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Comment by aroch | Hacker News Reader

Really? Because it seems that feminists say men can't take care of children, particularly by so convincing the US judicial system that only women can care for children that it takes extraordinary circumstances for a father to get custody. Modern, vocal feminists have, by and large, become severely anti-men in many of their policies. From convincing the world that all men are rapists and manipulating definitions of rape to induce male perpetrators. To the lovely Tumble feministas /SJW who spread vile, hate-filled messages against men. To a court system and public that's been convinced by the feminist political machine that women need to be protected and there's no way they could possibly rape someone or lie about being raped.

There's no such thing as the patriarchy in modern culture. Feminists like using that word as a scapegoat and explanation for everything they do and don't like.

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> Because it seems that feminists say men can't take care of children, particularly by so convincing the US judicial system that only women can care for children that it takes extraordinary circumstances for a father to get custody.

This is not true at all. In cases where fathers seek custody, they have a good chance of gaining custody or arriving at a shared custody arrangement.

> Modern, vocal feminists have, by and large, become severely anti-men in many of their policies. From convincing the world that all men are rapists and manipulating definitions of rape to induce male perpetrators.

Are you serious? When someone points out that most rapes are committed by men they aren't saying all men are rapists. Also, there has been tremendous effort to expand definitions of rape, esp. from a legal standpoint, to be more inclusive of sexual assault as it happens, whether it be to men or women and whether committed by a man or woman.

> To the lovely Tumble feministas /SJW who spread vile, hate-filled messages against men.

Please, tell me more about how someone venting about men oppresses you.

> To a court system and public that's been convinced by the feminist political machine that women need to be protected and there's no way they could possibly rape someone or lie about being raped.

This is the exact opposite thing that feminist and activist communities are fighting against. The notion that women are fragile and need special protections is highly misogynistic and patriarchal. That consideration of woman has been generally used against women and to prevent their access to equality over the last 100 years+.

Further, nobody is arguing that women cannot commit rape. If somewhere were to argue that, they would be discounting the experiences of many sexual assault survivors. Also, yes women can lie about rape, but that is not the primary issue with sexual assault and catching those that commit sexual assaults as the majority of sexual assaults go without a conviction and sexual assault continues to be a large scale social problem.

> There's no such thing as the patriarchy in modern culture. Feminists like using that word as a scapegoat and explanation for everything they do and don't like.

You are so obsessed with straw feminists that this is ridiculous. Like anything, there are many different voices and opinions that use the label feminism, but you seem to rather want to ignore any social problems in favor of blaming women.

>This is not true at all. In cases where fathers seek custody, they have a good chance of gaining custody or arriving at a shared custody arrangement.

~18% of fathers are the custodial parent. Shared custody favors the mothers in most circumstances.

>60% of of fathers (regardless of custodial status) are required to pay child support to the mother.

On average, women are awarded more child support than men -- Women also receive >85% of all child support paid every year.

>Are you serious? When someone points out that most rapes are committed by men they aren't saying all men are rapists. Also, there has been tremendous effort to expand definitions of rape, esp. from a legal standpoint, to be more inclusive of sexual assault as it happens, whether it be to men or women and whether committed by a man or woman.

Then why are we pushing campaigns to teach men not to rape but not women? Why are colleges around the US putting students through rape awareness education only telling men not to rape? As for redefinitions, feminists pushed for the recent FBI expansion that makes forced fallatio rape but not forced cunnilingus. They also pushed for the definition to be forced penetration by the accused, excluding cases where a man is forced to penetrate by the women.

>Please, tell me more about how someone venting about men oppresses you.

Please tell me more about derailing by insulting.

>You are so obsessed with straw feminists that this is ridiculous. Like anything, there are many different voices and opinions that use the label feminism, but you seem to rather want to ignore any social problems in favor of blaming women.

As usual, those voices (despite being some prolific and vocal, really being the face of feminism today) are No True Scotsman'ed out of being feminists.

> ~18% of fathers are the custodial parent. Shared custody favors the mothers in most circumstances.

This is correct, the overall rate is low. However, this doesn't take into account rates of fathers seeking custody. About 50% of fathers seeking primary custody in divorce cases are granted such custody. It should be noted that fathers generally do not see primary custody as frequently as women in these cases, which skews the overall rate.

> 60% of of fathers (regardless of custodial status) are required to pay child support to the mother.

I don't dispute this. However, rates of payout are different from legal obligation to pay. Any person, man or woman, receiving child support are more likely to only receive some partial sum of child support, if any. Moreover, there is already income inequality for women in general in the US, this will have a bearing on whether or not fathers, who are statistically more likely to be better paid, have to pay child support.

> On average, women are awarded more child support than men -- Women also receive 85% of all child support paid every year.

As you yourself noted, women are much more likely to be performing primary custody and care for a child, we would then expect that women receive more child support then men in such an arrangement. As I mentioned before, this is a bit misleading as many people don't receive full amounts of child support or have some kind of informal support arrangement that is not court ordered.

> Then why are we pushing campaigns to teach men not to rape but not women? Why are colleges around the US putting students through rape awareness education only telling men not to rape?

Rape and sexual assault is overwhelmingly committed by men. Prevention messages and campaigns are targeted this way for this reason. That is not to say that they deny that women can commit sexual assault, but rather that a primary problem is behaviors committed by people who are men. Campaigns that focus on women's behavior are not addressing this fact.

> As for redefinitions, feminists pushed for the recent FBI expansion that makes forced fallatio rape but not forced cunnilingus.

This is not true. The new summary of the change for the FBI includes: "or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim".

> They also pushed for the definition to be forced penetration by the accused, excluding cases where a man is forced to penetrate by the women.

The FBI definition still has problems, for sure. It focuses far too much on penetration as rape rather than non-consensual sexual contact. However, there were a wide variety of voices, feminist and not, that noted this when the FBI made its change and are continuing to call for more change. Like I said, there are many voices in feminism, some of which call for things that are shortsighted or don't make sense. To claim that this is wholly representative of feminism is what creates a strawman.

> Please tell me more about derailing by insulting.

As a man you do not face systematic discrimination and power imbalance due to your gender, that is why I mentioned it. When someone complains about men online, you are not seriously impacted due to your gender.

> As usual, those voices (despite being some prolific and vocal, really being the face of feminism today) are No True Scotsman'ed out of being feminists.

I made no such fallacy. Those voices exist and are associated with feminism. However, they are not the total representation of feminist voices and to make it seem as though they are is not talking about serious issues in good faith.

> When someone complains about men online, you are not seriously impacted due to your gender.

That statement contradict itself. People commonly complain (like the above comments) when men complain about feminism. If its been a woman complain about feminism, it would be acceptable.

In this specific context (a person complain about feminism), men are seriously negative impacted due to their gender.

~18% of fathers are the custodial parent. Shared custody favors the mothers in most circumstances. >60% of of fathers (regardless of custodial status) are required to pay child support to the mother. On average, women are awarded more child support than men -- Women also receive >85% of all child support paid every year.

Yes, that's the misogynist patriarchy for you. Women are no better at raising children than men. But in Old-Fashioned-Patriarchy-Land, people think women are "naturally" better and men are "naturally" worse. It's called "benevolent sexism".

And when feminists support that model of "benevolent sexism", they indirectly support a misogynistic society.

Or we could always redefine that no true feminist would ever say that a woman are more needed (or is better) at taking care of a young child than men. With public platforms like twitter and facebook, organization could easy purge members which such statements if they wanted.

"no true feminist would ever say that a woman are more needed (or is better) at taking care of a young child than men"

while I am not a scholar of women's studies, I would hazard that most modern feminists would agree with this statement.

What makes you think feminists support that model? They don't.

"Israel is one of the last countries in the world where the Tender Years Doctrine is still in force, if not the last. While the clause reflects an old world order in which mothers were expected to be homemakers and fathers were breadwinners, many feminist politicians and women's groups refuse to have it amended, claiming that the time is not yet ripe for such a change and that men will take advantage of it to put pressure on women in divorce." - http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/174956#.Urn...

I also read with some horror this for a self-claimed feminist:

"Yet under no-fault divorce, a woman can find herself essentially a single mom, drained of family resources by court costs and lawyer fees, and suddenly required to work against her will and sacrifice time with her children." - http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/05/10031/

Hopefully all the above is today a minority view, but it should not be glossed completely over. Feminists and fathers right groups should under all circumstances agree on gender equality, which mean equal time with children and equal requirement to work in an effort to support their own children.

I think I should make some writeup for responses to MRAs, because I think I understand the worldview and bought into it myself for a long time. Of course the response might not be perfect this time around, but I can perfect it incrementally.

The first thing that is crucial to understand is that feminism itself is not the enemy. In fact, intelligent feminists should care about the problems you list. I'm not saying they do, but they should, because feminism isn't anti-men, it's anti gender roles. This means that problems like men being pressured to bury their emotions, or men not getting proper mental health care, or men not getting fair custody, or men not being taken seriously when they are raped, are all things that feminism is supposed to be fighting against. The fact that our society often ignores these problems is not because of feminism, it's because of sexism. Feminists often do ignore problems like this with men, and those feminists are either ignorant or bigoted, because sexist oppression caused by society to men, and sexist oppression caused by society to women, have the same root and are part of the same problem that feminism is trying to fix. This is not a fringe view of feminism. This is the normal view.

The second thing that is crucial to understand is that the caricature of sexist tumblr-warrior "feminists" (that do indeed exist) are a distraction. The fact that people like this are taken seriously probably bothers me as much as it bothers you. However, these people are misrepresenting feminism. They do not say what feminism is supposed to represent. You can think of them as the crazy bigoted Christians or Muslims that are technically part of the same group, but do not represent the whole.

Finally, you have to realize that gender roles and sexism are oppressing men and women. I think the reason so many feminists react badly to men's rights advocates is because they marginalize women's problems while promoting men's. In truth I think this is just a reaction from seeing feminist groups do the reverse. Really, both are a problem. Just because one is a problem doesn't make another problem any more or less important. So instead of saying "This is ridiculous to be worrying about when much worse is happening to men and nobody cares," try saying, "This is an important problem," and separately, "These other things are happening to men and nobody cares."

This sentiment is often attributed to humanism, rather than feminism. Is there any distinct difference?

M-W defines "patriarchy" as: "a family, group, or government controlled by a man or a group of men."

90% of Congressmen, 95% of Fortune 500 CEO's, and 90% of Forbes 400 are men. The government and the most important corporations that people work for, along with the richest people in the country, are overwhelmingly controlled by men. That's the literal definition of patriarchy.

I give 0-shits about how M-W defines that word. Why? Because they until very recently defined rape as an act committed by a man against a women and now have added wiggle-words to their definition to make it seem like a less pejorative against men. Their "examples of rape" involves or intimates a male assessor.

It's absolutely hilarious for you to ascribe this definition to feminism, because it actually derives from the common law definition of rape, which is hundreds of years old and predates modern feminism by more than quite a bit. The common law definition is an anachronism in more ways than one--it excludes rape against men in the same breath as it excludes spousal rape against women.

The most deeply ironic thing about your post is that it was feminists who led the effort to reform rape laws in the 1970s-1990s, which included making them gender neutral in addition to applying within marriages and eliminating degrees that made rape by acquaintances less severe than rape by strangers.

Modern feminists also pushed for the FBI definition of rape which is forced penetration but construed in such a way that it really only covers insertion of a penis. They also pushed for useless laws like rape shields which prevents the accused from addressing their accuser in the press while allowing the accusers to speak freely. They also pushed the "Dear Colleague" letter that's lowered the standard to preponderance in disciplinary hearings that strongly favors female accusers.

The modern definition of rape is no longer the one espoused by second wave feminists, which I happen to agree with. Rape shouldn't be a gendered crime, but thirdwave and radical feminists don't seem to think so.

> Rape shouldn't be a gendered crime,

Rape perpetrators are overwhelmingly male. You do realise that, right? Because without at least an acknowledgement that that vast majority of rape is carried out by men there's no point engaging with you.

That seems to be a question better suited for empirical evidence than an ideological litmus test. I'll agree it's the conventional wisdom that more men than women commit rape, and it seems likely, but the whole point of feminism is to challenge conventional wisdom when it comes to gender and to avoid excluding people's valid experiences based on their gender. The question isn't whether statistically more men than women commit rape, the question is whether men who are raped and abused by women are marginalized and systemically denied justice by a system that asserts that such acts are impossible. Judging from the experiences of male victims of abuse and rape, unfortunately it seems that they are not only denied justice but systemically oppressed.

You make interesting points, around which a useful discussion can be had.

The MRA aroch is not interested in any of that, as can be seen by their weird use of cherry picked data to make outlandish claims.

I just wanted to check, and they've provided confirmation.

>Rape perpetrators are overwhelmingly male. You do realise that, right?

No, they really aren't. The majority of "rapes" are institutional (meaning they happen in prisons and other custodial environments) and are perpetrated by women against women (See the Canadian prison systems 2011 report). Further, rape statistics are skewed by how rape is defined -- almost singularly as something committed by a man . In many jurisdictions, a women forcibly having sexual contact with a man is sexual assault and not rape. The '1 in 6' (or '1 in 5' depending on who says it) number of women raped is bullshit.

Yes, all feminists are the same and it's impossible for one person/group which calls itself "feminist" to do something that other femininsts wouldn't agree to.

There's a massive difference between high-status men and low-status men.

High-status men are almost certainly part of a patriarchy, but as you've probably noticed are loved and admired by millions of women.

Low-status men in contrast have very little power and wealth, but get almost all of the flak for the patriarchy and in contrast significantly less access to women.

This term patriarchy is rarely used by a woman against men that she respects or admires even if they are extremely privileged. Most of the time it's a rationalisation for why she hates the average man that is uninteresting to her sexually.

So, yes, there is a patriarchy, but it's an integral part of the sexual politics which forces men to aggressively shoot for the top or receive nothing; it's not something that you can get rid of without the macro desires of women changing considerably; we're all part of the same system - one which orders men and women around masculine elitism.

It's not low-status men making the decisions about parental leave policies.

Quite right. I was simply pointing out that the word "patriarchy" is often used to imply that all men are extremely privileged, and the reason why this word doesn't even begin to negatively effect the real male ruling class.

(What I was saying doesn't have much to do with the original article, but has a lot to do with the comment above yours saying "patriarchy doesn't exist.")

There's a massive difference between high-status men and low-status men.

This is called "intersectionality". Sometimes people have advantages from being one thing (e.g. male), but they also have disadvantages due to being other things (e.g. a low-status person). You could have a gay white low-status male. They're male, so they have some advantages there, they're low status, so they have some disadvantages, white, so they have some advantages, and gay, so they have some disadvantages. Not everyone who is male automatically is disadvantage free. It's the intersection of all these things that are important in different situtations.

You've discovered intersectionality, doesn't mean male priviliege and the patriarchy doesn't exist. It just means that for many people "It's complicated"

>> You've discovered intersectionality

I read about that years ago and I don't take kindly to others trying to humiliate me with condescending statements like that.

>> doesn't mean male priviliege and the patriarchy doesn't exist

That is why I said: "So, yes, there is a patriarchy."

But you miss the whole point as what I said has nothing to do with intersectionality. I'm trying to make the point that "men" even without some kind of obvious status disqualifiers are not always on the top of the status hierarchy. This is the case with almost all big groups. It's not so simple. I was also trying to point out that it's the lowest status men that get derided for being patriarchal as high status is attractive and untouchable.

All of that straw!

Always the exactly same unsubstantiated ridiculous MRA delusions. Please stop spreading lies. If you think you don't spread lies please examine your beliefs and why you have them.

Show me the strawman?

> particularly by so convincing the US judicial system that only women can care for children that it takes extraordinary circumstances for a father to get custody.

The "extraordinary circumstances" that it takes for a father to get custody is to ask -- in the vast majority of cases where the father contests custody, he wins. While I don't think "the patriarchy" is the best construct (for reasons I discuss later) for explaining the world, the truth is that men don't end up with custody in the vast majority of cases because they are socialized not to seek it, and that socialization isn't a product of opposition -- by feminists or anyone else -- to traditional gender roles as binding archetypes.

> There's no such thing as the patriarchy in modern culture.

While "the patriarchy" is a not-unreasonable name for how the system of established social structures (yes, now, as well, though even moreso at the dawn of feminism) appears to someone who is both female and has a self-image that conflicts with its gender-based norms, its a problematic name in that it fails to recognize two key factors about the system: (1) that men are also bound by it, and (2) that, despite role differences, women also exercise power within it and are no less likely to be psychically invested in preserving it.

That being said, however much "the patriarchy" isn't a great name for what feminists use it to describe, what is described with that term is very real.

> in the vast majority of cases where the father contests custody, he wins

Can you show a citation for this?

Ha, not even close. Census data shows that of men who wished to have custody, only ~18% gained it.

Trying to silence a feminist by shooting down things that they say that don't align with your out of whack view of feminism isn't going to do one single thing to help with the problems you're talking about.

Hum. If someone is saying that men can't take care of children. He or She is not a feminist. You know that not every women is a feminist right ? Now... the problem is that the judicial system is macho and, yes, thinks that only a woman can take care of a child. That's utterly chauvinistic (in the American sense of chauvinistic).

Actually I'm not answering the rest of your post it's too much hate filled and trollistic to deserve a response. I'm sorry you feel like that.

> If someone is saying that men can't take care of children. He or She is not a feminist.

I find it extremely difficult to talk about feminism because it means different things to different people. More than once I have heard statements about feminism from women who self-identify as feminist that contradict one another.

How can I answer the question "are you a feminist?" when the term may mean something very different to the questioner than to myself? Indeed, it may mean something to them that I find incorrect or immoral.

Even amoung hard-core feminists (we're talking people who's job is to work in university's as women's studies professors and write books on this stuff), there can be a lot of disagreement.

Biggest example is trans people. Some old-skool femininsts are very trans-phobic.

I'd like to see you go on to the streets and ask 10 random women with children if they would like the fathers of their children to have the same amount of parental leave as them (or more!). Outside of exceptional circumstances the answer would be a strong, resounding yes.

If you think modern feminists have "won" and "control" the (US) justice system, you're wrong. Feminists are often complaining about the misogynist court sentences and proceedings.

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