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PaperclipPerfector  11d ago (text post)   22607 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026

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I’ll raise the issue of paternity testing as potential culture war fuel.

As far as I know, the law in US federal states and Western European countries is usually that a husband may not have a paternity test done on the child or children unless the wife agrees to it in writing and the family court permits it (in case of a divorce). I’m not a lawyer and I don’t know the specifics. But anyway, the practical reality is that a husband having such a test done on the kids without consulting anyone else is illegal. Basically there is never any permission given to do such tests.

On one of the now-defunct Manosphere sites, namely Dalrock’s blog, a regular commenter who went under the online name Novaseeker made a prediction about 10 or more years ago: not only will there not be any new legislation making paternity tests easier, as usually demanded online by angry men’s rights activists, but the opposite will happen. Namely: a growing number of men, usually in case of facing an initiated divorce, will start tinkering with these laws, covertly getting paternity tests done, basically on the black market, and this in turn will result on corresponding legislation becoming even more punitive and restrictive. There’ll be heavy fines, maybe even prison sentences etc.

Again, this was written more than 10 years ago. I wonder if anything of this has materialized or not.

I just want to know if this is a Mike Vrabel -- Diana Russini post.

Somehow, as I approach fatherhood, the whole world is back to my teenage years. I'm playing WoW and sucking at martial arts, we're in a confusing and ill-planned war in the middle east, and the New England Patriots are ontologically evil.

No it isn't.

Oh man are you missing out.

Quick rundown: Russini is a sports reporter, national profile but Philly football focused. Mike Vrabel is an NFL head coach, formerly of the Tennessee Titans currently of the New England Patriots. They were photographed together at a romantic resort in Arizona, and as a result evidence has emerged of a long running affair. When Vrabels team was on a losing streak she made a Spotify playlist called "keep your head up" or something like that, and shared it with someone named Mike on Spotify, it contains songs that Vrabel is known from interviews to love. They've been seen together all over, the joke is if everyone checks their camera roll they might find them in the background. They rented a boat together while she was pregnant.

And the kicker: her son is named Michael, and she was covering Vrabels game on site nine months before the birth.

Russini hasn't spoken publicly on the topic to my knowledge, while Vrabel has soft-confessed by publicly skipping day 3 of the NFL draft (arguably the most important day between March and August for an NFL head coach) to go to marriage counseling with his wife.

This is the gamergate of sports, because while it's mostly sordid gossip, but there's an inescapable element of journalism ethics here. Was Russini planting stories to help Vrabel? ((In Philly this is about Russini reporting on wide receiver AJ Brown being dissatisfied, possibly reducing his trade cost for Vrabels Patriots)) Was Mike leaking inside team information to Russini? If she was sucking dick for stories, is her career more or less ethical than Stephen A Smiths?

Sounds like an interesting rabbit hole, thanks.

as I approach fatherhood

Is your wife expecting?

Yes. Due in October. A daughter.

Congratulations!

Thank you! I've had a lot of thoughts about the process but haven't yet reduced them to an effort post.

I just recently had my second in a different culture/country to my first and was similarly thinking of an effortpost about how Asian norms differ pretty substantially from Western norms a ton through the whole process.

As far as I know, the law in US federal states and Western European countries is usually that a husband may not have a paternity test done on the child or children unless the wife agrees to it in writing and the family court permits it (in case of a divorce).

In the US laws vary a lot by state. Generally they are more along the lines of a man may contest paternity for a limited period. If he discovers false paternity years later he's SOL.

I'd say it's extremely unfair, but it's also not likely to get fixed.

There's a saying along the lines of "the problem with civil rights cases is the plaintiff." The Men's Rights movement suffers from that greatly. The men who really get screwed by family courts are typically low status who married very poorly.

People don't live atomic lives, and higher class women will have their behaviour policed by friends and family.

I'm sure you've heard "don't stick your dick in crazy". These men proposed to crazy and went through with the wedding.

Courts and lawmakers look at them and aren't that eager to put a major effort into helping them clear up that mess.

Generally they are more along the lines of a man may contest paternity for a limited period. If he discovers false paternity years later he's SOL.

I kind of wonder what contesting paternity means in a practical sense in this context. Let’s suppose the wife does not agree to a test. Then what?

The men who really get screwed by family courts are typically low status who married very poorly.

I’d argue that the causality is reversed, in a sociological sense. When a divorce is initiated, which is done by the wife in most cases, society will assume that the husband is low-status because he was divorced. People will generally assume that it was his fault, because reasons.

People don't live atomic lives, and higher class women will have their behaviour policed by friends and family.

First I'd suggest that you may be underestimating the overall level of social atomization. Otherwise I'd inquire what policing actually entails here. Is it that her behavior is policed during the marriage so that she is discouraged from filing for divorce? Or is it that she gets policed after the filing of divorce so that she doesn't overdo her vengeance?

I kind of wonder what contesting paternity means in a practical sense in this context. Let’s suppose the wife does not agree to a test. Then what?

You get it done anyway. Assuming you're the father on the birth certificate, you have the right to do so in most US states. In the few you don't have the right to get one with legal weight done, you still have the right to do a private test (Home kit, you can purchase online with no interaction), and you would then seek a court order to get a second one with legal weight done. Judges generally grant those orders unless there's some reason not to.

I'm sure you've heard "don't stick your dick in crazy". These men proposed to crazy and went through with the wedding.

Courts and lawmakers look at them and aren't that eager to put a major effort into helping them clear up that mess.

Yet when said crazies divorce them and the men don't pay up, the courts are all over themselves clearing up that mess. You can't sanewash this by saying only bad people are affected; the who/whom cuts along sex lines.

Yet when said crazies divorce them and the men don't pay up, the courts are all over themselves clearing up that mess. You can't sanewash this by saying only bad people are affected; the who/whom cuts along sex lines.

Agreed. Also, this is interesting:

There's a saying along the lines of "the problem with civil rights cases is the plaintiff." The Men's Rights movement suffers from that greatly. The men who really get screwed by family courts are typically low status who married very poorly.

Note that when the plaintiff is a low status woman who married poorly, this is much less of a problem.

Traditional society was a 'suck it up, life is hard' system that worked because things sucked equally for both genders. Men got an unfair amount of agency, and in return, women got an unfair amount of protection.

Feminism correctly pointed out that industrialized society should not be beholden to this survivalist system. In practice, they've focused on increasing agency for women, while fiercely guarding the protections of the erstwhile survivalist system.

Men have no competing movement because asking for protection is humiliating in erstwhile male society. Credit where it is due, Suffragettes did not get the credit they deserve for persisting with their non-woman-like behavior in public.

Asking for legal protections because you got cucked is humiliating. Asking for alimony from a wealthier ex-wife is humiliating.

One day, men will have their feminist movement. To men of this era, It will be ugly. It will look like boys becoming twinks. It will look like weak men refusing to take responsibility. It will look like welfare queens. As much as this forum is pro-men, I bet the shape of the eventual pro-men movement will disgust the median man on here.

did not get the credit they deserve for persisting with their non-woman-like behavior in public.

That's literally the main thing Sufragettes are credited for.

Also, aside from some rare exceptions like iconoclasm and bombings, I doubt the Sufragette's behaviour appeared "non woman-like" to most people at the turn of the Century: the resentful, nagging shrew who finds strength in numbers and acts as a buzzkill in a public setting is one of the most ancient and consistent tropes of womanhood. Add to that the fact that most Sufragette leaders were...shall we say...homely in physical appearance, and the stereotype of the "bitter spinster who wants to disrupt other people's happy marriages" essentially writes itself.

Suffragettes did not get the credit they deserve for persisting with their non-woman-like behavior in public.

...what?

Feminism correctly pointed out that industrialized society should not be beholden to this survivalist system. In practice, they've focused on increasing agency for women, while fiercely guarding the protections of the erstwhile survivalist system.

It's so correct in fact that it's in a mysterious decline and death whose start coincides with that of this particular barbarism of reflection.

Men will never have their feminist movement or perhaps only at the 11th hour when none of it matters. Industry didn't change our basic reality, the XXth century is the tragedy of people who thought it did and tried perhaps as hard as anybody did in history to escape human nature. The depth of their failure is so dizzying it captures all our political thought to this day.

Tradition will endure because it's transcendentally true. Even if it dies it will be rediscovered. We will not escape the shape and finitude of reality. The tower of Babel cannot be completed. Not by humans.

The tower of Babel cannot be completed. Not by humans.

Careful now, for some of these people your terms are acceptable.

When Johnny comes marching home again, hurrah, hurrah!
We'll give him a soldier's welcome then, hurrah, hurrah!
The men will cheer, the boys will pray,
The bells will ring on Landing Day,
And we'll all stand proud when Johnny comes marching home.

He left us when the sky was black, hurrah, hurrah!
With ten good men, and one came back, hurrah, hurrah!
He saw the Earth, he saw it burn,
He saw what waits at every turn,
And we'll all stand proud when Johnny comes marching home.

The traitor moons may sing their songs, hurrah, hurrah!
Of borrowed flesh and copied throngs, hurrah, hurrah!
But Johnny knows what man is worth,
The blood, the bone, the breath, the birth,
And we'll all stand proud when Johnny comes marching home.

They'll send their ghosts across the void, hurrah, hurrah!
Their hollow men, their souls destroyed, hurrah, hurrah!
But we are flesh and we are true,
The last ever that Adam knew,
And we'll all stand proud when Johnny comes marching home.

So lay the wreath at Ganymede, hurrah, hurrah!
For every man who paid the deed, hurrah, hurrah!
The fleet stands watch, the gates hold fast,
The Republic will outlive the last,
And we'll all stand proud when Johnny comes marching home.

And if he never marches home, hurrah, hurrah!
And if he sleeps in vacuum's loam, hurrah, hurrah!
No fork shall wear his father's face,
No pattern take his rightful place,
He is gone, he is whole, and his soul is the Lord's alone.

Is this a version of johnny comes marching home made for the jovian republic from eclipse phase?

Yes, I miss having the time to DM properly.

If you ever get back into it I'd love to join your group. Used to play EP with a russian DM but y'know, he hasn't had the time to play since 2022 :(

Can you elaborate on what a "men's feminist movement" would look like? Boys can already become twinks and to an extent (some) men are able to refuse responsibility just fine. I think you might be under-estimating how many men (here) are so seeped in gender-conflict that they would prefer pro-men outcomes at the cost of any amount of disgust.

What pro-men outcomes do you think a "men's feminist movement" would have?

Just as women demanded that traditionally male privileges be redistributed fairly; men must demand that traditionally female privileges be redistributed fairly.

I was unfortunately born with the worms in by brain that bite me if I eg Cry Because I Broke A Bone Or A Direct Relative Fucking Died on account of that is bitch(read: female) behavior; I can force down the impulse to judge for other men but I can't give myself the same grace.

Men deserve the right to get gassed up by other men because they have that shit on, they deserve the right to be a pillow prince, they deserve the right to stay home and raise the children and make the thirst trap untrad-husband tiktok shorts if they want to, they deserve the right to be approached by women who are attracted to them in a bashful way; and all the other female privileges.

This will only happen when

A: a large enough population of men get together and forcefully demand these things, and then act as through they have already had their demands met, and

B: Men (me) stop being such absolute pieces of shit to those among us who fail to live up to the retarded masculine ideal you didn't sign up for.

But the asymmetry of male vs female dynamics comes from:

  1. women's in-group preference vs men's competition instinct
  2. women's choosiness vs men's desperation
  3. women are wonderful effect

These things are psychologically hard-wired, not cultural. The only way to make a society where the women and men have symmetrical dynamics is social repression or genetic engineering. The feminist movement, and its outcomes, moved us closer to a state of nature.

The "men's feminist movement" is just Patriarchy.

These things are psychologically hard-wired, not cultural. The only way to make a society where the women and men have symmetrical dynamics is social repression or genetic engineering.

This is something people of a certain ideological bent state as a thought terminating cliche as an equal and opposite to blank-slatism. It is not proven, because it is unprovable. It is an article of faith. In the past, wearing pants and having wage labor jobs were "psychologically hard-wired, not cultural. "

Maybe they are, maybe they aren't, but you can't make the statement and call it there.

Can you elaborate on what a "men's feminist movement" would look like?

A general refusal and avoidance of taking overall responsibility for women, thus representing the further erosion of the old patriarchal order, in the same way the feminist movement contributed to that erosion through its refusal and avoidance of being accountable to men. And for men and women old enough to have been acculturated in patriarchal monogamous norms, it will come across as disgusting, much more so in fact than feminism ever did.

Then I must disagree with the OP's prediction that it would disgust the median man 'on here.' The median man here is about 30. He is too young to remember patriarchy.

Men today do not take overall responsibility for women (relative to patriarchy). Women are more independent than ever in their education, careers, and the support given to single mothers and divorced women. As far as I can see, the people who would actually be disgusted by our society -- the ancestors who were actually acculturated in patriarchal monogamous norms -- are all but dead. And it was the feminist movement which also reciprocally freed men of patriarchal obligation: men are no longer legally responsible for their wives or daughters in general; men are no longer required to be monogamous; etc.

Arguably the Boomers (and Gen X?) would be the ones disgusted by this mythical "men's feminist movement." Perhaps that is why we have vestigial parts of family law, or why we have pearl-clutching articles on the plummeting male labor participation rate? I'm not so sure these expectations will die with the Boomers. It would require a critical mass of women to willingly relinquish state coercion over men, and given the direction gender relations have been heading, it's not happening.

I'm not so sure these expectations will die with the Boomers.

If not, then probably with GenX-ers.

I'm not sure how it could ever die, without some sort of transhuman future (which, to be fair, seems more than unlikely). Men, like most people, follow their incentives, and women provide a huge incentive for men both to take responsibility for their weaknesses and to bully and shame other men who act weak and entitled. This effect by women only seems to be increasing as women are freed more and more to provide whatever incentive they want to men, without the limitations of social censure or material need.

Men have no competing movement because asking for protection is humiliating in erstwhile male society.

I think the bigger issue is that men as a group have little or no in-group bias compared to women -- who have strong in-group bias. So it's much more natural for women to organize and lobby for goodies for women.

One day, men will have their feminist movement. To men of this era, It will be ugly. It will look like boys becoming twinks. It will look like weak men refusing to take responsibility. It will look like welfare queens. As much as this forum is pro-men, I bet the shape of the eventual pro-men movement will disgust the median man on here.

These sorts of things are extremely difficult to predict, but barring any game-changing development in technology, I think the far likelier outcome is that subgroups which raise men and women both to fulfill traditional roles will just out-breed everyone else. How can a modern liberal woman who goes to grad school and has 2 or 3 children compete with a Haredi or Amish woman who marries at 18 and has 6-10 children?

Even with a low in group preference you would think that men would organize jointly on matters that impact all men, like with the evolutionary disadvantage men have when it comes to ensuring paternity.

And, well, this is what they did historically. What we call patriarchy is mostly just a way of managing this problem.

I don't think it can be explained purely by low in group favoritism for that reason.

How can a modern liberal woman who goes to grad school and has 2 or 3 children compete with a Haredi or Amish woman who marries at 18 and has 6-10 children?

Convert their kids. Some people already have the illiberal instincts to justify this.

[Per Patrick Deneen]We were discussing the practice of Rumspringa—literally, “running around”—a mandatory time of separation of young adults from the community during which they partake of the offerings of modern liberal society. The period of separation lasts usually about a year, at the end of which the young person must choose between the two worlds. An overwhelming number, approaching 90 percent, choose to return to be baptized and to accept norms and strictures of their community that forbid further enjoyment of the pleasure of liberal society. Some of my former colleagues took this as a sign that these young people were in fact not “choosing” as free individuals. One said, “We will have to consider ways of freeing them.” Perfect liberal consent requires perfectly liberated individuals, and the evidence that Amish youth were responding to the pull of family, community, and tradition marked them as unfree.

I'm sure the state can do plenty of things to try to suppress fertility. We've arguably mastered that trick by accident.

Even with a low in group preference you would think that men would organize jointly on matters that impact all men, like with the evolutionary disadvantage men have when it comes to ensuring paternity.

The most masculine way to organize a solution is "may the best man win." Which is the core issue with most male solutions to problems.

Even with a low in group preference you would think that men would organize jointly on matters that impact all men, like with the evolutionary disadvantage men have when it comes to ensuring paternity.

Why would you think that at all?

Suppose we did make disestablishing paternity much easier, so random man who married badly is better off. Great for him, really. But does the cost of supporting and raising a family end up being paid by the true father? No. Instead, that cost is born by net taxpayers, which is something like the median man and above. Although I genuinely sympathize with the guy getting cucked by his wife, I'm going to press the red button so I don't get cucked by the State. In the end, he did have choices about who he married and slept with, and he chose badly.

But does the cost of supporting and raising a family end up being paid by the true father? No.

Can we reintroduce debt slavery and forced labor then please? In order to turn that into a 'yes'?

You run for senate, Botund, and I will vote for you.

Some of my former colleagues took this as a sign that these young people were in fact not “choosing” as free individuals. One said, “We will have to consider ways of freeing them.” Perfect liberal consent requires perfectly liberated individuals, and the evidence that Amish youth were responding to the pull of family, community, and tradition marked them as unfree.

This is curious, because Deneen and his ilk dislike liberalism for its threadbare consent-only worldview. But by that same worldview, the young people who return to the Amish lifestyle are perfectly legit. Who are you to second guess their choice? Have at it, Josiah.

I think Deneen just doesn't trust liberal promises. He is quite clear that he thinks liberalism is imperialistic and responds to weaknesses or contradictions in its own ideology or society by demanding more power for itself and its imperatives. The standard for "freedom" is continually pushed back in ways that increase the power of the state.

The anecdote serves his purposes quite well in illustrating all these tendencies.

It's actually a criticism of his book raised by others: this doesn't really augur well for a Benedictine solution, which he gestures towards.

Even with a low in group preference you would think that men would organize jointly on matters that impact all men,

Why would you think that? I would seriously like to know your reasoning.

like with the evolutionary disadvantage men have when it comes to ensuring paternity.

Actually, being able to impregnate women and have other men pay to raise the resulting child is a huge advantage, at least for some men.

I'm sure the state can do plenty of things to try to suppress fertility. We've arguably mastered that trick by accident.

Doesn't seem to be working in Israel, and the US is next in line.

I think that because historically male led societies have been brutal to disfavored or enemy men but have general taboos against adultery, presumably cause men don't care if some man dies in a jail cell but care if they might get cucked.

As for child support cucking other men...yes, that would be great. But you can also be called for child support too AFAIK.

As for the Haredi, they're a much larger percentage of Israel's electorate than any conceivable US comparison.

I think that because historically male led societies have been brutal to disfavored or enemy men but have general taboos against adultery, presumably cause men don't care if some man dies in a jail cell but care if they might get cucked.

I'm not sure I understand your point here. From this, how does it follow that you would expect men as a group to organize in order to promote the interests of all men?

As for the Haredi, they're a much larger percentage of Israel's electorate than any conceivable US comparison.

Right, as I said the US is next in line. What do you think is happening with ultra-religious groups in the US? The answer is that -- for the most part -- their populations are exploding.

Not organize promote the interests of all men as a whole. But to protect against something all men have a reason to protect against.

Not organize promote the interests of all men as a whole. But to protect against something all men have a reason to protect against.

Ok, let me see if I understand your argument:

(1) At some point in the past, many male-led societies established social norms and laws against adultery;

(2) This shows that men can and do organize jointly on issues that impact all men;

(3) Therefore, in general one would expect men to organize jointly on matters that impact all men.

Is that your argument?

More comments

Asking for alimony from a wealthier ex-wife is humiliating.

I don't know, Cernovich seems to be getting along okay.

If you’re in upper middle class circles men getting fat payouts from wealthier ex wives is pretty common and has been for probably 20 years now. Society has largely adapted to it.

Democratic western society has a taboo about talking about unearned wealth, at least at the upper-middle-class level. It developed because inherited wealth is awkward in a nominally-classless society, but the taboo also covers talking about wealth from divorce settlements.

A man living off a divorce settlement is just unexplainedly rich. To ask whether it is an inheritance, a divorce settlement, or crypto profits is to breach the taboo.

As far as I know, the law in US federal states and Western European countries is usually that a husband may not have a paternity test done on the child or children unless the wife agrees to it in writing and the family court permits it (in case of a divorce).

I think this is less broadly true. I'm not familiar with Europe but based on my research on the United States there are only 15 or so states that seem to have any regulation of genetic testing of another person. To the extent this conduct is prohibited there, it's prohibited under general genetic testing/privacy/medical decision laws (requiring consent of both parents) rather than some kind of specific anti-paternity-testing law.

More broadly, I think the law recognizes an obvious distinction between legal parentage and genetic parentage. There's an (often rebuttable) presumption that the two are the same but they don't have to be.

Imagine a couple adopt an infant. They remain together for several more years and then divorce. Can a court order the non-custodial parent pay child support to the non-custodial parent? Should the biological parents (if they are even identifiable) be on the hook for the child support? There's no question here that the parents are not the biological parents of the child but I think courts would still happily order one to pay child support. There's an obvious analogy to a situation where a man signs a birth certificate. Acts as a child's father for some years. Only for it to come to light they are not genetically related.

There's an obvious analogy to a situation where a man signs a birth certificate. Acts as a child's father for some years. Only for it to come to light they are not genetically related.

There's also an obvious problem with this analogy: in the case of adoption the choice was made knowingly whereas in this case it was the result of fraud on the part of the custodial parent.

There's also an obvious problem with this analogy: in the case of adoption the choice was made knowingly whereas in this case it was the result of fraud on the part of the custodial parent.

I agree, which is why it makes sense to have mandatory testing. When the (putative) parents sign the birth certificate, they provide a saliva sample and they get a notification a week or two later either confirming biological parentage or not. If the man who signed the birth certificate is not the father, he gets a limited time period, like 90 days, to formally withdraw his signature.

If things worked that way, then yeah, you could say it's analogous to adoption.

This has always been morally insane.

I can't think of any other areas where society and law has some justification along the lines of "well it wasn't you, but someone needs to pay for it, and you are the easiest to catch."

Imagine this justification used for crimes:

[state]: pay the fine for running a red light

[person]: but i didnt run a red light

[state]: Well someone ran that red light, and we can't let it be known that running red lights will go unpunished. You were nearby and I've already captured you, it would be too much work to go get the real culprit if it turns out it wasn't you.

That is a light crime and it already feels heinous. More serious crimes with more serious punishments feels even more heinous. Imagine the above but for a crime that carries a lifetime prison sentence.

Just reversing the gender roles shows how insane this can be. A husband and wife. The husband wants kids, the wife does not. The husband manages to somehow adopt a kid without the wife's knowledge or consent (or he even forges her signature and commits some level of fraud in getting her assigned as the adoptive mother). Or the husband gets a surrogate to carry his baby, then he and the surrogate lie at the hospital about the mother's identity and he brings home a kid that isn't the wife's.

The wife then files for divorce because the husband clearly betrayed her trust. The wife then must pay child support to the husband for the raising of the adopted kid.

One of those scenarios might be the only way such insane parenting laws get reversed. Or they will just carve out an exception and send the man to jail without the slightest hitch in their step at the dissonance of their actions.

Its also a weird take on the responsibility level of the women involved. A women can't be expected to know for certain who the father is, but can be expected to raise a child? Like what?! Raising a child is way harder than knowing who the father is. In most cases not knowing who the father is would also be a demonstration of incompetence. If you claim to care about the welfare of the child, maybe having them raised by a woman that can't keep track of her sexual partners is not a great idea. Even if they aren't keeping constant track, once they know the due date of the baby they should be able to narrow down the conception to a 1-2 week time frame.

In a sane world we would be using this as an example of why Utilitarians shouldn't be in charge of writing laws.

Scenario: A person roles into the hospital with a gunshot wound to the [organ that can be lived without]. The shooter has the same blood type as the victim.

Question: Is it ok to take the organ from the shooter to replace the organ of the wounded person?

Utilitarian: You can take the organ from the healthy person in the waiting room, they are easier to find and might have been the shooter anyways.

"well it wasn't you, but someone needs to pay for it, and you are the easiest to catch."

You're surprised at this? Copyright infringement, illegal immigration, white collar/fiscal fraud, tax evasion, consumer product (healthcare, food and beverage) testing and certification, procurement grift....

I believe this is basically how much of law enforcement works today. Not all, but a significant proportion. They know stopping it is impossible, but they have to do something, so they find someone they can actually get and make an example out of them.

edit: whoops, not awake yet. Didn't realize you were talking about the actually innocent.

Imagine this justification used for crimes:

[state]: pay the fine for running a red light

[person]: but i didnt run a red light

[state]: Well someone ran that red light, and we can't let it be known that running red lights will go unpunished. You were nearby and I've already captured you, it would be too much work to go get the real culprit if it turns out it wasn't you.

It's not quite analogous, but IIRC some states have written their traffic laws such that the owner has strict liability, regardless of whether they actually drove the car through the light. "I didn't run a red light" "But someone you lent your car to (you didn't report it stolen) did, so pay up" isn't that Kafka-esque.

"But someone you lent your car to (you didn't report it stolen) did, so pay up"

That justification doesn't transfer over from the analogy. If you lend your car to someone, that's a deliberate action you take, with your responsibilities being clear beforehand. A man who got cheated on by his wife took no such action, he's the victim in this situation. If your car was stolen, making you pay for what the thief did with it I would indeed call kafkaesque.

Second, you have ownership of your car, with all that implies, but you do not have ownership of your wife. I do in fact get to lend my car to someone, or decline to, and the car gets no say, so it makes sense that the responsibility is on me. But husbands to not get to rent out their wife's body. It's also understood that I'm responsible for its safe operation. If I neglect to put on the parking brake, that's on me. Is it also negligent to not put a chastity belt on my wife?

Third, the car is a tool, not a person with agency. It doesn't do anything on its own (or if it does, I might be able to hold the manufacturer liable instead.) A woman, of course, is a person, who can take her own actions that aren't my responsibility.

Someone else pointed it out, but in that analogy I feel like the woman would be strictly liable. They own the vehicle of birth. The man is more like a driver.

It would be like charging someone who once borrowed a car with a crime associated with the car.

It's still Kafka-esque, it's just precedented Kafka instead of unprecedented.

This has always been morally insane.

I would have to disagree with that. These rules were developed in a time when (1) paternity testing was unavailable; (2) husbands had more power to control their wives' movements; and (3) people had children -- in large part -- as a way of getting free labor on the farm.

Nowadays, the rule no longer makes sense, but since we live in a gynocentric society, there's just not much push to make things fair for men.

That being said, I was checking, and a surprisingly large number of jurisdictions in the US give cuckolded husbands a legal remedy, i.e. a way to establish nonpaternity and avoid child support. It could be better, but it's not nothing.

That being said, I was checking, and a surprisingly large number of jurisdictions in the US give cuckolded husbands a legal remedy, i.e. a way to establish nonpaternity and avoid child support. It could be better, but it's not nothing.

I'm checking now too, and what I'm seeing makes me think @Botond173 was wrong above. That paternity tests happen plenty in the US when there is any suspicion of a need.

Its just France that is crazy and seems to ban it.

It seems the OP on that bygone blog was a bit of a doomposter then. At least it's what we can conclude as of now. Then again, doomposting generally did seem more than warranted back then.

One way to fix this would be to just normalize genetic testing after birth for everyone. Compared to all the other healthcare costs of giving birth, a 23-and-me style genetic test is an utterly trivial expense. It is certainly good for the parents to know if their new baby has any genetic disease, especially if they can obtain the info without ending up in a government or industry database.

And it is trivial for the father to also verify that he is indeed the father.

After all, that which can be destroyed by the truth should be destroyed by it.

--

Another aspect is that in the age of IVF, women can become victims of parentage fraud just as well. Of course, it would require the fertility clinic to be in on it.

I think it would not be very hard to bodymod a man so that instead of sperm, he is squirting a fertilized egg of his preferred genetic partner. I doubt that this would lead to implantation very often, though, fertilized eggs are not very mobile. One would need a microscopic robot bringing the payload where it needs to go. Still, not something which seems out of reach for this century.

Once women can no longer be certain of their genetic motherhood, I am sure their attitude towards genetic testing will change.

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.

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.

As this, as far as I know, has actually been a decree in the Napoleonic Code, and basically the simple codified normalization of a Christian tradition, I'm not surprised. I don't think it's anything new.

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.

Presumably, none of the parents there are under any illusions that they are both genetic parents. Likewise, there are likely plenty of cases where one partner is infertile and is happy to raise a kid created without their genetic contribution. This is all fine, as long as there is informed consent of all the parties involved, a lot of things are fine which would not be so otherwise, after all.

You are probably right that things are unlikely to move in the 'more testing' direction; there are likely some blue tribers around who would claim that if a woman was in a relationship with a guy while she got pregnant, any kids are spiritually his (unless she denies it, of course) and he should just pay up. And so far changing any family legislation which advantages women has not been much of a priority for MAGA either, so I doubt this is going to change.

You are probably right that things are unlikely to move in the 'more testing' direction; there are likely some blue tribers around who would claim that if a woman was in a relationship with a guy while she got pregnant, any kids are spiritually his (unless she denies it, of course) and he should just pay up.

In Australia this is pretty much how it goes now. If you have a pre-established relationship with the children (of several years say) then you are presumed to have assumed parenting responsibilities and need to pay child support in the event of a divorce.

The 'needs of the child' are said to out way the injustice done to the 'father'. Why the state can't provide for the needs of the child and that only 'daddy's money' can spiritually succor the child even though the cucked man wants no relationship with them is somehow left unsaid.

So you get scenarios where a man assumes that his wife/partner has been faithful, happily signs his name on the birth certificate, develops a relationship with 'his' child and then finds out 5 years later that he's been cucked by her ex-boyfriend Chad. He is horrified at the betrayal, divorces his wife and wants to cut off contact with Chad's biological kids. The Family Court comes after him with the full force of the law and is willing to throw him in 'debtors prison with extra steps'. He says go after Chad for the cash. The court says you have assumed the role of father and have signed the birth certificate so pay up.

I'd like to see mandatory genetic testing at birth. There are other medical benefits such as identifying susceptibility to genetic diseases early as well as the 'needs of the child' in knowing with certainty who their bio-parents are. Somehow the courts don't seem that the 'needs of the child' are important in these other areas.

Many states

What proportion of those are Blue?

If intended parents matter more to the state than genetic parent, it doesn't make sense to start genetic testing.

Genetic testing in this case would protect the man and bind the Woman. Obviously not going to fly in a gynosupremacist environment.

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?

This is textbook emotional blackmail. If you take offense to his verification of highly sensitive and legally important information, I question if you actually want to be married.

It's completely normal to be upset at the implication of suspecting adultery. She just said 'if paternity testing was normal outside of Maury Povich' she'd be fine with it.

That is not remotely emotional blackmail. It's perfectly normal to be upset when your spouse doesn't trust you and demands to check up on your behavior just in case you're up to something.

Not when it comes to legally binding documents. "Trust, but verify" is the way healthy relationships work. "Trust, but don't you dare verify" is the way abusive ones work.

No. A healthy relationship works on "trust". That's it. Not "trust, but verify" (which is in fact a lack of trust), not "trust, but don't you dare verify". Simply trust.

Not "trust, but verify" (which is in fact a lack of trust)

A lack of trust in the spoken word alone maybe, but otherwise this is not the case. The assumption that the parties abide by the agreement is still there. There is a whole Wikipedia article on the subject.

That would only make sense if you view trust as a binary. Typical usage treats it instead as a spectrum, with healthy relationships requiring less verification for the same level of risk.

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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.

You're comparing this to your relationship, but when a guy wants this kind of test, probably it's not the kind of relationship that you likely have.

Yes, I am married and similar emotional blackmail nearly changed that. No. Women do not deserve "trust" in this case since they are guaranteed such knowledge naturally. If you don't care enough about your husband to grant him the same privilege that biology grants you, you don't deserve him.

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

Men and women stand equal in their lack of natural guarantees about faithfulness, but not in their guarantees about parentage: you can present him with a child and falsely claim it is his. He can't present you with a child and falsely claim it is yours.

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I think most men would love that as an alternative to the wife seething in jealousy for months because she suspects he cheated but neither can prove their side of the argument. I don't think I'd mind at all, and would be delighted to establish the norm of wives periodically demanding such tests in exchange for the norm of husbands demanding paternity tests.

In short: trade offer accepted. Trust but verify, etc etc.

Trust but verify

That isn't trust. Trust, by definition, means that you believe someone without verifying. "Trust, but verify" is an incoherent expression that would be more accurately stated as "I don't trust you so I verify the claims you make".

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.

You've never had a woman pull the "I'm mad because I had a dream where you cheated on me" thing? Many women seethe in jealousy all the time for very little reason (and perhaps often secretly enjoy it for its own sake - jouissance). "Sure babe, q-tip my dick and send it to Labcorp" would be a very satisfying response, even if it doesn't address the deep underlying psychological cause of why she's mad about dreaming that you cheated on her (which, 90% of the time: she's bored/stressed/unfulfilled and subconsciously decided starting drama would be a fun distraction).

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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.

For the record, I don’t think these intuitions are very much opposed at all on a male/female level. Everyone wants their spouse to trust them. This site just selects for a very particular type of person.

It'd be a sign that your wife is currently seething in jealousy! Your relationship is forever changed whether the test happens or not.

Not really. It could be a phase for her. A momentary lapse in unconditional trust is not a thing that must ruin relationships, and I don't believe in unconditional trust anyway. What, if your husband one day starts giving off every single sign that he's cheating on you, basically everything other than straight up you catching him in the act, you wouldn't be jealous? As the other poster said, in today's world the man's unconditional trust risks him much more than the woman's, besides.

Possibilities:

  1. Wife suspects, for some reason, that I am unfaithful. I have no way to prove otherwise, she might eventually crank herself up into full seething mode, relationship is changed forever at that point, probably fatally.
  2. Wife suspects, for some reason, that I am unfaithful. I present her with the fidelity test, at which point she decides her suspicion was baseless. We move on.
  3. Wife suspects, for some reason, that I am unfaithful. I present her with the fidelity test, but it was never about proof anyway and she continues to disbelieve her lying eyes. Continue as in world 1.
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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.

I think it's more that people who were in an unhealthy relationship have a warped sense of what is acceptable. Like you, I would be very upset if my wife demanded a proof of fidelity out of nowhere (say if she wanted to randomly inspect my phone to make sure I didn't have any untoward text messages on it). That isn't something which should happen in a healthy marriage, and if it comes up at all, the marriage has problems.

I can't think of a better example of reterritorialization: capital destroys the social norms that ensure certainty of paternity to sell women liberated lifestyles, this makes men uncertain about their children whilst the old territory of rules remains, but instead of going back we can instead create a new technical solution and in one dialectic swoop we have sold a bunch of new products and created an opportunity for mass data collection, which itself will create new dialectics of power and further the dissolution of man into capital.

Modernity is not for the faint of heart.

I think spousal infidelity either appeared with the neolithic revolution, or did already happen in the ancestral environment.

At least as long as men have gone to war, they had the opportunity to fuck around, at least if the brother of their wife is not in their unit keeping an eye on them.

For women, cheating was probably a bit harder in the ancestral environment, but I personally do not envision it like there were sabre-tooth tigers constantly circling around the tribe just waiting for their chance to eat a lone woman lagging a bit behind to meet her lover. Basically, as soon as you have cities which are safe enough to traverse unarmed, most societies will evolve norms to allow lone women to do so. This opens up the opportunity for a booty call on the way back from the market or whatever. Even in the countryside, a woman bringing her peasant husband his lunch could probably arrange a date in the woods on her way back.

I mean, sure, capitalism made it much more convenient, now There Is An App For That. But the only men in history who could really be reasonably sure that their kids were really theirs were men living in societies which were rather strict about policing women.

So my read of your argument is "what is bad about modernity is that it allows for more female infidelity than Saudi Arabia".

I think there is a common pattern where technological progress fixed a problem, which in turn created another problem, which was again fixed through technology. For example, in the good old days, child mortality was sky high. A woman might bury half of her kids or more. Modern medicine fixed that, which in turn might have meant that the population would double every generation. So we invented another ungodly modernist workaround: birth control. That in turn created some problems down the line, etc. Still, very few suggest that we should just go back to letting half the kids die of dysentery or whatever Just Like God Intended.

the only men in history who could really be reasonably sure that their kids were really theirs were men living in societies which were rather strict about policing women

Which is a specific defining feature of all successful civilizations until very recently.

"what is bad about modernity is that it allows for more female infidelity than Saudi Arabia"

Yes of course. Adultery should be a crime. And arguably a capital one. How is marriage supposed to exist or men supposed to be expected to participate in a society that doesn't give them certainty the fruits of their labor will go to their line? Why sire children at all in such a system, where banditry naturally becomes the highest station?

You act as if cities were naturally dens of sin and conveniently forget we specifically evolved morality to solve such problems.

On this particular point, and as of now, the Arab world is civilized and the West is barbaric.

This isn't to say that female autonomy isn't an advancement in some sense, and it's always been a peculiarity of Western civilization to elevate such an autonomy. But paternity fraud is as antisocial as rape and needs to be punished as such. Or people will switch from orderly pair bonding to a free for all and thus dissolve society altogether, which is indubitably what's happening to the West.

Which is a specific defining feature of all successful civilizations until very recently.

Where "very recently" means the establishment of cisHajnal Europe as a distinct "western" civilisation around 1000AD, not the sexual revolution in the 20th century. Middle-class women having (and needing, to do their share of the work of the society) enough freedom to cheat on their husbands was enough of a thing in pre-modern society that Chaucer and Shakespeare both wrote about it (although it is probably significant that neither the Wife of Bath nor the Merry Wives of Windsor actually do the deed)

It's worth noting that the Romans believed that female adultery was very common in their society.

Gangsters are a very common feature of dramatic fiction. Are we to believe that the societies that produce these stories are are dens of vice that idolize robbery?

Quite the contrary, the narrative arc is so compelling because the vices of the character allow us to expurge our passions through them through catharsis and thus retain our propriety.

Modern westerners are as tame as it comes, and yet they play a lot of very violent video games. Fiction and entertainment are escapism, and as such often depict what we are not, in a way to connect us to it or to critique it, or to critique us.

Was cuckholdry unheard of before the sexual revolution? Certainly not.

Did men enjoy certainty of paternity to an immensely higher degree when we had enforced monogamy? Certainly.

The idea that western civilization was always this sexually loose is preposterous.

I don't think the Wife of Bath or the Merry Wives idolise adultery - in so far as Merry Wives of Windsor has a villain, it is Falstaff and he gets his comeuppance in the finale. The point I am making is that they only make sense in a society where middle-class men couldn't lock up their wives the way middle-class Arabs do. Falstaff seducing another man's wife isn't good, but it is possible and Page and Ford have to worry about it, and ultimately given the nature of the society Shakespeare was living in and writing about, they have to rely on their wives' virtue to prevent it.

Early Modern cisHajnal Europe was much closer to your standard of "rather strict about policing women" than post-sexual revolution societies (but everyone agrees those are only able to exist because we have contraceptive tech that the Merry Wives didn't). But by the standards of pre-contraception societies, it was among the loosest.

The evidence of whether the actual nonpaternity rate has increased as a result of the sexual revolution is thin. There are a number of studies estimating Western nonpaternity rates over centuries by linking Y chromosomes to surnames - they all have small samples and large confidence bounds, but they converge on a range of 1-1.5%. Because of the methodology, this counts undocumented adoptions, including informal adoptions by stepfathers*, as nonpaternity but doesn't count cases where one male-line blood relative cucks another. See also this article about a Dutch research group that have reached the same conclusions more recently with a larger sample size and the added advantage of being able to cross-check against birth records rather than relying on surnames. They also cross-checked against a mitochondrial-DNA based estimate of nonmaternity (which you can't do with surnames), and discovered that nonmaternity is, as expected, vanishingly rare. The article says that the nonpaternity rate increased significantly in the 19th century (i.e. long before the sexual revolution) due to urbanisation - they say roughly 6% but don't give the error bars on the subsample.

The really hard part is estimating nonpaternity in the here and now. The taboo against unnecessary paternity tests means that the headline rate of nonpaternity from paternity testing (well north of 10%) is meaningless - it is an intentionally biased sample. To measure nonpaternity rates in cases where there isn't enough pre-existing suspicion for a DNA test to be ordered you need to get permission to test (anonymised, but paired) samples of father-child DNA taken for other reasons, like tracing genetic diseases. As far as I can see from the limited number of papers where people have got permission to do that, you get a nonpaternity rate of about 3% for the population as a whole, and 1.5-2% if you restrict the sample to unsuspicious cases. Which would mean that the sexual revolution reduced nonpaternity (presumably because cheaters use contraception) relative to the industrial-age urban baseline.

* I am aware that the manosphere considers this "pre-cucking", but it doesn't qualify under the conventional definition.

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I can't think of any other areas where society and law has some justification along the lines of "well it wasn't you, but someone needs to pay for it, and you are the easiest to catch."

I feel like a decent chunk of the insurance system defaults to this kind of approach if it can at all get away with it.

And people like when this happens and think insurance shouldn't go after the true culprit?

They don't but it's pretty illustrative of how the system works when money is involved.

Scenario: A person roles into the hospital with a gunshot wound to the [organ that can be lived without]. The shooter has the same blood type as the victim.

Question: Is it ok to take the organ from the shooter to replace the organ of the wounded person?

Utilitarian: You can take the organ from the healthy person in the waiting room, they are easier to find and might have been the shooter anyways.

@stoatherd provided a good argument against this reasoning. In such a society, healthy people would avoid hospitals.

Likewise, the current situation discourages the adoptive father from supporting the child or even himself.

I actually think the adoptive father should be encouraged to raise the child as his own, key word encouraged. Coercion activates the innate human desire (common in men) to resist. No penalty for abandoning the child makes the father feel autonomous and "in control" when he raises them anyways, even if there's a (e.g. social) reward. (It also gives him control over the wife, but she still has the option of leaving him; if you think it's a bad or unfair outcome, can you think of a better or fairer one?)

I believe that is called rules utilitarianism, and maybe all actual utilitarians are actually rules utilitarians, and act utilitarianism is a straw man.

Maybe the current set of laws truly has no philosophical or moral backing, and I was wrong to tar anything with association.

I agree with your solution.

I don't think there's actually a coherent thing that "act utilitarianism" is pointing to. Its conceit seems to be that you can do some kind of causal surgery and ask: "Assuming that there are no downstream effects of this action (beyond some arbitrary cutoff?), and there are no implications of me being the kind of the person to have chosen this action... is it the best action?"

So there's two problems with this:

  1. The distinction between 1st order and 2nd/Nth-order effects is arbitrary; choosing to cut off some effects but not others doesn't really make sense
  2. You can't separate making a choice from being a person that makes that choice.

On point 2, the rule/act distinction is confused in a similar way that two-boxers in Newcomb are confused. If, in the organ scenario, you make the choice to kill an innocent person to take their organs... then you are the kind of person to do that. Which means you live in a society that generates people who choose to kill innocent people for their organs. You can't carve out the naive 1st-order utility calculation from the implications of people taking that choice, any more than in Newcomb you can go "I'm going be a one-boxer so I get the million dollars... and I'm going to take both boxes".

Act Utilitarianism seems to mostly exist as a strawman for people to say "utilitarians would kill you for your organs", which is silly, because they empirically don't.

Just reversing the gender roles shows how insane this can be. A grown woman and little kid. The woman wants kids, the boy does not. The wife manages to get pregnant without the kid's consent (since this was is rape by law).

The boy then must pay child support to the woman for the raising of the kid.

Literally legal precedent in the US.

For reference.

The amount of privlege the courts give women at times is absolutely insane.

Imagine this justification used for crimes:

[state]: pay the fine for running a red light

[person]: but i didnt run a red light

[state]: Well someone ran that red light, and we can't let it be known that running red lights will go unpunished. You were nearby and I've already captured you, it would be too much work to go get the real culprit if it turns out it wasn't you.

This exact scenario is the case in most of Europe. If a car runs a red light, the owner is fined. It doesn't matter who was driving. It is the same for speeding. The reason for the law is exactly as you said. It would be hard for an automated camera to find the driver (maybe less so now than 20 years ago though), but it can just read the license plate and check the registration.

This is an argument for making the mother fully responsible for the baby. They own the vehicle of birth. The father is the driver. The owner is responsible for who they allow to drive it. Exceptions can be made in cases where the vehicle is stolen, or the mother raped.

The important difference is that it makes you responsible for who you allow to drive your car, and if someone steals it and commits traffic violations that cost you money, you would in theory (presuming that the guilty part got caught, which is a big if) be able to sue that person for damages to at least compensate those. So you have avenues to avoid or (in theory) get reimbursed the fine. In his scenarios, you're held responsible for existing in the vicinity of the infraction, that's much more unfair than being punished for lending your keys to someone you should know better than to lend your keys to.

There are societies in which a man a man owns his wife (or daughter) and her sexuality (or lack thereof) in pretty much the same way a man in the Western world can own a car. In such societies, the analogy would make a bit of sense, we might say "well, you were the prison warden of your wife, if anyone else had sex with her you were clearly in on it or negligent in your duties as a husband."

In the Western world, this is very much not the case. Both husband and wife commonly have plenty of opportunity to cheat without their spouse catching them.

In the Western world, the law is both

"You were the owner/prison warden of your wife, if anyone else had sex with her you were clearly in on it or negligent in your duties as a husband."

and

"The wife has zero duties whatsoever, including the duty not to get pregnant with another man's child. If a husband attempts to assert any duty, he will be punished."

at the same time.

I don't think the red light comparison quite works, or at least it exaggerates the injustice in a way that is not conducive to a fair discussion of the subject (effective as it may be as polemic). From what I understand, the situations where the man is on the hook are those where he was married to the woman who had the child, and the justification is essentially that integrity of the nuclear family, or at least material safety for the child, is valued higher than justice for the man. (Contrary to many arguments, a ban on unilateral paternity testing even in alimony/child support proceedings protects intact families too, because not having it would incentivise doubting men to divorce so they could get the test.) They are not arresting a completely random guy just because he was easy to catch, and there is a good being defended (the family that is involving him, his wife and the disputed child) that is much more specific to him than the "recompense for red light violation" good that could really be fulfilled by just about anyone.

It's hard to build a plausible analogy with cars, but perhaps we could imagine a hypothetical society that takes valuing privacy of private residences to an absurd extreme. In such a society, if someone was murdered on private property, by similar logic the property owner could always be on the hook, unless everyone who entered the property consented to an investigation: someone has to be punished for the murder, the registered property owner is easiest to catch, as the owner he is felt to carry some measure of default responsibility for what happens in it anyway, and the alternative would be a sudden unexpected violation of privacy of everyone who went into the house which is roundly agreed to be a greater evil than the possibility of sending the owner (who anyhow would look a bit lame for not being on top of what's going on in his home) to jail innocent.

Grant_us_eyes brought up the case in another comment where a 16 year old female babysitter had sex and was impregnated by the 12 year old boy she was watching. The boy was ordered to pay child support. link

Yes the justification was the well-being of the child. I have no idea how a judge said that with a straight face as he ordered a child to pay child support. And to specifically pay it to a mother that is a convicted pedophile rapist of a child that was under her care. I hope the newly born child in this situation was a girl, otherwise he will probably be having a sibling/child in another 13 years, and then he will have to get a job at 14 to pay child support to his mother. Insanity.

(Contrary to many arguments, a ban on unilateral paternity testing even in alimony/child support proceedings protects intact families too, because not having it would incentivise doubting men to divorce so they could get the test.)

What about the incentives created by forcing doubting fathers to raise kids that aren't theirs or pay their wages to a woman who tricked them? If there are multiple kids in a family and just one is in doubt then guess who that father likes the least? I'm sure that kid is not having a pleasant time even if the parents stay together.

If you were married to a woman that cheated on you and then had to pay money to that woman and that child? I cannot imagine how infuriated I would be. I'd probably be willing to destroy my own life to spite them. Live poor for 18 years, leave the country to get out of payments, etc etc. I'm also not a violent person, but its not hard to imagine what choices a violent man might make in that situation.

Maybe it works because the type of man that can be actually cucked heavily overlaps with the type of man that can be cucked by the justice system.

I'll admit the traffic light example is a little polemic, but I don't think it takes very much wrangling to become more accurate.

Imagine a business is being stolen from by one employee. The theft is large enough that the business will go bankrupt unless the money is returned, which is bad for all of the employees, the owner, and their customers. We would not think it is ok to just confiscate the savings of one of the employees to pay for the theft.

Is a business just not that sympathetic? I can make it more sympathetic. Its not a business its a non-profit. They make pacemakers for people that can't afford them especially children. If the non-profit goes under people will die, children will die. Can we take money from a random employee? What if its not random, can we pick the ugliest man with the biggest bank account and no family? At what point in this hypothetical does it become ok? For me the answer is never. (which is the same answer I have to Robert Nozick's The Tale of a Slave)

What about the incentives created by forcing doubting fathers to raise kids that aren't theirs or pay their wages to a woman who tricked them? If there are multiple kids in a family and just one is in doubt then guess who that father likes the least? I'm sure that kid is not having a pleasant time even if the parents stay together.

Unfortunately, under the old ideal of the family (the mother runs the house, the father slaves away at a day job and maybe is home on the weekends every now and then to give some words of stern admonition to the kids), the incentives there don't matter so much. The father's role is to provide resources, and exist as an abstract sort of role model and stabilising force.

I don't have access to stats, but I would assume that out of all the "cucked" men in the world (who are stuck with a less than certainly affair-produced child in a marriage), a bigger fraction continues more or less playing out the above role than actually resorts to violence or spiteful self-sabotage. To begin with, I would think that the woman actually having an affair when the couple is trying to conceive correlates pretty well with such a family model, because otherwise the woman simply would not have enough opportunity to cultivate one. If my partner managed to get an affair baby, my first reaction would be "when the f did she manage to sneak that in"; outside of work we are basically together all the time and we are pretty well-aware of each other's social calendars too.

business example

I think this once again misses the circumstance that the cucked husband is not some random bloke grabbed off the street. You seem to want to pick a random employee, or the ugliest one, or whatever, but why are you so resistent to picking the most obvious default-responsible one, which is the CEO? If you made the example say that some employee embezzled money from an LLC, but the state refused to investigate and just put the CEO on the hook for it, we would be getting closer to the marriage situation.

I have no idea how a judge said that with a straight face as he ordered a child to pay child support

I get that this is rhetorical, but here's the actual answer:

He ordered a man to pay child support.
A man is not a child, and being male takes precedence; furthermore, men can't be raped (their age of consent is 0- no Woman would ever actively want to fuck a man so this doesn't create any downstream problems, especially the most objectively attractive kind of Woman, that being a 16 year old one). The male gender role is to do the fucking, so this was Consensual, thus forcing him to take Responsibility makes trivial sense.

The only reason we pretend men can be raped is just basic gender equality, but that's just a fig leaf: they get the title but none of the protections that being a victim of the same grants Women. If we could get away with it, we would set the age of consent for Women to be infinite, even within the confines of a marriage (because otherwise, a Woman couldn't have Her husband thrown in jail if he displeased Her by retroactively revoking consent -> claiming marital rape, as all sex with Women is illegal).

TL;DR It was base human instinct.

the justification is essentially that integrity of the nuclear family, or at least material safety for the child, is valued higher than justice for the man.

That's obviously special pleading though, because divorce laws would look much different if that principle were applied consistently.

And given that material safety for the child can be achieved in other ways, it just tells us how little justice for men is valued.

I have only heard about this law existing in France.

From what I understand, paternity tests can and are used in the UK in child support/custody disputes. Men can also be ordered by the Child Maintenance Service to get one. A refusal to take a test (or, one assumes, a refusal by the mother to allow her child to take one) can be taken as evidence by family courts.

The whole 'the father is whoever the state says he is, evidence be damned' seems to be a piece of Napoleonic nonsense, not a European universal.

In the UK, nonpaternity is an absolute bar to a statutory child support claim, with the obvious exceptions for fathers named on adoption papers. (If the cuck was married to the slut, she may still be able to get some child support indirectly as part of a "needs"-based divorce settlement.) The UK is, as far as I am aware, the only country where this is true.

Can you please explain what 'statutory child support' is as opposed to, well, child support?

I'm certain it's the same in Germany.

The German system is a hybrid of the Anglo and French systems. The husband cannot unilaterally perform a legally valid paternity test, but he can challenge his wife’s (or the child’s mother’s) refusal of one in court. The court can then order a test, and if he isn’t the father, if he wasn’t married he’s largely off the hook and if he was he has a strong legal case.

This is in contrast to the French system which makes it difficult if not impossible at every point without maternal consent. France is actually quite unique in this regard, a product of a long culture of acceptance of affairs by both sexes.

As far as I know, the law in US federal states and Western European countries is usually that a husband may not have a paternity test done on the child or children unless the wife agrees to it in writing and the family court permits it (in case of a divorce).

This is incorrect, at least in the US. The source of the confusion may be that there's a difference for purely informational paternity tests and forensic tests that have strict protocols and can be used as evidence in court. The latter are only done, for obvious reasons, if there are actually court proceedings, and require a court order.

As far as I know, the law in US federal states and Western European countries is usually that a husband may not have a paternity test done on the child or children unless the wife agrees to it in writing and the family court permits it (in case of a divorce).

This is incorrect, at least in the US. The source of the confusion may be that there's a difference for purely informational paternity tests and forensic tests that have strict protocols and can be used as evidence in court. The latter are only done, for obvious reasons, if there are actually court proceedings, and require a court order.

yeah its not "paternity tests are not allowed" and more "there is absolutely zero chain of custody on this test and we are not accepting it as legal evidence by itself" although obviously it becomes much easier to compel a legally valid paternity test if you have a failed one.

This is incorrect.

I assume that you're referring only to "US federal states". Among "Western European countries", France is fairly infamous for having banned informational paternity tests, and it appears that Germany also has banned them. Wikipedia page

Correct. I make no attempt at understanding European law. I should have clarified that.

I’d love to read a steelman for

  1. Why a father should be forced to pay child support without a paternity test

  2. Why, if the biological father is different, they shouldn’t be the one required to pay the child support instead

For example, I care about the mother’s and child’s interests, but how will 1) not create animosity from suspicious fathers, and 2) not decrease child support since the resentful adoptive father will try to evade it (at least as much as the biological one)?

My first big scissor statement was reading Reddit (outrage fanfiction) “my husband asked for a paternity test and I divorced him”. But I now understand that perspective: believing that your husband will always be suspicious of you, that they think with apathetic game-theoretic logic, while you want selfless and unconditional “true love”. I understand that acting like an unemotional autist is not rational, not harmless, not me (because I have emotions, desires, and even my logic is biased for them).

But I can’t even imagine a decent argument for 1) or 2).

Why a father should be forced to pay child support without a paternity test

The best argument I can think of is that someone needs to pay for the kid. The state will do whatever possible to avoid taking that task. Partly due to the economic expense, partly for the sake of the kid. If the state starts paying child support, odds are the state will also want a say in how the child should be raised. I believe having such a large faceless entity be directly responsible for any individual leaves a lot of opportunity for things to go wrong. So while it is unjust to demand child support while denying a paternity test, there is a decent argument it is helpful to the kid.

As for why it is not the woman who pays, that is tradition. The law has not caught up to gender equality in the labor market, and I imagine feminist activists will work hard to keep things that way, considering this is something that disproportionately benefits women to the detriment of men.

I also think it is partly due to cheap DNA testing being a relatively new thing. It has not been that long since sequencing was an expensive, time consuming task mostly done as academic research. While mandatory DNA testing may well be a reasonable demand today, 20 years ago it would have been ridiculous.

As for why it is not the woman who pays, that is tradition. The law has not caught up to gender equality in the labor market, and I imagine feminist activists will work hard to keep things that way, considering this is something that disproportionately benefits women to the detriment of men.

The primary custodial parent receives child support this is usually but not always the woman and in general is determined by who was the child's primary caretaker during the marriage. A stay at home dad would be extremely likely to receive primary custody and child support.

The best argument I can think of is that someone needs to pay for the kid. The state will do whatever possible to avoid taking that task. Partly due to the economic expense, partly for the sake of the kid.

Its fascinating to me that the state paying for other people, such as the sick and the elderly, is accepted, but paying for our children is somehow a bridge too far. Why? Its not like the government begins to regulate the behavior of old people to my knowledge, or prevents life saving healthcare, etc. I don't see a problem with them paying for the kid, but leaving how they are raised up to parents. Thats not even getting into the fact that we already have entities like CPS and the education system that play some part in how children are raised.

I think the unstated assumption is that assuming state responsibility for the welfare of bastards would be enabling the irresponsible behavior of their biological parents, and most citizens don't want that. Paying for the sick and elderly is similarly generally seen as the state's responsibility only when other options are unavailable.

Paying for the sick and elderly is similarly generally seen as the state's responsibility only when other options are unavailable.

Err, given Medicare, SSDI, and ordinary old age social security, this seems obviously false in the US. I believe it is even more false in Europe.

No surprise, kids can't vote. If we banned elderly from voting entitlements like social security would be among the first things to be cut.

The state already takes a strong view about how any child is raised, most notably via the education system.

Well yeah. That and the adoption system is pretty good evidence in my eyes that giving the state more power over children is not a good thing.

The best argument I can think of is that someone needs to pay for the kid.

How about Bill Gates? He's wealthy, and was just as involved in the kid's creation.

I agree with almost all of this, but I think the major exception is load-bearing:

The state will do whatever possible to avoid taking that task. Partly due to the economic expense

If you type 60wpm, it took you 17 seconds to write this sentence and a half, over which period of time the federal government disperses an average of $2.2M in transfer payments, $250k of which are specifically for families and individuals facing economic hardship. Taking on that sort of task is something that the state already does, on such a massive scale that adding another hundred thousand kids' child support payments would literally be within rounding error on the commonly reported figures. Since our chief remaining worry is indeed

for the sake of the kid

then we want that kid's expenses to be at least backstopped by the almost-incomprehensibly rich state, which is guaranteed to pay, not by some random guy who might delay or evade payment. Once that's assured, our remaining concerns are much less pressing: justice vs deadbeat parents, and well-being for innocent taxpayers. We can fix both concerns by finding the biological father and getting him to pay, but can we improve either by squeezing a non-father?

Justice vs deadbeat parents can't be improved by punishing a non-deadbeat non-parent.

Well-being for innocent taxpayers you might think can be improved by getting some poor sucker to pay instead of them, but that poor sucker is in the set of innocent potential taxpayers, and the marginal utility of money decreases. A priori most people would probably prefer a certainty of paying a tiny amount over a tiny chance of being unjustly pushed into paying a much larger amount. And that's just considering the financial aspects; someone who's been cheated on in this way is paying to have those extracted finances managed by their victimizer, which is definitely negative-sum in well-being.

There is a more subtle problem with just letting the state pay in these cases: doing so removes all incentives the mother might have to help the state track down the biological father. That wouldn't necessarily be a new problem, though (why bother tracking down biodad if the guy you tricked is already paying?), just a still-unsolved one.

This has been my mental response to the idea of the state's motivations being a primary driver. It's still irrational and immoral. We're already using children as a vehicle for UBI at an astonishing scale - making fathers slightly less likely to be financially cucked is the easy button nobody will push.

At the end of the day it's difficult to chalk it up to anything beyond "Women are Wonderful"

But why not the biological father?

(And if he’s dead/incapable, maybe the state has to pay, but that’s the case when somebody isn’t tricked. Or that can be an exception, since the adoptive father would have less reason to envy him, although I still think it’s bad)

You don't know who the biological father is, so you would have to find him first. You don't know how wealthy he is, so there is no guarantee he is even capable of paying child support in the first place. You will have to take him to court to find out. During this process as you locate and sue the bio dad, who pays for the kid? And what if he is just too poor to pay anything? It seems to me that the incentives, at least in the short term, favor the assumption that the boyfriend/husband is also that goes out the window if you do a test and find out it isn't the case.

That sad, I personally still believe the injustice of paying for another man's kid when doing so is easily avoidable is too great an injustice to be justified by this. But it is the best explanation I can come up with, and I do think it is logically coherent.

Why not Elon? Or Bill Gates? Well, we think that’s wrong because that would be stealing.

So why are we forcing it on the chump who got played and his world destroyed (kid isn’t yours but you have to pay for the kid nonetheless).

the chump who got played

But that's the trick right there. Without DNA tests or another man to claim fatherhood, there is no way to conclusively prove you did get played. With the test being unavailable, we maintain the convenient narrative that the "chump" is in fact the father, and should take responsibility as such.

Without DNA tests or another man to claim fatherhood, there is no way to conclusively prove you did get played.

A shame, because those exist? That's like claiming that we wouldn't need speed limits on the interstate highway if motor vehicles didn't exist. They do.

I'm assuming a setup where the wife has a brief time of cheating on her husband and gets pregnant, then the cheating guy is gone, and the wife is silent and wants the husband to raise the family. It's not very satisfactory on moral grounds but probably the answer is that the biological father is typically more of a swindler type who may already be far away and has a personality and attitude that makes collecting stuff from him a bigger hassle. Meanwhile the other guy, who married the woman, is probably a more prosocial guy, who settled properly, has more job stability, follows rules more and is just easier to extract money from.

Why a father should be forced to pay child support without a paternity test

Are you asking about situations where the man is married to the mother? Or other situations?

I'm not an expert on this subject, but as far as I know:

(1) If the man is not married to the mother and does not acknowledge the child, then if she wants child support from him over his objection, she has to pursue a proceeding to establish paternity. In that proceeding, he is generally entitled to a paternity test. Probably there are some injustices in this process, for example if the man is tricked into acknowledging paternity, that could be a problem. Or if he is unaware of the paternity proceeding, having not been properly served. But for the most part, a cautious man can avoid being tagged with child support for another man's children, provided he is not married to the mother.

(2) If the man is married to the mother, it's a much bigger problem for him. In a lot of jurisdictions, he's completely screwed. In others, he has a limited amount of time to dispute paternity. I am pretty sure this rule has its roots in common law traditions from the distant past, in which there was no DNA testing available. (Of course, back then arguably a man was in a better position to prevent contact between his wife and other men.) I would guess it carries on today out of a combination of cultural inertia and gynocentrism. To be sure, it's very unfair to men, but there are still workarounds. For example, a man can secretly test his children and if he is not the father, make an excuse to move the family to a jurisdiction where this would be a basis to disclaim paternity.

Why, if the biological father is different, they shouldn’t be the one required to pay the child support instead

Again, I think it's mainly a matter of cultural inertia. Although it would be interesting to see what would happen if a married woman ended up getting pregnant with the child of Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates.

The prohibition on challenging paternity only applies when the parties are married. Changing this wouldn't even make sense because you don't make support payments or deal with visitation rights when living in the same household. If you file for divorce then the marriage ends and you very much can challenge paternity. While you won't have to make child support payments, you also won't get any visitation rights.

The prohibition on challenging paternity only applies when the parties are married. Changing this wouldn't even make sense because you don't make support payments or deal with visitation rights when living in the same household. If you file for divorce then the marriage ends and you very much can challenge paternity. While you won't have to make child support payments, you also won't get any visitation rights.

I'm not sure what your point is here. Do you disagree with anything I have said?

I'm not sure what the point would be of legally disestablishing paternity would be if you're married. If you want to do it for your own edification then buy a test off of Amazon; there's no role for the court to play here.

You can't think of why a married man would want to legally establish he'd been cheated on and duped?

You can't think of why a married man would want to legally establish he'd been cheated on and duped?

I suspect what's going on here is that @Rov_Scam is attacking some kind of straw man. Why would a married man wish to establish non-paternity? Obviously, the answer is that -- if the law allows it -- he would like to get a divorce and get out of paying child support. If he discovered he was not the father, either through an informal DNA test or some other way, then in theory he could file for divorce and, as part of that proceeding, ask for the Court to find that he's not the father and therefore he's not on the hook for child support. As part of that proceeding, he would presumably request a formal DNA test. (Of course this is only if a non-paternity proceeding is permitted in the relevant jurisdiction.)

Here's what I said before:

If the man is married to the mother, it's a much bigger problem for him. In a lot of jurisdictions, he's completely screwed. In others, he has a limited amount of time to dispute paternity.

Now, obviously it kind of goes without saying that if a husband is formally disputing paternity, he's going to be doing it in connection with a divorce proceeding. Admittedly, I did not spell that out. Which -- I suspect -- was the opening @Rov_Scam needed to come in and pretend that I was talking about a non-paternity proceeding brought without any kind of divorce. Which I agree would be silly.

Which is why I strongly suspect that @Rov_Scam is just going after a strawman for whatever reason. But who knows? In another post I asked him to QUOTE me if I said anything he disputes.

I'm not trying to establish a straw man, I just don't understand why you continued to argue after I said you could disestablish paternity as part of a divorce proceeding.

If the man is married to the mother, it's a much bigger problem for him. In a lot of jurisdictions, he's completely screwed. In others, he has a limited amount of time to dispute paternity.

I arbitrarily looked at the laws in the number of states and I couldn't find any that prohibited this.

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No, I can't. The legal consequences of disestablishing paternity are irrelevant if the man and woman are married and living in the same household with the child. The three things that are legally at play here are support obligations, visitation rights, and the right to make decisions. Married guys with kids don't pay child support to their wives, and visitation isn't an issue when you live together. And he doesn't need a court order to let his wife make all the decisions.

if the man and woman are married

I'm not sure where you're from, but on planet Earth, cheating is generally cause for not being married any more, notably even in religions that are normally incompatible with divorce.

It not being the husband's kid is undeniable evidence that this happened, and further, undeniable evidence that the wife concealed that fact. (The mother is not confused- the baby comes out of the mother.)

The purpose of this law is simply to limit the woman's liability for cheating in a relationship, while leaving it unlimited for the man (any intent behind that is an exercise for the reader). It's consistent with the other laws that limit the duties the woman has to the man in a marriage.

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Having legally established that you'd been cheated on and tricked into raising somebody else's kid isn't going to be a relevant factor in the following divorce case?

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I'm not sure what the point would be of legally disestablishing paternity would be if you're married.

It can potentially get you out of paying child support if you get divorced. Which presumably a lot of men would do if they discovered they were the victims of their wife's paternity fraud.

Like I said, if you're suspicious you can get a test done through a lab, it just won't be able to be used in court. If you decide to get divorced based on the result, then you can have a forensic-grade test done. I also don't know what kind of universe you think exists where a guy could initiate proceedings questioning the paternity of one of the marital children that wouldn't result in the wife just filing for divorce anyway.

Like I said, if you're suspicious you can get a test done through a lab, it just won't be able to be used in court. If you decide to get divorced based on the result, then you can have a forensic-grade test done. I also don't know what kind of universe you think exists where a guy could initiate proceedings questioning the paternity of one of the marital children that wouldn't result in the wife just filing for divorce anyway.

Again, I am not sure what your point is here. Let's do this: Is there anything I said which you dispute? If so, please QUOTE it.

And by the way, do you have any precedent to support your claim that for a conviction under the Federal wire fraud statute "the government would need to identify a particular person that saw the representation, relied on the representation, and that the organization made money off of that reliance."

Broadly the person the state puts the interests of above all else is the child in any given relationship. Generally, a culture of distrust towards women that would mandate (or heavily incentive) paternity tests is far more liable to result in arguments and general suspicion, even in otherwise harmonious relationships once the issue is raised as it necessarily implies a fear on the husband’s behalf on the trustworthiness and fidelity of his wife. Beyond that, the ideal circumstance to raise a child is (according to most sources) within a family home with at least two parents. The child as such would benefit the most from being raised within such a home, even if in reality the child is actually not biologically related to one of its guardians.

The biological connection can be observed to not be too significant of a factor broadly speaking in the raising of a child, as we already have many instances of for instance adopted children, or children born via sperm donation or surrogacy being able to grow up well adjusted and with healthy connections to her (legal) parents. Besides, the fear you describe has already been shown to be a largely hypothetical problem, since in France for instance paternity tests are broadly discouraged and effectively illegal, and all the same healthy relationships resulting in families still occur.

Generally, a culture of distrust towards women that would mandate (or heavily incentive) paternity tests is far more liable to result in arguments and general suspicion, even in otherwise harmonious relationships once the issue is raised as it necessarily implies a fear on the husband’s behalf on the trustworthiness and fidelity of his wife.

The opposite: once the husband asks for a paternity test, there's already an argument and suspicion, and the only way it would be resolved is if the test confirms they're the father.

The child as such would benefit the most from being raised within such a home, even if in reality the child is actually not biologically related to one of its guardians.

I agree that the father should stay. But I argue that forcing him to pay child support is actually counterproductive here.

I'd wager status quo continues for another 10 years unless a child somehow ends up dying from a lack of support from the not-father. Like, not-father takes a secret paternity test and stops paying child support and divorces the wife. Wife and child goes to live with the real father. Real father murder-suicides the family. People point fingers at the not-father for triggering the divorce, when the secret paternity test is discovered.

I care about the mother’s and child’s interests

As opposed to, and at the cost of, the father's interests.

"But women > men" is the only real argument here.

Here's my "women > men" argument.

When women > men, a bit of polygyny is tolerated and population ratio quickly evens out. If the ratio is dramatically in favor of women, the remaining guys have a really good time while it lasts.

When men > women, excess males get aggressive and tend to result in internal conflict or external wars. If the ratio is dramatic enough, your society collapses because it cannot maintain population unless you kidnap women from another society.

Ergo, women > men because it never hurts to have more women, and when you are in shortage of women your society is gone. Humans probably feel this at a genetic level, we are all probably descendants of kidnapped women at some prehistoric time.

Since women > men, always prioritize womens needs, especially over the complaints a few excess males or cucked husbands.

I think your parent poster meant "women are better than men", not "there are more women than men".

Oh, yeah I know. And then I used a quantity argument to say the available quantity of women proves women are more valuable then men. Probably a crappy argument because it doesn't prove women are better than men.

Here the interests don’t compete: getting non-biological fathers to pay child support (instead of biological ones) usually doesn’t benefit the wife and children.

I'm not aware of major new developments in germany. I'm going with "nothing ever happens" on this one; It will probably stay illegal bc there is no solid constituency to get it changed (no, men in general don't count; Caring about paternity implies that you think it plausible for your wife to cheat on you, which is pathetic), but laws will also not get more punitive bc many cases in practice are at least somewhat sympathetic (if you care enough to break the law about this, there is probably a clear reason for it).

For the record, I'd prefer if genetic sampling on birth was (opt-out-able) standard practice and would involve paternity testing by default, as well as testing for a host of inheritable diseases and whatnot.

I tend to agree that the status quo is likely to continue, although this is the sort of thing which is extremely hard to predict. It's like trying to predict what style of skirt will be fashionable in 10 years.

What if there are a few prominent cases where a Muslim immigrant to the US or Europe gets a paternity test done; discovers his children aren't his; and stabs his wife and children to death with a kitchen knife? If it gets to the point where Something Must Be Done to Protect the Children (and to divert the conversation away from third-world immigration), well, I could easily see the Left proposing a ban on paternity testing without the mother's consent.

Just call it 'test rape', and that will help paternity test bans gain traction.

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