No, we still can't all just get along. (Response to a youtube comment.)

The comment on this video:

My response, posted in answer to the comment, was wordy, but to the point with regard to the "can't we all just get along" charge. I've copy/pasted it here rather than using a screenshot specifically to make it available if others want to use part of it to compose responses to specific claims related to its parts, if that makes sense.

The claim feminists have something in common with MRAs does not even deserve consideration until some serious changes are made in feminist advocacy: Get back to me when mainstream feminist groups acknowledge they've been lying about the dynamics of intimate partner violence, take female violence seriously, cease promoting the "condone female violence while generalizing & condemning male violence" formula that PERPETUATES they type of partner violence that makes up about half of existing cases, and lobby to revert the gender-discriminatory VAWA back to the original, non-discriminating Family Violence Prevention and Services act of 1984 so that two-way violence and unilateral female violence (which combined make up the majority of partner violence) are addressed by the law instead of it shoehorning those cases in with the unilateral male perpetrated minority of the problem. For more explanation from me on this, see this video & the citations in the lowbar: https://youtu.be/m6IFLbGkbbA

Get back to me when academic & media feminists stop gendering their promulgation on sexual violence to demonize men as predators and infantilize women as victims, when they demand that their own movement's researchers both within and out of government research give female perpetration the same labels and push for those labels to lead to the same condemnation as male perpetration, when they stop using generalized demonization of men to push for legislated infringement on due process, and when feminist acknowledgement of female sexual violence leads to feminist lobbying for changes in law to hold female perpetrators equally accountable to the system accused men face. For more explanation from me on this, see this video & the citations in the lowbar: https://youtu.be/ob4DFbLMbyg

 Get back to me when organizations like the National Organization for Women and other mainstream feminist lobbying groups stop fighting to block equally shared parenting laws, when they stop generalizing demonization of Dads as deadbeats and abusers to excuse promotion of the idea that regardless of their or their children's interests, their only value to their families is to be a walking wallet, when mainstream feminist organizations begin admitting that the harm done to kids when a parent uses custody interference to prevent the child from having a relationship with the other parent is NOT limited to paternal perpetration and that the majority of parents doing that are mothers - in short, when feminist organizations stop using "best interests of the child" as a cheesy catch phrase and actually start supporting children's best interests. For more explanation from me on this, see this video & the citations in the lowbar: https://youtu.be/csGVuuyuYNk

Get back to me when academic feminists stop using feigned sympathy for gender atypical men to demonize men whose masculinity manifests in a more rugged nature, when interdisciplinary department professors stop using "male privilege" as a proverbial bludgeon with which to beat their male students - regardless of background and experiences - into meekness and self-condemnation, when feminists stop thinking it's no big deal that so much of their movement is predicated upon man-hating. I have not made a video on that as of yet, but I recommend watching the series that starts with this video, because I have discussed it as part of my responses to Liana: https://youtu.be/jL9lNocuPV4

 Get back to me when feminist organizations stop responding to gender disparity in the justice system (http://www.avoiceformen.com/misandry/gender-disparity-in-criminal-court/) by advocating for MORE of it and treating advocacy for protection of due process rights as an attack on women. Get back to me when the mainstream in academic and media feminists stops marginalizing the falsely accused and exploiting actual victims' stories to excuse the promotion of railroading & sacrificing the rights of men in general. I put responses to the main arguments I've received from feminists on the false accusation issue into this article: https://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/dangerous-rape-myths-part-1/

For a particularly heavy example of what I've witnessed in terms of system-facilitated false accusation, read this: http://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/domestic-violence-industry/seven-years-in-hell/ And for more examples of the effects of false accusation & due process infringement, check out the Community of the Wrongly Accused: http://cotwa.info/

Those are some of the bigger issues between men's issues activists & feminists. There are more, too many to address in a comment, but I think this is enough to understand why no... the two movements are not compatible, and as long as feminism is what feminism is, we never will be.

Comment under the video "Why feminism is good for men."

The video's url:
https://youtu.be/CHzlFYQwpJo

My comment:

Feminist initiatives like #HeForShe impose on men the very gender roles feminists like you claim it tries to eliminate. It just adds one detail: Only fill those roles for the benefit of women, never because it's natural or comfortable for you. And never expect to have your masculinity considered BY women while they're busy demanding you be strong & commanding against other men on women's behalf, because your humanity is secondary to your function as a shield/beast of burden for women.

Feminist propaganda campaigns like "Don't be that guy" do the same thing - make every man, specifically BECAUSE of standards for masculinity, responsible for the safety of women who can't or won't be responsible for themselves.

Meanwhile, feminists clearly feel entitled to tell men which feelings they're allowed to express.

Feeling girly? Great! You're a feminist!

Feeling a need for human companionship? Get the heck outta here, creep!

Feeling hurt over being rejected? Now you're a misogynist!

Resent the damage done when you were circumcised? Don't expect help from feminists. They're too busy lining up to tell you that women, whose genital integrity is legally protected throughout the vast majority of the world in many nations where yours isn't & even where neonatal male genital cutting is common, have it worse. And they'll tell you that you're a misogynist if you think the more widespread cutting practice is anywhere near as bad of a problem as the comparatively rare one. 

Heart broken because your children were taken from you in a divorce? Don't look to feminists for help. They're too busy opposing equally shared parenting legislation.

Would you feel more comfortable with equal reproductive rights, such as a legal equivalent to women's "safe haven" option? Don't look to feminists for help with that, either. They're too busy demanding stricter child support enforcement against you.

Hurt or afraid because you're being abused by your wife, girlfriend or a woman in your family? Don't look to feminism for that, either. They've spent the last 40+ years telling the public that doesn't happen, and if it does, it's "preemptive self-defense" because they believe you'll inevitably hit back. 

Trauma from being assaulted or even raped by a sexually aggressive woman? Yeah, don't look to feminism for help with that either. Feminist research on sexual violence has been carefully designed to avoid evidence of experiences like yours so they can paint sexual violence as a male behavior & blame you for it. 

Has your life been wrecked by false accusations? Don't expect feminists to care how you feel about that, either. Their story on your experience varies from "it's not as bad as experiencing (whatever crime you were falsely accused of) or "It's ok to sacrifice a few innocent men to ensure we catch all men guilty of (whatever the crime) as if hurting you somehow helps real victims of that crime... to "it's no big deal, because it's rare" as if rarity makes a crime less heinous (Jeffrey Dahmer's victims' families should be glad to know that)... to "This is beneficial - the falsely accused could learn something from the experience" as if you had no sympathy for victims prior & any harm done is negated by changing that... to "Women don't lie about (the crime) so it can't be false" even if you have evidence of your innocence. 

So yeah, men... you're supposed to express your feelings, except when it's not convenient for feminists, such as when you've been raped, abused, alienated, or falsely accused BY A WOMAN... or permanently scarred in a way that they feel competes with a female victim narrative. 

What DO they want you to do? 

Take dance classes, have your ass waxed, and only ever cry when bad things happen to women, because it doesn't really matter to them when bad things happen to you. 

But feminism is totally NOT about hating men, right?

The feminist crusade against fatherhood

Feminists will tell you that "Patriarchy" is the reason fathers are discriminated against in criminal court, via the presumption that women are better caregivers. That assertion is on a list that is being circulated and repeated by grassroots feminists in "debate," without ever questioning its validity. A little research into the history of changes in custody standards debunks the claim.

The legal presumption that women are naturally better caregivers, used as a determining factor in the decision of child custody, is rooted in 19th century feminist activism. At that time, divorce was much more rare, and subject to strict rules. There was no no-fault divorce, and the reasons accepted for requesting one were limited to circumstances like adultery and neglect. If there were children from a marriage, they were considered to be in their father's custody, not the custody of the couple. Whether the couple separated or divorced, they remained in their father's custody.

This was the situation faced by Caroline Norton after separating from her husband, George Norton. The end of her marriage to her husband was not brought on by circumstances that were approved reasons for divorce. Because of this, when Norton separated from her husband, he had complete control of her ability to see their children. Norton looked for legal means to counter her husband's alienation of her from her children, and found none. With no legal recourse, she began fighting to change the law.

When Caroline Norton wrote the bill which would become The Custody of Infants Act of 1839, followed by her "plain" letter to the Lord Chancellor regarding the bill, she probably had no idea that her writing would end up as the inspiration for a court doctrine which would cause for fathers in multiple nations to suffer exactly the indignities she was trying to eliminate in her own life and the lives of other women, but that is what occurred. The Custody of Infants Act was the start of what is now referred to as the Tender Years Doctrine, the basis upon which it became traditional to place custody of children in divorcing families with the mother. The argument that mothers are better caregivers is put forth in Mrs. Norton's "plain" letter, in which she stated that fathers have to hire nursemaids to replace their wives' involvement in the lives of children during their "tender years," and therefore it is natural that the child should be placed in the custody of the mother. Over the years, this doctrine, originally intended to prevent divorce from keeping women from their children, has been pushed and twisted into an every-case imperative, making maternal custody the default in divorce cases.

Objections to the bill included the prediction that with the ability to gain custody of their children, women would be more likely to divorce their husbands, and dire warnings of maternal kidnapping to keep children from their fathers.    

   

The result of her effort was the passage of the Custody of Enfants act of 1839, the basis for the Tender Years doctrine, which was used for much of the 20th century as the standard on which custody decisions were based. The tender years doctrine has since been abandoned for the nicer-sounding "best interests of the child" standard, but the determination of the child's best interests includes presuming true the beliefs laid out in the tender years doctrine, namely, that young children are best off with their mothers.

In 1910, the Uniform Desertion and Non-Support Act was proposed by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, and passed with modifications by 24 states. It was intended to address abandonment of the family by the husband and father, who at that time was generally their sole means of support. The unmodified version stated:

This was due to the far lower earning capacity of women at that time, as women considered less productive employees and were paid lower wages. The child support system, in other words, is a factor of traditional gender stereotypes.

In the United States, custody is awarded to mothers over 80% of the time. This also results in mothers receiving child support awards much more often. Even when fathers receive support, they receive less. 

Child support law has evolved over time since then, with broader and often senseless application, greater strictness, and greater government involvement in enforcement. One of the issues which men's rights activists have with existing child support law is that changes in it have not kept up with changes in women's circumstances. The conditions which child support law was written to address are no longer a factor; women can work, and earn a living the same as a man. Not having a man in the house doesn't automatically need to translate into poverty.

Feminists argue the implication of custody and child support statistics are debatable, claiming that fathers who file for custody get it most of the time. That claim is their basis for the assumption that fathers don't get custody of their children because they don't want it. 

However, for a father to file for and be granted custody, he must first amass the funds for a lawyer and court costs. If his income is moderate (or low) and is already being reduced by a child support payment, he has little or no ability to fund any legal action.

Further, when feminists claim that fathers get "custody" of their children whenever they ask for it, they're including joint custody agreements. These are nothing more than maternal custody/paternal visitation rewritten to recognize the father as a legitimate parent and afford him the ability to make decisions regarding the child's medical care and school attendance. The living arrangement of the child is the same as when a mother has full legal custody, so the difference is mainly on paper.

This situation means that women do not have to be financially stable to be awarded custody of their children, while fathers have to have enough money to pursue legal action before the court will even consider awarding them custody.

The result has been an increase in single mother households living under the poverty level, eligible for and collecting government assistance. According to the latest data from the U.S. census bureau, custodial mothers are more likely than custodial fathers to:

•     Not have jobs and not have enough non-employment income to be above the poverty level without being employed
•     Earn low income even if employed
•     Have custody of four or more children
•     Combine joblessness with multiple child custody
•     Become custodial parents as teens. 

Single fathers report more income from employment (wages and salaries or self-employment) and savings and investment (interest, dividend, rental, and other property income), while single mothers report much more income from assistance sources (for example, unemployment, workers’ compensation, public assistance, alimony, and child support). This difference is in part due to the requirement that fathers prove themselves fit parents in order to obtain custody, while mothers do not face such expectations unless custody is contested in court. Social attitudes also play a role in this; a mother living in poverty is considered a victim of abandonment and financial neglect by the estranged father of her children. A father living in poverty is considered a deadbeat who won't man up and take care of his family. Even though both parents have the same capacity to obtain employment and earn a living, only one is held responsible for doing so.

Cutting fathers out of their children's' lives can have significant negative impact on the child.
Research by Cynthia Harper of the University of Pennsylvania and Sara S. McLanahan of Princeton suggests that boys are significantly more likely to end up in jail or prison by the time they turn 30 if they are raised by a single mother. Bruce Ellis of the University of Arizona found that about one-third of girls whose fathers left the home before they turned 6 ended up pregnant as teenagers, compared with just 5 percent of girls whose fathers were there throughout their childhood. A study by Mary Corcoran and Roger Gordon of the University of Michigan shows that receipt of welfare income has negative effects on the long-term employment and earnings capacity of young boys. That study also found that both boys and girls were twice as likely to become unwed teen parents if raised in a fatherless home.
 
Fathers' rights groups have sought to remedy the courts' senseless handling of child custody by introducing and advocating for legislation to change the standard custody arrangement following an uncontested divorce. These laws, introduced in the United States, Australia, and Canada, would ensure equal time with each parent. This would also change how child support is handled, as equal time between the parents would mean that neither should be faced with a greater share of the child's living expenses. This would limit reasons for assigning a child support obligation to factors like differences in income or other personal resources.

Feminist groups have opposed the introduction of laws related to equally shared parenting using writing that uses a dishonest representation of the law as an every-case imperative, and demonization of fathers as deadbeats and abusers to argue against the proposed standard.

Michigan NOW against shared parenting law
(Note that Michigan NOW has scrubbed the original of this post from the 'net. The original link, http://www.now.org/nnt/03-97/father.html, still comes up in searches of Michigan NOW's content, ((screenshot)) is widely referenced, and is quoted all over, but there is now no example of it in its original form. 

NOW "action alert" on father's rights groups

NOW's 1996 Conference Resolutions include anti-shared parenting resolutions that demonize fathers as deadbeats and abusers

National Association of Women and the Law (Canada) against shared parenting law

Shared care laws damaging many children

Caring for children after parental separation: would legislation for shared parenting time help children?

A Feminist Family Agenda: Putting the mother back into sole parenting           

From the Wikipedia article on the men's rights movement, edited by feminists per Project Feminism,

Feminist groups state that if shared parenting were ordered, fathers would not provide their share of the daily care for the children. The National Organization For Women and the  American Bar Association also question the motives of those promoting shared parenting, noting that it would result in substantial decreases in or termination of child support payments.

Feminist arguments include claims that equally shared parenting laws would force judges to place children in abusive homes, and that men only want custody of their children to get out of paying child support. However, proposed laws would not make the equal time standard a set-in-stone requirement, but merely the default in uncontested cases. If a parent does not want that arrangement, he or she can contest it in court. If both parents agree that they want a different arrangement, they can sign a contract to that effect, as well. 

While feminists accuse fathers of being deadbeats who have abandoned their children, available information shows that to be untrue. 

• 40% of mothers reported that they had interfered with the non-custodial father's visitation on at least one occasion, to punish their ex-spouse
  
• Between 25% & 33% of mothers denied visits
• 90% of the violence and kidnapping we have seen are in sole custody situations in which the sole custodial parent fears losing his or her custody status, or the parentectomized parent kidnaps the child away from the sole custody parent who possessively blocks the visiting parent from access.
  

  - Frequency of Visitation by Divorced Fathers: Differences in Reports by Fathers and Mothers - Sanford H. Braver, Ph.D., Sharlene A. WoIchik, Ph.D., Irwin M. Sandler, Ph.D., Bruce S. Fogas, Ph.D., Daria Zvetina, M.Ed. 

• Unilateral abuse of parental custodial power is more common in court ordered sole custody situations.
  

  - Child Custody and Parental Cooperation - Frank Williams, M.D., Dir. Psychiatry

• “Perhaps half of the mothers valued the father's continued contact with his children, and protected the contact with care and consideration. One-fifth saw no value in this whatsoever and actively tried to sabotage the meetings by sending the children away just before the father's arrival, by insisting that the child was ill, or had pressing homework to do, by making a scene, or by leaving the children with the husband and disappearing. In between was a large group of women who had many mixed feelings about the father's visits, resenting the father's excessive gift-giving and his freedom from domestic responsibilities. These irritations were expressed in their difficulties in accommodating the different schedules of the other parent to make the visit possible and to protect the child's access to both parents, in forgotten appointments, in insistence on rigid schedules for the visits, in refusal to permit the visit if the father brought along an adult friend - in a thousand mischievous, mostly petty, devices designed to humiliate the visiting parent and to deprecate him in the eyes of his children."

  - Surviving the Breakup - Joan Berlin Kelly and Judith S. Wallerstein 

•  The former spouse [mother] was the greatest obstacle to having more frequent contact with the children
  

  - Increasing Our Understanding of Fathers Who Have Infrequent Contact With Their Children - James R. Dudley, Professor, University North Carolina

• 70% of fathers felt they had too little time with their children.
• Very few of the children were satisfied with the amount of contact with their fathers, after divorce.
• Few men can afford to legally contest every infringement of the visitation agreement.
  

  -Visitation and the Noncustodial Father - Mary Ann P. Koch, Carol R. Lowery, Journal of Divorce, Vol. 8, No. 2, Winter 1984)

That's not fathers abandoning their children, but mothers refusing to allow their children time with their fathers. This puts fathers in the position of having to take legal action, or tolerate being evicted from their children's lives by custodial mothers. 

While feminists accuse fathers of being abusive, data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services shows that the majority of child abusers are women.

• In 2006, approximately 58% of perpetrators in child abuse cases were women.
• In 2007, 56.5% of the perpetrators were women.
• In 2008, 56.2% of the perpetrators were women.
• In 2009, 53.8% of the perpetrators were women.
• In 2010, 53.6% of the perpetrators were women.
• In 2011, 53.6% of the perpetrators were women again.

The above list of links does show a decline in percentage, but some of that can be accounted for by an overall decline in child abuse in the U.S. over the past 5 years.

Study: Child abuse on decline in U.S. (CBS)
Child Abuse Rate In The U.S. Drops For 5th Straight Year (Huffington Post)

Statistics showing that women are more than half of abuse perpetrators in the U.S. directly contradict NOW's inference that routinely assigning custody to mothers following divorce would prevent children from being placed in abusive homes. One could even come to the conclusion that routinely assigning custody to mothers puts children at greater risk, yet nobody is proposing that mothers be cut out of their children's lives to eliminate that risk.

Baseless accusations and conditions which aren't gender specific are not legitimate reasons to oppose instituting equally shared parenting as the applied custody arrangement in uncontested divorces. As a society, we've seen the negative effects of cutting either parent out of the child's life. Wouldn't it be most beneficial to the child to ensure that he or she receive the benefit of both parents whenever possible?

If the best interest of the child really is the standard feminists embrace, the most sensible way they can show that is by ceasing to oppose equally shared parenting initiatives. That opposition is not rooted in concern over abuse, but self-serving bigotry against men.

The food stamp challenge: highlighting issues with social services (3)

Back to the food stamp challenge:

The description in this story and on this facebook page show that the challenge assumes a monthly stipend of $150.00, or 75% of the maximum allowed for a single person. A single person working 30.5 hours a week at federal minimum wage, paying $550.00 in rent and $125.00 in utilities per month (the bottom end of the national average for a 1 bedroom apartment according to Numbero) or a single person receiving $315.00 a month in unearned income (like alimony) or $393.00 a month in earned income (13.5 hours a week at federal minimum wage, or three 4.5 hour shifts) and listing no expenses would receive this much.

These individuals would also be eligible for other assistance programs (results based on first example - 30.5 hours/week at federal minimum wage, single person) and these services can be applied for simultaneously, reducing or even eliminating the strain on the individual's monetary income, so the treatment of food stamps as the sole available income for grocery spending is, in many cases, false or misleading.

Further, taking a single week out of context, and treating one's shopping budget as per-week with no holdover (as in the rule against using anything existing in your pantry) is a deceptively unfrugal method. This limits the participant from being able to use careful planning and conservative cooking habits to stretch a food budget, as we do at my house, a habit which allowed us to not use all of the budget the state allotted us. Purchasing meat products in larger sizes for a primary usage when they are on sale (a roast, a whole turkey, bulk ground meat) will result in a mass of leftovers which can be divided, frozen, and used in later recipes (soups and stews, casseroles, stir-fries and other mixed foods) is one method that only works if you measure your budget with a long-term approach instead of taking into account only the immediate future. Purchasing ingredients instead of ready-made items is another; cost-effective purchase of ingredients that keep (like flour, oil, rice, or dry beans) means buying more than you will use in a week. Take away that planning ability, and your challenge forces the participant to buy pre-packaged, ready-made foods, the immediate purchase of which is less expensive than the immediate total cost of bulk ingredients, but which will be much more rapidly used up.

One thing that participation in the challenge can demonstrate is the impact of small but repeated wasteful spending habits on a monthly food budget. Single-serve foods and beverages, pre-made foods, and unhealthy snacks can more than double grocery expenses. Another is the impact of shopping at the wrong place. Equidistant from my apartment is a grocery store and a convenience store. The convenience store carries some of the same products as the grocery, but the price difference is considerable, even sticking with just grocery items. A gallon of milk from the convenience store is double the price charged by the grocery. A loaf of bread is two and a half times as much. Delving into the snack and convenience item shelves, there are items which are triple the grocery store price. Worse, when I worked at that little store, we had customers asking if they could use food stamps to purchase fountain drinks, machine-made cappuccino, and roller-grill items (expensive as heck; compare spending $1.50 on one hot dog to $4.00 on a package of 8 at the grocery.) Had the store been able to accept food stamps, the answer would have unfortunately been yes.

I know the point of the exercise is showing that living on food stamps is hard. Of course it's hard. Living on any tight budget is hard. The problem is that Americans are starting to forget the difference between hard, and impossible. It has become too easy to fall back on the government for the answer to every little problem, and to not get back up from that safety net once you're down. It's all to easy too get comfortable extending one's budget on someone else's dollar.

The difficulty in remaining within a $35.00 weekly budget is not solely indicative of insufficient funding, insufficient provision, or callousness on the part of public servants for not finding ways to increase the stipend. It is in part indicative of the incomplete picture presented by the test itself, and more so of the level to which America has relaxed its standards of ingenuity, industriousness, diligence, and tenacity. The only remaining question is how hard will our economy have to crash before we figure that out?

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The food stamp challenge: highlighting issues with social services (2)

3) How does this affect the kids?

From the article Expenditures of single parents: how does gender figure in?

Single fathers are much more likely than single mothers to own their homes. In fact, the numbers are almost exactly opposite with regard to owning and renting: nearly two-thirds of single fathers (64 percent) own their homes, while nearly two-thirds of single mothers (63 percent) rent their homes. Like income, home ownership is an important measure of economic well-being. For example, because owners can build equity in their property, they have greater access to loans in case of emergency or even planned-for events, such as their children’s education.

From The Kids Are Not Really Alright, By W. Bradford Wilcox, Slate, Friday, July 20, 2012:

Take two contemporary social problems: teenage pregnancy and the incarceration of young males. Research by Sara McLanahan at Princeton University suggests that boys are significantly more likely to end up in jail or prison by the time they turn 30 if they are raised by a single mother.  

and

One study by Bruce Ellis of the University of Arizona found that about one-third of girls whose fathers left the home before they turned 6 ended up pregnant as teenagers, compared with just 5 percent of girls whose fathers were there throughout their childhood. This dramatic divide was narrowed a bit when Ellis controlled for parents’ socioeconomic background—but only by a few percentage points. The research on this topic suggests that girls raised by single mothers are less likely to be supervised, more likely to engage in early sex, and to end up pregnant compared with girls raised by their own married parents.

Prolonged family dependence on welfare can lead to a cyclical effect wherein the next generation is primed to trap themselves in the same pattern, rather than seeing improvement in their quality of life in adulthood.

A similar study by Mary Corcoran and Roger Gordon of the University of Michigan shows that receipt of welfare income has negative effects on the long-term employment and earnings capacity of young boys.

The study shows that, holding constant race, parental education, family structure, and a range of other social variables, higher non-welfare income obtained by the family during a boy's childhood was associated with higher earnings when the boy became an adult (over age 25). ⁶ However, welfare income had the opposite effect: The more welfare income received by a family while a boy was growing up, the lower the boy's earnings as an adult.1⁷

and

The current welfare system may be conceptualized best as a system that offers each single mother with two children a "paycheck" of combined benefits worth an average of between $8,500 and $15,000, depending on the state. ¹² The mother has a contract with the government: She will continue to receive her "paycheck" as long as she does not marry an employed man.

and

Daughters of single mothers are twice as likely to be single mothers themselves if they are black, and only slightly less so if they are white. ³⁴ And boys living in a single-parent family are twice as likely to father a child out of wedlock as are boys from a two-parent home. ³⁵ The TALENT study, noted earlier, already had found that children born to teenage parents are more likely to become teen parents themselves. ³⁶

And

Research article: Does Father Absence Place Daughters at Special Risk for Early Sexual Activity and Teenage Pregnancy?
Bruce J. Ellis, John E. Bates, Kenneth A. Dodge, David M. Fergusson, L. John Horwood, Gregory S. Pettit, and Lianne Woodward

In conclusion, father absence was an overriding risk factor for early sexual activity and adolescent pregnancy. Conversely, father presence was a major protective factor against early sexual outcomes, even if other risk factors were present. These findings may support social policies that encourage fathers to form and remain in families with their children (unless the marriage is highly conflictual or violent; Amato & Booth, 1997).

4) What does this mean for the national economy?

Based on the issues described following question 3, and the choice-based phenomenon described following question 1 versus the necessary adaptation described following question 2, we are faced with the problem of a self-perpetuating cycle of choice-based welfare dependency related to single motherhood. In other words, as long as it remains acceptable for courts to choose unemployed mothers over employed fathers for custody awards, the problem will continue, and in fact is likely to escalate.
This is not an indefinitely sustainable system.

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The food stamp challenge: highlighting issues with social services

Recent discussion I've seen on this topic has prompted me to write about it. And no, this isn't specifically, on its own, a men's rights or antifeminist issue. However, it is related in that women are disproportionately served by the Health and Human Services (welfare) department of the U.S. government, and in affording themselves of those benefits, they necessitate government pursuit of paternal child support.
This is not a complaint (well, maybe a little;)  but for purposes of this discussion, a statement of reality, based in the gender disparity in custody awards, and how that effects income and eligibility. There is also a difference in tendency to rely on social services for income assistance. This study is old and small, but it raises an interesting point and some interesting questions.
The point:

while single fathers report more income from employment (wages and salaries or self-employment) and savings and investment (interest, dividend, rental, and other property income), single mothers report much more income from assistance sources (for example, unemployment, workers’ compensation, public assistance, alimony, and child support).

The questions:

1) Why? Why is it that more custodial fathers work and support their families, while more custodial mothers rely on the government?

This question doesn't have a simple answer. It would be easy, as a woman, to attribute factors cited in feminist complaints as reasons why women need support; lack of education, unemployability, the difficulty of juggling single parenthood and a career... but reality does not back up those complaints. Women have been given boost after boost in the American education system. We have special funding for post-secondary education, special funding for business goals... even Walmart has gotten in on the "special initiatives for women" gig. With educational initiatives for women dating back to the 60s, and both government and private initiatives spanning all of that time, there must be another explanation for the discrepancy. When you eliminate lack of opportunity and lack of funding, you're left with choice as the obvious answer.

This choice is facilitated by a system designed to protect custodial mothers from poverty. Custodial parent-designated eligibility for a number of social programs (including medicaid insurance and WIC) begins during or may be enhanced by pregnancy, meaning that unwed mothers may become dependent upon social services for income assistance prior to the effects which child custody can have on ability to attend school or accept work. Income caps on these programs discourage initiative to step up from a welfare income to an independent source, particularly when doing so can result in a loss of "income" before it results in a financial gain.

2) Why is this not also happening with single fathers?

This may be partly explained in differences in the manner in which custody is determined. For mothers, custody begins at conception, as it obviously cannot be altered during gestation. Therefore, for the never-married single mother, maternal custody at birth is a given unless it is contested by, or conceded to the father. In the event of divorce, the default award is similar due to existing social standards.

Paternal custody in unwed circumstances, then will necessarily depend upon one of two things; either mutual choice by both parents, or evidence-based decision by a judge. The latter is dependent upon proof by the petitioning father that he is a fit parent, able to provide for the child, or that the mother is so unfit that by comparison he is the better choice.

The initial-custody gap (wherein the approach to paternal custody begins with a circumstance of maternal custody) promotes a secondary circumstance which has a direct effect on the father's employment status: Mandatory child support payments. In order to make those payments, the payer must have an income, which in most cases necessitates being employed. 

Social standards also contribute to the employment factor; It has been traditionally expected that fathers will be employed, whether single and noncustodial, or married. Though standards have recently begun to evolve to a more gender-neutral approach to parenting, Census bureau data between 1994 and 2010 shows that in the majority of married couple family groups with one stay-at-home parent, that parent has been the mother. This creates a gap in numbers, wherein custody determination begins with unemployed mothers more than with unemployed fathers.

Though food stamps are universally available based on income standards, an unemployed or underemployed single parent with residential custody will necessarily receive a larger stipend than a single individual, or a non-custodial parent.

Further, under federal rules, to be eligible for benefits a household's income and resources must meet three tests: Gross monthly income, Net income, and assets. The first test measures the applicant's gross income (before deductions) against the poverty level to determine eligibility. The second test measures the applicant's net (after deductions) against the poverty level to determine the size of the stipend. The third measures the applicant's available financial resources: households without an elderly or disabled member must have assets of $2,000 or less, and households with an elderly or disabled member must have assets of $3,250 or less, but in many cases, it is the first test which disqualifies a noncustodial father paying child support. In plain English: The first test counts the noncustodial parent's child support payments, often garnished before he receives his paycheck, against his eligibility for food stamps. A man may be assessed a high debt at a judge's whim (not because it's legal, but because once his pay has been confiscated, he can't afford a lawyer or even court costs to contest the ruling) and garnished at up to his state's percentage limit (60% in my state) of his income before other deductions... meaning that after that percentage is taken, the employer will also take out federally required deductions, state tax, and in many cases local taxes. 

On a personal level, I can report that for some years, this left my husband bringing home 15% of his gross pay. Though his net was far below the poverty level, his gross was just a few dollars per month above where the cut-off for food stamps would have been, were he single... just high enough to keep him from being eligible. Fortunately, our situation did not depend on one person's income. Doing 3 (and sometimes 4) different jobs in 3 (and sometimes several) different counties was not easy, but it kept us housed and fed - though I would also note that there have been times in our history when we have been eligible. Most of those times, we have not opted to apply, but sudden, unavoidable changes in employment have led to use of the food stamp system. Even then, we were eligible for more than we needed based on our household's consumption... I'll expand on this later.

The situation which would have been faced by my husband, were he single, is a reality for many men; income to which they never have access is counted against their eligibility for social programs, designating those with borderline-poor gross incomes as ineligible despite their being rendered impoverished by duel government mandate: They are required to work, in order to pay support, so they must accept whatever work they can get... and that percentage of their pay is confiscated regardless of the circumstances that creates, but still counts against their eligibility for government assistance. When your government can take 85% of your income for various reasons and still deny you assistance because on paper you "have" too much, you can't afford to rely on welfare for support.

Custodial parents, on the other hand, may base their eligibility on a larger household by virtue of that custody. There is no mandate requiring custodial parents to hold a paying job, and there are some programs available only to families with children (like the Healthy Start end of the medicaid system, and WIC, the name of which - Women, Infants, Children - is even gendered.) To a point, by qualifying for multiple programs, a single, unemployed or underemployed custodial parent can actually "earn" more through the health and human services department than a full-time worker brings home. While receipt of child support may reduce the dollar amount of services received, unlike for the payer, it does not do so based on income not received by the applicant. Aside from collected taxes (which may be returned as a refund later,) the custodial applicant actually has all of the money considered income for the purpose of determining eligibility. Further, the assessment of that income often divides it between one person more than the number of "earners" (the kids, plus one parent,) and the parent can claim dependent care (babysitting) costs against the income listed. In all, it is much easier for a low-income single parent - more often the mother - to qualify for assistance than for a noncustodial parent - more often the father. 

These combined factors lead to the prevalence of custodial fathers starting out ineligible for assistance due to existing employment circumstances, rather than starting out with the use of social services as a form of financial support.

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Any more stupid questions you wanna ask?

This morning I saw this question asked in /r/feminism, and reading the comments, I stumbled across a discussion on gender rolls and parenting. Contained therein was the accompanying comment on the balance and even-handedness of the courts.

The commenter's opinion about "what should be" notwithstanding (because honestly, if feminists really believe that, why are they not fighting for it?) I decided to address the denial of the discriminatory way family court and government agencies handle fathers. Fed up with hearing so many variations on the lies, "courts don't favor mothers" and "courts don't discriminate against fathers" I decided to speak up.

I knew there were a couple of possibilities. There could be debate... kind of. I could have come back later to find a cascading procession of angry retorts, rhetoric, and other renditions of the company line. I could have been told off for posting something the commenter didn't like, or even dismissed as irrelevant because (as you'll see from my comment) I'm somewhat bitter about the shit sandwich my family was handed by the system this commenter claims doesn't do what it did to us. However /r/feminism is not known for being able to handle genuine debate. They certainly can't handle the knowledge that advocacy of the ideas and ideals they express in their vacuum of communal validation and emotional appeal is actually damaging to others. The denizens of /r/feminism do not have big girl panties, and I did question the validity of their beliefs. I suspected I would be banned from the sub, but if so, that would simply make my point all the more. Feminists throw women like me under the bus to get and maintain their social power.

In the end, that is what happened, though not as I expected. I was not banned. I was a little surprised to return and find the comment deleted without communication. No message was left in my inbox to explain why. In fact, I would not have known about the delete at all, had I not asked a friend to read it, because when I'm logged into reddit, it still shows. It's interesting to learn that, because it means /r/feminism's mods can censor without the cut commenters knowing unless we visit the thread while logged off, or someone else tells us. I wonder how many voices they've silenced that way.

I decided not to be silenced by some self-important twit who can't handle making the choice to either counter what I said, or accept it and let it stand, so I'm posting it here. In response to the above commenter's glowing praise of our nation's broken legal system, I wrote the following.

If you want evidence of how family courts look at gender roles, I have an example for you: My husband.

His ex-wife wanted a career. She wanted to be unfettered by the role of primary caregiver. She was earning $40,000/year in a full-time management position in 1997. She was rarely at home, and did not spend much time at all with the kids because when she wasn't working during the week, she was partying with friends on the weekend, often 100 miles from home (living in the northern part of Ohio, driving to the southern part.) Her (then) husband was a stay at home Dad, in part because he lost his job from having to call in on weekend days when she was supposed to come home, but he couldn't find her.

When she left - breaking up her family for the other man with whom she was cheating - she was still deemed the primary caregiver, still deemed the victim in the divorce, still treated as having full custody of the kids despite a shared parenting agreement... and still awarded child support based on a fictional income applied to his end of the equation, defined by what a social worker thought he should be making so he could support his poor, helpless, (middle-class) ex-wife. After years of barely even paying attention to the kids, she decided she must keep them with her, because it would look bad for her new man, a lay preacher, if his wife's kids not only were not his, but lived with her ex... and even though the actual, factual primary caregiver was the husband, the state treated the wife as holding that right and responsibility merely because she is a woman.
 
I have been with him since about 8 months after the divorce, which occurred in 1997 while she was middle class and he was not a wage-earner (by her design.) Prior to dating him, I watched with our other friends as he tried everything he could to save a marriage the other partner had stopped wanting, then to salvage at least his relationship with his kids in the face of her selfish efforts to cut him out of their lives (but keep his wallet in hers) to facilitate her new lifestyle. There has never once, in the entirety of the relationship between my husband, the ex, and the legal system... not once been equal treatment under the law. Government agencies and the courts have bent over backward for her at every turn, allowing her to extort additional money from him for every lifestyle decision she's made, from quitting her $40,000 a year job, to having more babies who were not even his, to fleeing across the state to keep his children from him so could she try to hide her past by forcing them to falsely use their stepfather's name.

Excuses given for the discrimination ranged from the simply sexist (the tender years doctrine, the assumption that he had abandoned her, treatment of him as a deadbeat for not making more money than she did, treatment of him as irrelevant to the children's well-being aside from money, because he is a man) to the outright antagonistic ...the child support case worker screamed at him on the phone so loud that when he pulled it away from his ear, I could hear her from across the room... shouting that he had no right to interfere with his ex's "new life" by attempting to stay close enough to her kids (yes, hers, and only hers, because he was the irrelevant father) by daring follow her when she fled with them to an isolated little berg near the southern border of the state. She called him a stalker and an abuser for the heinous act of attempting to avoid losing all contact with his own kids... not because he had actually done anything violent or even inconsiderate to his kids or even his ex, but simply because he had the gall to be there for his family.

How dare he.

I listened to this same woman castigate my husband for "making" me pay the overflow of his child support while she simultaneously threatened that if I didn't do it, he'd go to jail.

Then she made me sign a paper saying I wasn't coerced... also under threat that if I didn't, the man I love would go to jail.

Because, you know. That isn't coercion at all.

And the excuse? She needs the money, because she's a mom.

Meaning that I am not a mom.

Because, you know, my son does not count as a child.

I'm the second wife.

I am married to the father of my child.

As such, my son and I don't count for anything to these people, so that case worker was willing to break my back to prevent the ex having to even use hers.

Even if my husband's case were isolated, even if I'd never seen the same treatment handed to other men in my life... friends, relatives, coworkers... I'd still say this is a symptom of the larger issue caused by feminist advocacy. Laws governing family court and policies followed by health and human services agencies are based on the idea that women in divorce, and unwed mothers, are the victims of the fathers of their children. For 25 years, I have watched laws and policies treat efforts of fathers to remain active in their children's lives as an intrusion on the mother's life, while simultaneously facilitating mothers in using the child support system to fund their own life choices. Stories I could tell you range from being just like my husband's experience to many times worse.

Women who don't take advantage of that system and don't marry divorcees with kids don't see it happening.

Women who do take advantage, don't admit it.

Women like me, who see it, are often afraid to speak up because when we do we are beaten down by other women for our trouble.

That doesn't mean it isn't happening.

It means most women aren't invested in trying to fix it.

If someone among the readers and commenters here wants to tell me how the system as it works now constitutes equal treatment, how if he were a woman, the case would have gone exactly the same way, I would be interested to hear your
reasoning excuses.

You might even be able to offer me some case or another, an exception to the 25 years of discrimination I've witnessed, and treat that as the counterbalance for the many, many cases which go the opposite way.

If someone wants to tell me how justified and reasonable it was to take away the focus of my husband's life because his female ex wanted to look respectable to church people after cheating and breaking up her family to run off with another man, I would be interested in that 
argument  propaganda, too.

If you want to tell me how women are victimized by the consideration given them by this system, by all means, go ahead and tell me all about it. How terrible it must be to have an entire network of judges and government workers think you're so incapable of backing up your own decisions that you have to be supported by someone else. What a burden it must be to have to constantly play victim in order to make part of your living.

Maybe someone who supports the system could explain to me how child support workers who take sides are unbiased, who accuse men without knowledge are reasonable, who presume guilt without evidence are benevolent.

Why, after 25 years of watching the family law and family government systems and the people who run them show searing hatred and angry disdain for men, should I have any sympathy for women who walk out on their husbands and then cannot support that decision on their own?

Why should a second wife, who has seen the damage that so-called "pro-woman" advocacy does to everyone but the selfish and the heartless, give a rat's ruddy ass about defending the innocence of your ideology?

Modern feminist advocates of victimology and sex-politics may be able to bullshit younger women and many men, but what do you think you can present that is going to bullshit someone like me, who has had the wool ripped from her eyes by experience? Do you have anything besides rhetoric? Anything I haven't already heard? Anything besides opinion, ancient history, cheesy catch-phrases and twisted terminology? Anything real, solid, and current?

I got my answer to those questions with the deletion of the comment: no. No, they can't present anything to justify the presented position. They cannot demonstrate balance in the courts. They cannot back up the commenter's denial, and they cannot even defend their general ideology.

As for the original question, "Is there a reason why Men's rights and Women's rights can't coexist and produce equal rights?" the answer is feminists. Feminists cannot accept the reasons behind the MRM, because many, if not most of those reasons trace right back to their own house. You cannot work together with another group for a cause you've been fighting against throughout your entire history. You can claim to be interested in cooperating on gender issues, but in reality, you are more interested in pushing your own agenda than in working with anyone else, particularly if working with others means having to question the validity of the agenda you've been pushing. Why? Because you'd rather be confident than right.
And confident you are. You go, girl!
Go right on spouting feminism's company line, while more and more women see through your bullshit and either leave, or like me, never join your ranks in the first place.