(sigh) I don't get PMS, at least, I don't experience emotional symptoms...so no benefits for me there. Women who use this excuse may obtain some benefits from it, but I wouldn't consider it to be overall a benefit, because they are also usually held in deep contempt while being handed the benefit, which precludes them from being able to obtain more important benefits, those which are associated with actually being respected by others. But that's just my opinion. I've never heard of it as an excuse for murder, though I have heard of postpartum depression and PMDD as excuses for murder.
The fact remains it is often a free pass for behavior which would never be excused in men.
Actually knew someone who suffered from postpartum psychosis. It's not a joke or a lie; it's a real, measurable psychiatric disorder. If a woman kills someone(s) because of it, she needs to be locked up for her own safety and the safety of others and given treatment ASAP, just like anybody else with a dangerous psychiatric disorder. Andrea Yates got life in prison, to the best of my knowledge--is that incorrect?
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/yates/Her conviction got overturned. The point of it all is that her, like Susan Smith, get understanding. Russell Yates - my God. Google him, and browse. I mean, He got her help, he supported his family - and somehow it got twisted around in a lot of places like it was his fault.
Man kills his kids - is there hand-wringing, pleas for understanding - or calls for a fair trial followed by a first-class lynching?
I don't know about that from personal experience, but it sounds like a reasonable assertion. I will research it. I WILL, but now my list of research is getting very, very long. So it may take a little while...sorry..!
I've seen it happen time and again in divorce cases. Woman claims she is the primary caregiver and is taken at her word. Man claims it, and evidence is required. And it happened to me - despite my diary and documentation that I was the primary caregiver for my son, not to mention witnesses - INCLUDING HER MOTHER - it was dismissed in favor of her assertion that "Unh-uh- Me! It was me!"
I don't know what that is, sorry?
That children below a certain age belong with their mother.
Girl pushups don't exist in the modern Army, though I can't speak for other branches, so no privilege there. Sex-segregated sports are more of a mixed blessing than a privilege--they give women a lot more chances to compete, but they also reduce the respect women athletes are held in. Sort of a privilege...sort of not.
Well, they did in mine. It's not so much that they exist that is the problem - the sexual dimorphism of the human species is empirically observable. It's the insistance that the lower achievement is AS GOOD that get's annoying, the more so when it is used for job fitness tests.
Honest question here...isn't all the above in VAWA gender-neutral? By law, couldn't my husband do all that to me too? Not that either of us would, but couldn't he?
Hehehe. There's the law as written, and the law as applied. The day a strapping man such as myself could walk into a court and seek an ex-parte restraining order because I claimed "fear" of a five and a half foot tall one hundred and twenty pound woman would be a historical one indeed.
Look up "Duluth Model."
No, I can't agree with this one. Women are routinely told to "keep your legs closed" in the most sneering and derisive tone possible. Abstinence programs do not, in my experience of them, urge girls to be *more* abstinent than boys.
Let's rephrase then - suppose a young woman sought an abortion or to give a baby up for adoption and was told, "No, you're young and healthy, you can work - you can have/keep this baby and support it. You should've kept your skirts down."
I support abortion on demand. However, I don't support forcing a man to pay for a child that he didn't want born in the first place, and if someone would put forth a law giving men a legal out, I'd support it (is anybody? because I've never seen anything like that even suggested by my gov't officials). I think that the "privilege" of choice about birth is neatly counteracted by the "non-privilege" of being the one giving birth...net gain = zero for women.
That type of law is one I often use for shock value, but no - I think children have a right to their parents, and parents a right to their children. What is a true crock of shit as far as child support goes is that a man who writes a check every week and has jack and shit to do with his kids is counted by society and the law a better father than one who is broke but engaged in their lives - and the law then works on disengaging that father from their lives via a host of punative means. Miss a few CS payments - no matter what the reason - and watch a life go to hell.
Deny visitation, though? Deny active participation by the father into the child's life? You can go through over a year of runaround before you even get a hearing - on your own dime, where a CS action is "on the county" - and then you're likely to get a wink and a nod, and a worthless "That's not what you should be doing." Visitation is a court order. Defiance of it is contempt, but it is just not enforced.
As far as bearing children, I have to say that there are few mothers I know who considered it a burden. And just for reference, I asked every Mother in my SCA group if they would have traded carrying and bearing any of their kids with their husbands - all answered in the negative once they realized my question was serious.
I have watched this happen twice, with completely opposite results. Sorry, this is in no way a guaranteed female privilege. I must disagree with you here.
It may not be foolproof - but it does work a lot; and something a man would be laughed at for even trying in all but the most egregious examples of female behavior.
This is not what happens in my ex-husband's county (he's a cop). Seriously, it isn't. In his county, this "female privilege" does not exist.
That's one county. Like I said, the whole series "Cops" is my reference.
:evil: Women have done this to me so many times I've lost count. If this is a female privilege, it's one they exercise against other females too. If you know any snappy comebacks for ladies who do this (that won't get me arrested) please pass them on.
Well, you could get away with a snappy comeback.
Well, I do get away with it*, but I get dirty looks for loudly calling her "Princess" and being a sarcastic asshole, and suggestions I have no manners for not letting her treat me like a doormat. But I really don't care what people think of me in that respect, so my response is highly atypical and not socially accepted behavior.
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*I mean seriously, WTF are they gonna do? If they locked up people for being shitheads, we wouldn't have the outside population and infrastructure to support the jail system.