Men don't have to have shitty jobs. Men don't have to be the breadwinner. Men don't have to get married nor take care of kids. These are optional.
In case you haven't noticed julie - they do.
With more and more women going into the cushy, air conditioned, ergonomic, affirmative action driven jobs and boys being treated like evil potential patriarchs in the education system more and more men are marginalised into the shitty jobs that are left over.
Men are expected to be a breadwinner whether or not they have responsibility to family. They don't have any plan B which entitles them to reproduce and live off somebody else's earnings.
I don't even have kids but I'm paying bucketloads for the kids of others.
Exactly. Society DOES have to change it's mind set. This is the same thing that happened when women wanted to work. The man was looked down upon as if he was a loser. He was considered less a man because she worked. He was supposed to be the sole breadwinner and provider. (Mind you this was not the reality for all women. Some or many did already work)
Glad you mentioned that women did already work.
In the sixties in Australia one average income could support a family. Now it requires more than two. We were well on the way to creating a society where even that one breadwinner wouldn't have to work full time. What changed? Think supply and demand.
Of course you are right. I am not sure why feminists were intrusive to men's groups? Maybe some form of fear of losing their power.
Maybe they fear their dishonesty being exposed.
I do hear that this is an important want from men's groups. And yet there are some that I know of that have no involvement of women at all. Men are complaining in these groups. There are not enough feminists to control the amount of men's groups that exist and are popping up.
Which is why they attempt other ways of shutting the mens groups down. See the Canadian free speech situation. Australian examples are the glossy news magazine portrayals a few years back of men's groups as being Nazi brown shirts. Or articles such as
Stephen Fisher's Are Men Evil. Fisher, by the way is the director of welfare studies at one of our colleges. Imagine the prejudice he creates in the minds of future welfare workers.
I have not been aware of anti male protests but I am aware of the anti male attitude out there.
The seriously anti male stuff, with some exceptions, didn't really start till the early eighties by which time feminism was becoming part of the establishment.
I'll jump the rest of your post as it's mostly meaningless.
You keep refering to the "patriarchy". I know I sometimes do this myself but truth is I don't believe there was ever such a beast. I see it as a misrepresentation of "heirarchy".
@foldedintobeauty
Spitzer DID NOT abandon his children or family.
ok so anyway julie, damn, you write way too much for me to read right now, but you said something i've been wanting to say for the last few days now and haven't had a chance. the claim that women abuse children more than men would only be because women are usually the caregivers and it is a full-time job - no breaks, no naps, no downtime, no sleeping through the night. it's a full-time job 24/7 and for lower-income families, and single mother households it's even worse. so, maybe people should stop crying about women abusing children and start doing something to make their lives easier so they can be better fucking mothers. the end.
What utter bullshit. Compare the outcomes for single mothers against those of single fathers. The children of single fathers fare no worse than those from intact families. Single mothers produce outcomes multiple times worse for every single negative social indicator.
yes because raising someone for 20 years at the poverty level is every poor woman's dream!
It's much easier than working for a living. Subsidised housing. Four thousand dollars for every birth. Thousands each year per child in family allowances. Plus a full pension which itself increases according to the number of children.
I live about half a mile from a housing commission estate littered with single mothers. I'm also a volunteer at the local community house so I see and hear much of the interaction between those folk. They all have reasonably new cars, wide screen TVs, all the drugs you can eat - you name it.
I work, they don't, but most of them have more than I. Tough life for some.
