defend our interests and we're starting to see that the game appears to be rigged. That if there is an universal value in play it is that we will do what is best for women and this is only not said aloud as to dupe credulous men. alimony seems very much to be less about the kid and more about the state leaning on it's monopoly of force to skip out on a bill that is the obvious consequence of its other policies.

If consent to sex is consent to a parenthood then lets live in that world, if it's not please stop pretending that we do when it harms me.

If consent to sex is consent to a parenthood then lets live in that world, if it's not please stop pretending that we do when it harms me.

What would this world that you don't think exists look like to you, besides banning abortion?

Something more like socially enforced monogamy, premarital sex being looked at more like experimenting with opiods than some life phase important for self discovery. I'm not really one of these conservatives, my preference is for the more freedom oriented world we do live in, I just find the inconsistent application of values grating.

All these universal values that we're supposed to stoicly bear when they're against our interests seem to turn to sand the moment a situations comes up when they might defend out interests and we're starting to see that the game appears to be rigged.

Correct; the meta-rule is just "you lose". It's not so strange that leftists endorse this situation. It is strange that conservatives do also.

Do you have similar feelings about revenge porn? After all, if she didn't want those pictures out there, she shouldn't have had them taken in the first place. I find it rather perverse that men who engage in oral sex with condoms are considered to be freely giving "a gift — an absolute and irrevocable transfer of title to property from a donor to a donee", so have no legal recourse should she decide to use the sperm to later artificially inseminate herself and burden him with responsibility for a child while women who consent to recording sexual activities are protected from his later use of said recordings.

I don't think revenge porn is directly comparable, but yes, I do think it's pretty stupid to put your nudes out there if you expect them never to be shared, and I also think that someone who shares someone's nudes nonconsensually is a scumbag.

As for these edge case scenarios people keep bringing up like the woman who digs a condom out of the trash to impregnate herself, I think the law probably should make exceptions for truly involuntary cases of impregnation (male rape victims, stolen condoms/sperm, etc.), which would be equitable with the right of women to use abortion to avoid involuntary pregnancy. That the law currently does not address these rare cases "fairly" is not a compelling argument to me that therefore all the other men who'd like to sever paternal responsibilities should be able to do so.

there are plenty of stories of women who got drunk at a party and wound up with a child and a deadbeat dad.

And if and when she did, the system won't hold her accountable. It offers her plenty of outs, such as 1: abortion, 2: safe haven abandonment, and 3: adoption, all of which she has a unique ability to access because she carries the child, and additionally any child born out of wedlock is in her sole custody by default and thus she won't be guilty of custodial interference by taking advantage of safe haven laws. Pray tell, why has your hypothetical woman not taken advantage of any of these options available to her, if she does not want to care for a child and the father is out of the picture? And which analogous "ways out" are fathers allowed?

The point isn't to "hand your money over to a woman," it's to avoid having unsupported children who become the state's responsibility. You want to get your dick wet, you know there is a possibility of producing a child, and if it's not your responsibility (jointly) to provide for that child, then whose is it?

Yet safe haven abandonment is explicitly allowed, and these laws absolutely create unsupported children who become the state's responsibility. I suppose that by the same token, you oppose safe haven abandonment as a method of surrendering parental responsibility for women, correct? If you have decided not only to perform the act that resulted in conception but also have carried the pregnancy to term and have eschewed every option to terminate up until that point, then you absolutely have the responsibility to care for it. Under this worldview, that is.

I'm not going to lie, this entire "personal responsibility" screed you've produced here sounds like an awfully convenient way to avoid the clear double standards that exist surrounding this entire thing.

The law isn't an algorithm, this is like comparing that one man who shot someone in Kansas and got a suspended sentence and that other woman who shot someone in Florida and got life.

If you look at it in isolation, perhaps. Looking at the entire picture, it forms part of a much larger pattern wherein women are treated with far more leniency and are granted far more options when it comes to abrogating parental responsibilities.

None of the men moaning that it's unfair they can't sever parental responsibilities after a hook-up would be satisfied by a law carving out an exception for male rape victims.

Sure. They're claiming it's unfair they can't sever parental responsibilities because women can.

And if and when she did, the system won't hold her accountable.

The law does hold women accountable for providing for the care of their children. Women have options men do not have for terminating pregnancy because men do not get pregnant.

Only a handful of infants are surrendered every year under safe haven laws. I doubt many of those were produced by fathers who otherwise would have been willing participants in the child's upbringing.

I'm not going to lie, this entire "personal responsibility" screed you've produced here sounds like an awfully convenient way to avoid the clear double standards that exist surrounding this entire thing.

The double standard is one enforced by biology.

Yes. They're claiming it's unfair they can't sever parental responsibilities because women can.

But they don't actually care about this, they just want to be able to have consequence-free sex and leave the woman stuck with the responsibility of deciding what to do if she becomes pregnant. I believe exactly zero arguments based on "unfairness."

The point you carefully elide is that in those cases where a woman can sever her responsibilities, she's also terminating any responsibility the father has as well. You also speak of adoption and safe haven abandonment as if this is a common and casual option, like Plan B.

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The double standard is one enforced by biology.

It's really strange how when this subject comes up so many people transform into BASED proponents of natural law.

Rape should be legal. Why would men be stronger than women if it wasn't to physically dominate them?

Nah, see men have two reproductive strategies and fucking everything that moves willing or not is just one of them.

Hobbes would justly point out that it is our duty to civilize and attune ourselves to the best parts of our nature, which here is clearly the second one where people marry and don't destroy each other in the chaos of the war of all against all.

Natural law isn't the state of nature.

That's a weird take and I don't think it's an ingenuous one.

Recognizing that biology has a material impact does not mean being a proponent of "based natural law" and fantasies about reverting to Hobbesian savagery.

It's perfectly ingenuous.

I don't see anyone throwing their hands up and saying "well men are just stronger than women are so there's really no point in trying to resist that fact with law we just have to recognize biological reality" but people like yourself seem perfectly happy insisting that biology wrote our laws regarding paternity established family courts and decided their policy and there's just nothing we can do about it.

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Women have options men do not have for terminating pregnancy because men do not get pregnant.

In my opinion, abortion is a far more morally fraught method of surrendering parental responsibility than legal paternal surrender (LPS). There's the worse issue in abortion of "maybe we're killing something here that deserves rights" which simply isn't present in LPS. Perhaps hardline pro-choicers who don't see the unborn as being deserving of rights at any stage of development and don't see any moral greyness in any part of the issue would disagree, but IMO that's a thorny issue which is very unique to abortion. It actually appears to me that abortion is a more questionable practice than LPS. There are very few methods of surrendering parental responsibility that don't invite moral objection.

And that debate aside, the existence of abortion as a unique option for women that already exists by virtue of them getting pregnant raises the question as to why women have further additional methods of surrendering their parental responsibility that men do not after birth.

Only a handful of infants are surrendered every year under safe haven laws. I doubt many of those were produced by fathers who otherwise would have been willing participants in the child's upbringing.

By bringing up safe haven abandonment I'm not arguing that women are giving babies away that fathers want (though that is a distinct possibility and IIRC in the case of adoption there have been cases where biological fathers were alienated from their children - the rights of fathers are often not appropriately respected in these proceedings). Rather, I'm arguing that if a woman does not want a kid she's given birth to, she can abandon it, and put the burden on the state to deal with it.

If we were to be consistent with the principle that taxpayers should not be obligated to pay for children that aren't theirs, she should not be allowed to access safe haven abandonment at all. She should be made to keep the kid that she chose to carry to term, and help the state identify the biological father so the child can receive support from both parents. That this is not the current system is pretty incongruent.

But they don't actually care about this, they just want to be able to have consequence-free sex and leave the woman stuck with the responsibility of deciding what to do if she becomes pregnant. I believe exactly zero arguments based on "unfairness."

I'm a pretty strong supporter of LPS myself from a moral consistency standpoint. I'm also very certain your characterisation doesn't accurately portray my motivations for arguing in favour of it, given the fact that I don't have any desire to have "consequence-free sex" with women. Or just sex with women at all.

Very few of the policies I argue in favour of with regards to male-female relations actually end up benefiting me.

The point you carefully elide is that in those cases where a woman can sever her responsibilities, she's also terminating any responsibility the father has as well.

Correct. She is allowed to sever her responsibilities if she wants, and also terminate the father's responsibilities in the process. None of this contradicts my assertion that women have an array of options they can utilise to terminate their parental responsibilities, some of which they can utilise even after birth, and men typically cannot do so at any stage of the process without also having the woman's cooperation and consent.

Sex is risky in many ways besides the obvious. Yes, if you choose not to be celibate, you choose to take on risk.

Which doesn't apply to the rape victim cases.

None of the men moaning that it's unfair they can't sever parental responsibilities after a hook-up would be satisfied by a law carving out an exception for male rape victims.

I think that if the law had an unprincipled exception exactly for rape victims and nobody else, these men wouldn't be happy. I also think that if the law had an exception for rape victims that was based on principles, then the kind of principles that would support an exception for rape victims would inherently change the rest of the system, in such a way that they'd be happy.

To answer your first statement: absolutely! No one in my generation asked for this, no one in my circle wants it, and I think it should be the one burned to the ground. It’s pure societal poison.

As for men (or women) who treat their spouses in a "pitch-black evil" way, we've always had means of dealing with that, outside a parasitical family court machine. A strong family is a good start, for example. Something that the current M.O. has made scarce.

This. If I mistreat my future wife (who I'm pretty certain I'm getting from back home) she would have her own family to go to for support. Also my own family would probably disown me, because the consequences of it coming out publicly that they support their women hurting son would make it extremely difficult for my younger brother to get married.

And not just support. In a tight-knit community, if you beat up your wife (who is also someone's daughter/sister), you can expect a dad/brother/their buddies bringing hell to your front door the next morning.

I agree that the way the family courts treat men is pitch-black evil. The way a lot of men treat women is likewise pitch-black evil.

The difference of course being that the former is done with the full backing of the state.

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