Society

If I Were A Parent Of A Boy

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An excerpt from this post: http://womenformen.org/2014/01/22/if-i-were-the-parent-of-a-boy/

We are in denial about our males.

I believe this denial will continue (and we will ultimately rue and mourn the dangerous, socially debilitating consequences) unless we change our academic, media, government, and philanthropic programming to include a new ideological truth: just as the traditionalist paradigm regarding girls and women needed to be deconstructed and replaced by the feminist paradigm in the last century, the feminist paradigm, especially as it regards boys and men, needs to be deconstructed and, at least in part, replaced now if we are to meet the needs of both genders.

Why does it need to change? Because it posits that females are victims of a masculine society that oppresses them systematically, and this isn’t true in the developed world anymore. While individual girls and women can be dominated and demeaned by individual boys and men (and vice versa), we do not live in a culture that systematically teaches girls and women that they are second class citizens and boys and men that they are superior.

While some areas of life are still male dominant (mechanical engineering, senior leadership at some corporations and some areas of government), other areas of life and work are female dominant (management, medicine, education, mental health professions). The original feminist paradigm posited systemic male dominance in our culture, but male dominance is only systemic in small pockets of the culture and female dominance also exists in others.

Can our culture open its mind to our new reality? To answer yes, we will need to make a distinction between gender issues in the developed world and the developing world. In many countries in the developing world, systemic and brutal patriarchy does prevail and the feminist model of male dominance/female victimization is essential for encouraging social justice. My own parents, while they served in the State Department, helped build schools for girls in Afghanistan against impossible odds. In that world, systemic degradation of females was and is prevalent.

Read the rest HERE: http://womenformen.org/2014/01/22/if-i-were-the-parent-of-a-boy/

Marriage, Parenting

The marriage crisis

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If people only knew how horrible divorce REALLy is, there wouldn’t be so many of them:

An excerpt from this article: http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/2014/02/01/2928280/the-marriage-crisis.html

Marriage in America is disintegrating. According to the Census in 2013, only 48 percent of Americans were married — a substantial plunge from 67.3 percent in 1960. (These figures are of all people age 15 and up who were married and living together in 1960 and 2013.)

A major reason for the decline of married couples is divorce. In 1960, only 2.8 million people were divorced. By 2013 that figure jumped nearly tenfold, to 25.3 million.

America’s divorce rate is actually the highest of the civilized world — triple that of Britain and France, for example. After five years of marriage, 23 percent of Americans are divorced vs. only 8 percent of British or French.

Why? If a British woman wants a divorce, but her husband does not, they must wait five years to divorce, six in France. Five or six years allows time to reconcile. By contrast, 27 states have a ZERO waiting period, and three states require only 30-60 days. Why are these “Hot Head States” pushing couples to divorce?

An earlier columnof mine quoted a woman named Jennifer Rivera: “After being together eleven and a half years, the Family Court of Miami-Dade County was able to legally end it in 11 days. If we had more time to wait it out, such as a legalized separation, our divorce would not have happened. It was like a drive-thru divorce. That’s how it felt. They have a waiting period to get a marriage license. There should be a waiting period to get a divorce.”

When the couple stood before the judge, they were holding hands and crying. That night they had dinner together and spent the night together.

This divorce should never have happened.

It would not have occurred in Illinois or Pennsylvania, which require couples to wait two years if one spouse opposes the divorce. As a result, those states have divorce rates among America’s lowest. Clearly, a longer waiting period allows hot heads to cool down.

Their divorce rates are almost half those of 13 Hot Head States with No waiting — Nevada, Wyoming, Idaho, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alaska, Florida, Alabama, New Mexico, Mississippi, Colorado, Arizona and Oregon.

According to Frank Furstenberg and Andrew Cherlin’s book “Divided Families,” four out of five divorces are opposed by one spouse. Yet in America, one spouse can file for divorce and always get it. In the old days, one would have to prove a spouse was at fault — due to adultery, abandonment or abuse. However, in 1969 California Gov. Ronald Reagan signed America’s first “No Fault Divorce” law, allowing just one spouse to declare there were “irreconcilable differences.”

Most states passed similar No Fault Divorce laws in the 1970s, and the number of divorces nearly doubled from 639,000 in 1969 to 1,189,000 in 1979.

In “How To Cut America’s Divorce Rate in Half,” I argue No Fault Divorce is unconstitutional. Both the 5th and 14th Amendments supposedly guarantee that “no person be deprived of life, liberty or property without the due process of the law.” Yet how can there be “due process” if every divorce is granted?

Divorce deprives people of life. A divorced man will live 10 years less than a married man; a divorced woman, four years less; and their children, five years less. Divorced people and their children are also deprived of liberty. A typical father can see his kids only two weekends a month. Certainly, husbands and wives lose property when they move apart.

Yet there is no constitutional protection for 80 percent of spouses handed an unwanted divorce.

Read more HERE

Family, Relationships

Judith Grossman: A Mother, a Feminist, Aghast

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An Excerpt from this article: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324600704578405280211043510

I am a feminist. I have marched at the barricades, subscribed to Ms. magazine, and knocked on many a door in support of progressive candidates committed to women’s rights. Until a month ago, I would have expressed unqualified support for Title IX and for the Violence Against Women Act.

But that was before my son, a senior at a small liberal-arts college in New England, was charged—by an ex-girlfriend—with alleged acts of “nonconsensual sex” that supposedly occurred during the course of their relationship a few years earlier.

What followed was a nightmare—a fall through Alice’s looking-glass into a world that I could not possibly have believed existed, least of all behind the ivy-covered walls thought to protect an ostensible dedication to enlightenment and intellectual betterment.

It began with a text of desperation. “CALL ME. URGENT. NOW.”

That was how my son informed me that not only had charges been brought against him but that he was ordered to appear to answer these allegations in a matter of days. There was no preliminary inquiry on the part of anyone at the school into these accusations about behavior alleged to have taken place a few years earlier, no consideration of the possibility that jealousy or revenge might be motivating a spurned young ex-lover to lash out. Worst of all, my son would not be afforded a presumption of innocence.

In fact, Title IX, that so-called guarantor of equality between the sexes on college campuses, and as applied by a recent directive from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, has obliterated the presumption of innocence that is so foundational to our traditions of justice. On today’s college campuses, neither “beyond a reasonable doubt,” nor even the lesser “by clear and convincing evidence” standard of proof is required to establish guilt of sexual misconduct.

These safeguards of due process have, by order of the federal government, been replaced by what is known as “a preponderance of the evidence.” What this means, in plain English, is that all my son’s accuser needed to establish before a campus tribunal is that the allegations were “more likely than not” to have occurred by a margin of proof that can be as slim as 50.1% to 49.9%.

How does this campus tribunal proceed to evaluate the accusations? Upon what evidence is it able to make a judgment?

Read more HERE

Society

No, Women Don’t Make Less Money Than Men

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1391276896330.cachedPhoto by CBS Photo Archive/Getty

The myth won’t die. Christina exposes the President’s false claim of discrimination at the Daily Beast.

 

It’s the bogus statistic that won’t die—and president deployed it during the State of the Union—but women do not make 77 cents to every dollar a man earns.

President Obama repeated the spurious gender wage gap statistic in his State of the Union address. “Today,” he said, “women make up about half our workforce. But they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it’s an embarrassment.”

What is wrong and embarrassing is the President of the United States reciting a massively discredited factoid. The 23-cent gender pay gap is simply the difference between the average earnings of all men and women working full-time. It does not account for differences in occupations, positions, education, job tenure, or hours worked per week. When all these relevant factors are taken into consideration, the wage gap narrows to about five cents. And no one knows if the five cents is a result of discrimination or some other subtle, hard-to-measure difference between male and female workers. In its fact-checking column on the State of the Union, the Washington Post included the president’s mention of the wage gap in its list of dubious claims. “There is clearly a wage gap, but differences in the life choices of men and women… make it difficult to make simple comparisons.”

Consider, for example, how men and women differ in their college majors. Here is a list (PDF) of the ten most remunerative majors compiled by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Men overwhelmingly outnumber women in all but one of them:

1.   Petroleum Engineering: 87% male
2.   Pharmacy Pharmaceutical Sciences and Administration: 48% male
3.   Mathematics and Computer Science: 67% male
4.   Aerospace Engineering: 88% male
5.   Chemical Engineering: 72% male
6.   Electrical Engineering: 89% male
7.   Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering: 97% male
8.   Mechanical Engineering: 90% male
9.   Metallurgical Engineering: 83% male
10. Mining and Mineral Engineering: 90% male

And here are the 10 least remunerative majors—where women prevail in nine out of ten:

1.  Counseling Psychology: 74% female
2.  Early Childhood Education: 97% female
3.  Theology and Religious Vocations: 34% female
4.  Human Services and Community Organization: 81% female
5.  Social Work: 88% female
6.  Drama and Theater Arts: 60% female
7.   Studio Arts: 66% female
8.   Communication Disorders Sciences and Services: 94% female
9.   Visual and Performing Arts: 77% female
10. Health and Medical Preparatory Programs: 55% female

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Fatherhood

When is a sperm donor a father – Part II

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Men…as much as we think we live in 2014, the domestic relation laws are written as if it is 1954.

Why isn’t this woman’s ex-partner held responsible for child support? She was the partner right? She is allowed to walks away form the responsibility, but the sperm donor can’t? I’ll give you a hint as to why…The “mother” was forced to give up the “father’s” name because she went on state assistance. If she was able to afford the kid on her own, or with her partner, none of this would have happened.

And if she was able to “marry” her partner, I would assume that the one who is the deadbeat mom would be required to pay child support is she were to suddenly find herself the noncustodial parent. I doubt it.

Our laws want to perpetuate an era that is long gone. Why isn’t the state forcing the other mother to pay up? Equality huh?

And some people wonder why I have major issues with family law, increasing federal power and narcissistic politicians. This can happen to any man who has sperm in the USA. Men, be careful out there!

If this kind of thing happened to me, I would be down in family court demanding sole custody. Family law is a horrific set of laws. It is just awful.

I’ve followed this for a year: http://www.socraddockmethod.com/2013/01/01/when-is-a-sperm-donor-a-father/

A Topeka man who donated sperm to a lesbian couple is the presumptive father to a baby one of the woman bore and is subject to paying child support, a Shawnee County District Court judge ruled Wednesday.

In her written decision, District Court Judge Mary Mattivi said that because William Marotta and the same-sex couple failed to secure the services of a physician during the artificial insemination process, he wasn’t entitled to the same protections given other sperm donors under Kansas law.

“Kansas law is clear that a ‘donor of semen provided to a licensed physician for use in artificial insemination of a woman other than the donor’s wife is treated in law as if he were not the birth father of a child thereby conceived, unless agreed to in writing by the donor and the woman,’ ” Mattivi wrote.

“In this case, quite simply, the parties failed to conform to the statutory requirements of the Kansas Parentage Act in not enlisting a licensed physician at some point in the artificial insemination process, and the parties’ self-designation of (Marotta) as a sperm donor is insufficient to relieve (Marotta) of parental rights and responsibilities” to the child, the judge concluded.

Marotta contended he was only a sperm donor to a same-sex couple seeking a child, but the Kansas Department for Children and Families argued he is a father who owes child support to his daughter. The girl is 4 years old.

The requirement to include a licensed physician in the artificial insemination dates to 1973 when the Uniform Parentage Act came into being and was adopted by Kansas, Mattivi said.

The judge noted it is “uncontroverted” that the semen in this case wasn’t provided to a licensed physician.

“Accordingly, the statute as written does not afford (Marotta) the bar to paternity that he seeks,” she wrote.

The Marotta decision “appears” to be a case of first impression in Kansas, the judge said. That means a specific issue in the ruling hasn’t been dealt with before in that court, and there isn’t binding authority on the matter.

Read more HERE: http://cjonline.com/news/2014-01-22/court-marotta-father-not-merely-sperm-donor

Family, Society

Stop being ashamed of being men

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By Rick Johnson
Better Dads Ministry,
Roseberg Oregon

From this article: http://oregonfaithreport.com/2014/01/the-war-on-men/

Guys, we need to stop being ashamed of being men. Virtually every behavior that is natural to a man is now being criticized and we are made to feel ashamed about being our gender. Perhaps if we spent more time uplifting men instead of trying to annihilate masculinity, we’d have better men.

I recently posted this comment on a social network site. Not a huge fan of Men’s Health Magazine, but this ain’t bad advice: “You can’t be a topnotch man unless you’re deeply grateful. For what? Glad you asked. For the gift of your gender. For those muscles in your back. For those neurons in your brain. For your mirth. Your lust. Your courage. For your possibilities. A man in full appreciates the twist of fate that made him so strong, so cunning, so stalwart, so alert, so sexually skilled, so fully equipped, so good to go. Live the appreciation, by using it all.”

The point was that men should have an attitude of gratefulness. Is there anything wrong with a man being grateful? Hardly—I’d say it’s one of the foundations of authentic masculinity. Men were almost embarrassingly silent regarding the post, but a number of women responded with snarky comments like, “so humble” or “vain,” or “very prideful.”

Really? Are we so threatened by passionate, proud masculinity that we (as a culture) are programmed to immediately take steps to keep it squashed down. After all, if we can keep men ashamed of themselves, we can keep them docile. And docile men are easy to control. We’ve raised a generation of docile sons and we now call them slackers. If I had posted a note encouraging women to be proud of how they were created I’d have been lauded as an enlightened and highly intelligent human being.

In the past, men’s conferences such as Promise Keepers were met with criticism and distain by the media and women (even Christian women). They were portrayed as men getting together to plot and scheme with some ulterior motive to dominate or control women, putting them back under the thumb of oppression. Recently a Christian men’s conference focusing on inspiring men to act more manly has been heavily lambasted by Christian men and women in the media as being chauvinistic and rather stupid. Comments such as “Why do men need a conference to teach them how to be men anyway?” were cavalierly tossed about intending to humiliate the men who attended (yet interestingly national and local conferences that teach women how to live fulfilling and satisfying lives as wives, mothers, and women are thriving).

As a culture we seem to be highly threatened when groups of men get together so we do all we possibly can to demolish (or at least integrate with females) men’s clubs, boys groups, or any other male-only domains. After all, we wouldn’t want men getting together without the supervision of a female—who knows what might happen? When men have gotten together in the past they’ve only done things like, oh, put a man on the moon, or write the Constitution and Bill of Rights for the greatest country ever created in the history of the world.

Men are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If they make no efforts to improve themselves they are criticized as being lazy and self-centered. If they do try and improve themselves by learning from other men they are accused of trying to usurp a woman’s rights and it’s assumed that there must be some nefarious motive behind what they are attempting. And when they do good and right things (like the young Catholic men in the photo above who were praying together to protect a Catholic cathedral from vandalism) they are mocked and chastised.

Guys don’t buy into it. You need other men in your life. Learn from them what healthy (and unhealthy) masculinity looks like. And when you make mistakes (which you will) learn from them and don’t be ashamed. If you are not making mistakes (and getting criticized by someone), you’re not accomplishing anything.

Now go out and figure out how to accomplish something great!