The Gift Transformed Into a Debt

by Dalrock

Blessed is he who expects no gratitude, for he shall not be disappointed. –  W.C. Bennett

Back in 1852 the troop ship HMS Birkenhead sank in shark infested waters off the coast of South Africa. There weren’t enough lifeboats to save everyone, and the captain made the extraordinary decision to reserve them for the women and children aboard. The crew followed the captain’s order even though it meant his and many of their own deaths. This incredible example of men sacrificing for others has made what otherwise would have been an obscure shipwreck a famous event in history.

Even a century and a half later, women still understand the meaning of the profound sacrifice made by those brave men:

Men owe us.

A similar event occurred in 1912 when RMS Titanic struck an iceberg. Well over a thousand men stood aside and died so that mostly women (and a lesser percentage of children) could survive. Women understood the meaning of that sacrifice as well:

You got off easy. The women who survived are the ones who had to suffer. We didn’t ask you to do this for us anyway.

And of course:

Men owe us.

One of the videos I saw after the sinking of the Costa Concordia had an overweight American woman with a short haircut complaining:

It certainly wasn’t women and children first!

She said this in the form of an indictment, with the obvious expectation that all listening would see it as proof of an outrageous dereliction by the men on the ship. She and countless other women believe that since some men have volunteered to die in shipwrecks in the past, all men will forever have an obligation to do so. What men in the past did was an incredible act of graciousness; it has been met with an equally incredible lack of grace in return.

I’ve searched the web looking for a copy of the video to share, but unfortunately I couldn’t find it. What I found instead was even more powerful however.  Sheila Gregoire wrote a post/syndicated column shortly after the Costa Concordia went down titled:  Women and Children First? – A Feminist Tragedy :

In the comments I’ve been reading on the news reports, people seem to agree that children should be given priority, but there’s a heated debate about the women. We’re equal, so why should a man lose a place to a woman? Why should a man have to help a woman when he’s in danger, too?

And, as disgusting as I find that question, it makes sense. In 1912 it was a different world. Personal responsibility was still the main ethos of the day. People took care of their neighbours; they did not wait for government to do it for them. And people had a code of honour that included helping others when you could.

Somehow we have lost that. It is no longer about honour and what we should do for others; it has become what others should do for us.

I assume the irony is lost on her that her response to men having shown incredible selflessness is to be upset that men might at times elect to take care of themselves instead of focusing on people like her. As I have written before, making chivalry mandatory or expected destroys the very concept. It isn’t just feminists who destroyed chivalry, but feminist-lite women who view themselves as traditional.

Even so it wasn’t Sheila’s blog post which really startled me, it was the comments from many of the women who read her blog.  Several of the women understood the issue and why men made different choices on that wreck than on certain shipwrecks in the past. But others took an attitude of incredible entitlement, assuming that men in general exist to serve them. Commenter Rachel started by explaining that men owe this to women because women’s lives are worth more than men’s:

Women and children do not go first because they are weaker; they go first because lets face it, you need more women than men to keep the population going (men can make millions of babies in a day, women can only make 1-2 per year at best and our fertility is limited)and children are our future to continue the human race.

She then describes how she rudely bumped into a man recently in an elevator because she assumed he would understand that she has a special right to exit elevators first, even though of course she is his equal:

That being said, I was just thinking of this topic last night. I was sharing an elevator with a man about my age. When the elevator stopped, I automatically started to get off and he almost ran into me! I am so used to men letting me get off the elevator first, it hadn’t occurred to me that he wouldn’t. Once I righted myself, I got thinking about it and why would he let me off first? I am his equal. I started to think if there was a scientific reason, and I could not come up with one. In fact, I thought maybe the man should go first to let him see if it’s safe (I’ve watched too much late night drama and seen too many people get attacked getting off elevators).

Even though the uppity man in the elevator didn’t know his place, she graciously suggests that there are times when it is acceptable for a man to enter a lifeboat:

The thought process led to thinking about the “women and children first” policy and I do still think that applies, unless the child who is getting on the life boat is only accompanied by his/her father. I think then the dad should be able to get on the life boat with his child(ren).

I want to back up and remind you that before 1852 there was no such expectation that men should stand by and drown in order to save women who in most cases are strangers. The sense of entitlement so many women now have because of acts of incredible selflessness by men in the past is astonishing.

Another commenter named Britiney who writes a blog called Consider the Lillies read Sheila’s post and it reminded her of a time recently when men she didn’t know failed to snap-to and be her personal unpaid valet. It happened when she exercised poor planning while taking her computer in for repair:

Along the same lines and under the heading of “Chivalry is dead” I had to take my computer to the repair shop last week. I took it to the Apple store in our local mall and, not knowing that there was a “secret” entrance close to the store, I lugged it all the way through the parking lot, and then all the way through the mall and then BACK because I decided to take it somewhere else. I don’t know how much it weighs, but by the time I got all the way back to my car I was nearly in tears because it was SO heavy and I was SO frustrated. And here’s my point: I cannot even tell you how many able-bodied young men I passed while I was carrying something that was OBVIOUSLY too heavy for me. When I finally got to my car I called my husband and told him that my boys will NEVER pass someone who needs help and not offer to help them. I was so disgusted that not one single man offered to help me! So so so sad. I can’t influence any of the men who passed me by, but I can certainly influence the 3 young men God has entrusted to my care and if I have ANYTHING to do with it, they WILL put women and children first!!!

It reminded me of a comment Hestia made on a previous post on this topic about a woman who saw a group of servicemen returning from active duty, and was upset that they didn’t volunteer to carry her load for her:

Basically here is a group of largely men who have been sacrificing on behalf of the nation (or so the story goes) who haven’t done enough for this pampered princess. So it seems to go not only with soldiers in particular but men in general when it comes to chivalry.

One thing men need to understand is that in the event that they make the kind of sacrifice women are demanding, not only will it lead to even more entitlement, but many women will still detract from the noble nature of your choice.

Commenter Amanda wrote:

Not to undermine your point, but when the Titanic sank, women and children were NOT put first. Sure, they started the evacuations like that, and there were men of honor, but there were also the men who locked the doors to the third class section so that those people wouldn’t take up lifeboat space, and the coward who pushed women and children aside in their haste to get into a boat.

After Sheila challenged her on the historical accuracy of this claim, Amanda replied with:

Well, it’s been a few years since I did all the reading I did on the Titanic, but I was pretty interested as a youngling, and the picture I got from the books was one of polite, subversive cowardice slowly escalating to outright anarchy and panic.

Understand that if you sacrifice yourself for women you don’t know that most women will simply take your act of ultimate selflessness as proof that men owe them. A significant number will also deny the bravery of your dying act.

Bias Against Fathers in U.S. Custody & Child Support

by Dalrock

We all know the system is biased against fathers, but the actual data is important when discussing this with those who are skeptical. “It can’t be that bad, can it?”  Here is the data I pulled together from Table 1 in the latest US Census Bureau report on the topic, Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support: 2007

All of the steps of the process are biased against men except the percentage of support due which is collected (the two are roughly equal).

It starts with who is granted custody:

For those few fathers granted custody, they are less likely than mothers who are granted custody to be awarded support:

 

For those few fathers who are awarded support, they are awarded less on average than mothers who are awarded support:

 

The percent collected is the only area where there isn’t a clear bias against fathers.  This looks to be a wash:

 

However due to the bias in the amount awarded, the average amount received by fathers (per year) is still lower:

 

When I shared this data on my own blog, several of the commenters were surprised at how low the average yearly support amount was.  Commenter Clarence shed some light on this based on his work experience in the area*:

I used to work as a temp (for almost a year and a half) for a child support agency in a large city. I was data entry, so pretty much every case they did in the office went through me. Now things might have changed since then, but when I left they were just getting the ability to garnish licenses. What I experienced with the data I entered was this : most of the cases were from single mothers where the father was either unemployed, part-time employed or employed at minimum wage. Such men got very low orders, somewhere around 25 dollars per week. About 30 percent of the cases were middle class or above, usually earning at least 15 an hour. These men were getting socked with child support of at least 700 per month and, most commonly, support orders of around 1400 per month.

Yeah, that 70 percent skews the data a lot.

 

As a result of all of these biases against fathers, the percentage of all child support dollars paid is extremely biased. Roughly 90% of all child support dollars received are received by mothers:

 

Looking at the figures for 2007, it appears to me that there may be a sampling anomaly.  The percentage of custodial mothers awarded support dropped by 4% between 2005 and 2007.  This is 3% lower than any other year in the series.  I’m not aware of any sweeping changes which occurred in this time frame, and since parents receive child support for between 18 and 21 years it seems highly unlikely that the makeup of the population would change this much in just 2 years. I’m also not sure why they don’t have data beyond 2007.  Since they publish this every other year they should have data out for at least 2009. Once they publish the 2009 and 2011 data we will have a better understanding of if the 2007 data shows a trend towards slightly less bias against fathers or if it was in fact a sampling error.

*Clarence’s experience makes sense, as Table 2 shows that 47.6% of all custodial parents with support agreements in 2007 were on public assistance. In these cases the state is generally the recipient of the child support payment, although some states do pass $50 a month or a similar token amount on to the parent. This also shows up in the numbers, as only 27% of custodial parents who stated they were due support payments in 2007 were on public assistance. Those parents who didn’t receive anything aren’t included in the average figures reported by the Census, but those who received $50 are.

The Reality of Parental Alienation Blight

by E. Manning, senior writer, family rights advocate and retired economist

“I don’t care if the judges and the lawyers die of heart attacks in the process of getting their job done. They are corrupt, inefficient, lazy, stupid — they’re the most God-awful people.” These are the words of popular actor Alec Baldwin after a minefield experience in the U.S. family courts. Regardless of how many men have felt the same way, Alec Baldwin finally lends a voice to abused men in the court system.

According to ABC News, Baldwin believes that many family court lawyers and their manipulations and delays make the child custody duel much worse than it needs to be. “The judges are like pit bosses in Vegas casinos. Their job is to make sure everybody stays at the table and keeps gambling.”

The casino reference is based on the fact that the family court debacle is neverending: a heartrending, expensive and impossible situation for most men, particularly when the “little ex” proves to be vindictive and abusive, even turning children against fathers.

Most divorced dads have become strangely familiar with a national disease referred to as parental alienation syndome. In most cases, nothing could have prepared newly divorced dads for what they would face in the land of the free and home of the brave.

Yet, neither freedom or bravery come to mind as men are continually beat down by a system that dispassionately disregards men as nothing more than beasts of burden. Thoughts of leaving the country, sinking into the mires of endless depression or ending life are common responses to the negative reenforcement that the federal government and judges across the board show divorced men. Baldwin was so distraught that he lashed out hysterically at his daughter in a famous phone call promoted by the national media. While Baldwin might have been a little over the top, he creates a national identity for abused dads in a system that favors only women and children coupled with the political expedience that continues to destroy the family long after the family is dissolved.

This tale is not one of complaint, but one of real hope and change. Men are not debris in a maternally-ordered society. America has built itself up as a champion of freedom. Recent years of corruptive politics and negative press have turned politics and family courts into a socialist regime, undermining the freedom and civil beauty that made the idea of the United States great. Society has corrupted itself, fashioning the tools of order into weapons of abusive emotion and policy grounded in nothing more than entitlement attitudes. Feminists and other socially-oriented individuals and corporate bodies have promoted children’s rights over any other in the vain attempt for power and influence to radicalize the political scene in their favor.

Insane jealousy and hatred always need vindication. For the last thirty years, America has become a hotbed of everything it used to hate: unconstitutional laws and hurtful abusive policy that eliminate human and civil rights instead of promoting them. Until America resolves these laws and works to reverse the blight of parental alienation, the nation has no right to promote itself as a lover of freedom and human rights to the world regarding the lack of freedom and oppression that it actively promotes. Until this blight of parental alienation is reversed and the Bradley Amendment is repealed, we are a nation of hypocrites. ~ E. Manning

Read an excerpt from Alec Baldwin’s new book.

Best Interest Debate and Abusive Fraud

Child Custody Laws use the “best interest” of the child doctrine to decide the custodial rights of children from broken families. Unfortunately, the best interest of the child doctrine is subjective and ambiguous. Best interest doctrine is usually influenced by
a) ideological movements such as feminism and
b) third party organizations such as lawyers and psychotherapists.
The majority of third party organizations are legal enforcers of feminist ideology.

How Feminist Ideology Effects Custodial Disputes

According to feminist ideology, custodial disputes should be decided in favor of mothers. Some judges are known to hold this view.

The personal opinion of psychotherapists maintains great influence during the legal process and can determine which party obtains custody. Psychotherapists are not required to possess any experience with children. As a consequence, the opinions of many psychotherapists can be impractical and downright wrong. Everyone knows that doctors are not always right. The competence of parents who contest custody of their children is often ignored by psychotherapists who preside over such disputes.

False Accusations

False accusations of violence and/or sexual abuse are commonly made during custodial hearings. The majority of false accusations made during custodial hearings remain uninvestigated and publicly admitted to publicly accessible records. False accusations have been used to decide the outcome of such cases in favor of the accusing party without evidence. Because of this fraud, some divorce lawyers encourage their clients to falsely accuse their ex-partners of domestic violence and/or child abuse during custodial disputes.

Three-Step Technique Mothers Use To Manipulate The System

1. Make a false accusation of domestic violence or child abuse against the father
2. Demand full custody of the children
3. Demand the collection of child support, alimony, and legal fees.

According to Phyllis Schlafly, a mother is likely to use the Three-Step-Technique because it allows her to
a) avoid having to prove she deserves to have custody and that she is a fit parent
b) tarnish the reputation of her ex-partner by inciting hysteria against the dad
Evaluators are known to label a case like this as a high-conflict divorce using the premise that shared parenting will not work because of the inability of parents to resolve their problems in court, full custody is awarded to the mother. The father will be reprimanded by the court if he does give in. The court will mandate that the dad is “not buying into the process”. If he tries to defend himself against the mother’s accusations, the dad is denied the basic rights a criminal defendant is given such as; “innocent until proven guilty”.

The mother does not need to substantiate her accusations. Assuming that the mother’s accusations are true, the court does not investigate the validity of her statements. The fathers is forced to consent to be interrogated and evaluated by court-chosen child-custody evaluators — the father must pay for these services.

Fathers are sentenced to attend re-education classes and psychotherapy sessions, where they are forced to claim they were at fault. The psychotherapists report back to the courts, and the father is forced to attend these sessions until he conforms.

Court-approved psychotherapists and lawyers benefit from this process as they recommend the services of each other to their clients. In fact psychotherapists will decline to challenge each other’s recommendations or investigate how competent they are, and the lawyers refuse to cross-examine them as they all benefit from continuing business by collecting fees from fathers.

Man Receives Judgment for Child Support

Judge David Roper said he felt bad for Kenneth Samuels when he learned the child he had fathered for 11 years wasn’t his. Last month, Judge Roper ruled that Jamie Hope, the child’s mother, and Oba Wallace, the child’s biological father, would have to repay Mr. Samuels $14,460 in child support he had paid since 1997.

article

Apparently, Mr. Samuels managed to keep his child support current and was able to afford an attorney to reverse the 11-year judgment. Unfortunately, his legal fees will probably eat up most of the judgment. Now he will receive a judgment against the other parents that he may or may not be able to collect. At least one man is free from the system wrongly accused by what was his past conduct and circumstances. Is all of this poetic justice against the “hoes” of the world? Hardly.

Now the child’s mother and real father are subject to same Bradley debt if they don’t pay this judgment off or fall behind in payment for any reason. The Bradley Amendment provisions that every bank record in the United States will be combed for violators, a violation of public privacy of every American. The debt can never be forgiven or altered per federal law and is subject to be used against the “violator of the law”.

Will Mr. Samuels actually be afforded the same “protections” of the federal Bradley Amendment? That is largely unknown. This is child support debt and therefore qualifies as Bradley debt should the payees fall behind. Do the parents of this child deserve to be threatened by the Bradley Amendment like the presumed father? Should any American be subject to a threatening and menacing federal child support collection law? Did I forget to mention that the Bradley Amendment is unconstitutional as well? Are these parents and presumed parents guaranteed equal protection under the law? Obviously not. That makes the law unconstitutional as well.

New Video on Bradley Amendment

For a quick review of the Bradley Amendment this website has most of what you need.

For a quick summary and poll, visit my Squidoo link!