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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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
World 2: Wife asks for "fidelity test"
Possibilities:
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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