Men's Awareness

Marriage rates have gone down 50% since 1970 in the United States. Traditionally, it is men who ask women to marry them, not the other way around. Put the two of these facts together and you have a culture of American men who are just not asking women to marry them.

Here is an article from iVillage.com called "Do guys hate when we talk about marriage?" It is filled with the standard women's magazine attitude that men's lack of commitment is their fault due to being inferior to women, or insecure in some way. Indeed, it is men who are answering the questions in the articles, but are they going to publish responses from men who give reasons women won't like? No. They would be more likely to publish the comments from the men that put women up on a pedestal and make them feel superior. I once read a Cosmo article that said something along the lines of how men stay little boys long after they are grown up, and that is why they are insecure and have trouble committing.

Do an experiment. Ask any woman why she thinks men avoid long relationships and marriage. I'm sure anything they say will make it sound like it is men's fault and how they are in some way all damaged.

Lets face it, long-term commitment often spells marriage. Marriage leads to kids. Men do avoid these things, but there are real reasons other than the ones given by the usual female "experts". Many answers can be found in the way the U.S. legal system treats men differently compared to women in the areas of divorce, child custody and child support. Most marriages end in divorce and women can gain from these split-ups because of a deeply rooted anti-male bias in family court caused by feminist influence. Men almost automatically lose out. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is another reason, not because men would prefer to hit their partners, but because it legally sanctions female to male intimate partner violence by not protecting men and only protecting women.

It may be hard for men to notice, but fathers get a bad reputation just for being fathers. There is certain degradation in popular culture and society that dads have to put up with which mother's, usually viewed as the superior parent automatically, would never tolerate. Watch an episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond". His wife raises her voice to him, demasculates him, sexually humiliates him and insults his manhood. Listen carefully to every self-righteous, manipulative or sexist thing she says and think to yourself how the show would look if Raymond was the one saying the lines to his wife. Wouldn't it be domestic abuse? Would feminists and a lot of women think that is an acceptable way to portray a wife as a simple-minded mental punching-bag? Speaking of simple-minded, why are so many TV fathers and husbands portrayed as complete jack-asses? The Simpsons and Family guy are two of the funniest shows on TV, but the anti-father bias is flamboyantly blatant.

You might wonder where this bias comes from. In my opinion, it stems from the anti-male bias in family law. That particular aspect of the legal system has been heavily influenced by women's activist groups to the point where it is a kangaroo court. 90% of custody battles sway in favor of mom. Why? because feminists spread false statistics about men and manipulate the legal system to work in their favor. When they're finished, they still claim that men discriminate against them.

Dr. Linda Nielsen is Professor of Adolescent Psychology & Women's Studies at Wake Forest. She has written a paper based on different books on divorced fathers which compiles all of the data in a paper called "Disenfranchising, Demeaning, and Demoralizing Divorced Dads : A Review of the literature". You can view it in PDF format here. Here are some interesting stats that she has compiled, along with a number of references and resources, quoted from her paper where she debunks many myths:

Contrary to the popular image of "deadbeat dads", 75% of divorced fathers are fully meeting their financial obligations to their children. Four million fathers are paying 12 billion dollars a year in child support. Moreover, those divorced men with the highest incomes are usually paying for most, if not all, of their children’s expenses - especially when the mother did not work full time outside the home throughout their marriage (Artlip, Artlip, & Saltzman. 1993; Farrell. 1994; Hetherington & Stanley-Hagan. 1997; Sheehy. 1998). And when the mother grants the father some voice in how his child support money is being spent, the father rarely fails to pay and often pays more than is legally required of him (Arditti. 1992; Bender & Brannon. 1994; Depner & Bray. 1993; Blau. 1994; Dudley. 1991; Kelley. 1995; Maccoby & Mnookin. 1994; Mandell. 1995; Parke. 1996; Pasley, Ihinger-Tallman, & Lofquist. 1994; Seltzer & Brandreth. 1994; Teachman. 1991)

Here is another excerpt from the paper which explains the emotional impact on divorced men and how they can suffer at least as much, possibly even more, than a divorced woman:

A number of us - including the millions of children whose parents are divorced - also do not seem to understand that fathers suffer as much or more emotionally as mothers after a divorce. Indeed it seems as if people more readily envision the divorced father as a carefree “swinging bachelor” rather than as a depressed, lonely, disoriented human being. Many children, therefore, might be surprised to learn that men are more likely than women to become depressed, commit suicide, or develop a stress-related illness after their divorce. Most divorced fathers are extremely lonely, overwrought, and disoriented - mainly because they have lost daily contact with their children. Unlike mothers, almost all fathers are essentially rendered childless as soon as their marriage ends. In part because men are so reluctant to let people know how miserably unhappy and depressed they are or to ask for help, many people including their own children - do not appreciate the extent to which most men suffer after a divorce (Beer. 1992; Bender & Brannon. 1994; Buehler & Ryan. 1994; Depner & Bray. 1993; Flynn & Hutchinson. 1993; Kitson & Holmes. 1992; Kruk. 1991; Pledge. 1992; Pruett. 1992; Warshak. 1992).

Is it interesting how divorced fathers are more likely to commit suicide than divorced mothers? According to maledeperession.org men are far more likely than women to suffer from depression and commit suicide in general.

Even more shocking is how women can abuse the one-sidedness of the family law system to commit what many people are now calling paternity fraud. Paternity fraud comes in different forms. One example is women who plan to become pregnant with the intent of turning the child into an 18-year meal ticket by taking advantage of the child-support system. Like Dr. Neilson says, men automatically lose out after a divorce. Another example is men paying for kids which are not even theirs because of lack of requirements for DNA tests. In most U.S. states men have a limited window of time, if any at all, to use DNA to prove they are not the father. This has lead to men paying child-support for kids who do not belong to them. Here is an example of a man who had a vasectomy, just for his girlfriend to become pregnant from another man and lie and say the baby is his. There is also the case of the Florida man who owes $10,000 for a child who is not his. That is not the only case of its kind, many men are stuck in debtor's prison. Here are several more examples of paternity fraud. Finally, a transcript of Judge Judy discussing paternity fraud on Larry King.

Men are vilified by all the femstats "proving" we're bad, which are then used to influence standards which punish all fathers just for being fathers. In addition, women insist on equal pay, but ex-husbands still pay most alimony despite gender-neutral alimony laws. In an article called When ex-husbands get alimony (MSN Money Central) it seems the woman who wrote the article actually has the idea that a woman who has to pay is a victim! She quoted one ex-wife as saying "My feeling was that I worked hard while he was trying to figure out a career," Williams says. "I was penalized for that during the marriage and then after it ended." Why is she complaining when millions of men go through this? Is she not able to handle gender-neutral laws? Would she be happy if only men paid alimony?

To re-cap what fathers face:

1) Having 0 reproductive rights
2) Paying for women to have 100% of those rights
3) Women having 100% rights with their bodies, and to decide if a man becomes a father, but only 50% of the responsibility after the birth.

They want to have their cake and eat it, too, while husbands and fathers pay for it and are constantly degraded on TV, in the legal system and women's speech.