It wasn’t this exactly – I said that I don’t talk to strange women in public places I pass by or happen to be near on public transportation. But there are many other situations in which I’m fine with talking to women I don’t know.
Basically, I avoid trying to talk to any woman in a situation in which women have indicated to me (in the past) that being approached in such a situation makes them uncomfortable. This includes passing by on the street, being on public transportation, and things like that. It doesn’t include being in line at a movie theater, or being in a bar, or watching a game, or things like that.
Can you please cite this Texas child custody law that prescribes the default you are claiming here? Everything I have been able to find, for Texas and other States, does not mention that at all. Since you are a lawyer, I will give you the benefit of the doubt as you should know better. Why can’t I find these laws?
Having done a little reading about this (I’ve never been divorced so I wasn’t familiar), I would probably oppose it too – not because I would want a different default, but because I would want NO default. I’d want to get rid of “every-other-weekend” too. It should be case-by-case. And since you mentioned inability to litigate, I’d say that’s a problem that should be handled by the system without just substituting a default settlement.
And that’s not a position that you can pin on feminism or say is a feminist double-standard. I wonder if that’s the argument feminist groups have used against it. I would have to see before judging. Feel free to post a link.
Absolutely, and that’s not limited to same-gender friendships, either. Anybody who gets horrified or freaked-out or resentful just because one of their friends starts experiencing some sexual or romantic attraction towards them is also too immature and/or naive to be dating, IMO.
However, that is not the same thing as requiring people to have telepathic awareness about a friend secretly being attracted to them. If your friend is attracted to you and doesn’t tell you about it, you shouldn’t be expected to guess their feelings.
In particular, despite what some gender-traditionalist types claim, you should not automatically assume that all your opposite-sex friends (or all your same-sex homosexual friends) secretly want to bone you.
(Can you imagine the shit women would get if they actually made that assumption about their male friends? Cue the cries of “what a conceited bitch” and “hell she’s not even that hot” and “how sexist to take it for granted that a man can’t just want to be friends with a woman without being sexually attracted to her”.)
Thanks, but that appears to be a default arrangement for a visitation schedule (which is apparently called possession and access in Texas).
It doesn’t determine a default for who is the custodial and non-custodial parent, or if there is to be joint custody. Is there a legal default for that?
95% of divorces are settled out of court. There are good reasons for that. One is that many people can’t afford it. Another is that even among those that can, many would rather spend the money on their kids - sending them to college, for example - than on lawyers. Nevertheless, to the extent that people are reasonable - and people aren’t always reasonable when they’re divorcing - they have to have some standard to determine what’s “fair”. When they do that, they look around them, and they look at the law.
When they look around them, they see that women get custody about 85% of the time. When they look at the law, they see the standard is every-other-weekend.
Which isn’t to say fathers can’t get custody. It’s to say that they’re looking at a long, expensive, drawn-out fight. And one they’re likely to lose anyway.
But what I want to ask is, when you say there should be no standard, what do you mean by that?
You used the phrase “default settlement.” But there is no default settlement. A settlement is whatever the parties have agreed to.
What there is is a default judgment. If you look back at the law in my state:
[Bolding mine.]
In other words, the standard possession order happens only when the parents fail to agree about custody.
Shared parenting isn’t about forcing parents to share custody. It’s about making shared custody the standard order when the parents can’t agree about custody. Even then it would be a rebuttable presumption - meaning it would happen only if or when there was no good reason to do otherwise.
That is what feminists are opposing.
Feminists have consistently opposed giving fathers a greater role in their kid’s lives after a divorce - if that’s what you’re talking about. (And by the way, women initiate divorce about 70% of the time.)
Another good reason could be that these majority of cases are decided by mutual agreement.
The standard isn’t about what’s “fair”. It’s about the best interests of the child.
If the majority of cases are settled out of court, then the majority of those women are granted custody based on a mutual agreement.
You are assuming that all those men wanted custody but didn’t ask for it or fight for it because of the costs, or the idea that they would likely lose the case. What evidence is there that these are the reasons in these majority of cases? What evidence is there that men who do fight for custody lose more often than not?
Aren’t you the same person who thinks sexual assault cases are particularly difficult to defend? Still waiting for your evidence for that assertion, by the way.
Let’s go back to your argument about men not fighting for custody because of the costs of litigation. Wouldn’t that apply here as well? What if there were good reasons to not grant shared custody, but the parent with that concern could not afford the litigation? Would that be in the best interests of the child?
Women are more likely to file the papers first, but this tells us nothing about the reasons for the divorce, or the actions of the parties prior to filing the papers.
Yes, I acknowledged that in my response. I also indicated what a cheap stunt it is to attack LK’s particular phrasing (which we can charitably understand to be a tad hyperbolic) rather than to engage with the actual issues: genuine equality, shared parenting, what’s best for the child rather than the mother, etc.
Defending the indefensible by criticising the wording of the accusation is cheap and shameful. It’s also telling. It’s not the approach of someone who wants equality, nor of someone interested in the best result for children. It’s the tactic of those who (possibly sincerely) believe their ideological goals to be more important than truth or any concept of justice.
Nope, that’s not what I said, but it was also cheap and shameful to suggest that’s what I’d said. Luckily for you, ideologues generally know no shame.
I disagree with your inaccurate and misleading dismissal of evidence you don’t like, but I would, wouldn’t I - I posted it. Others can make their own minds up.
I’m still waiting for the ‘all too easy’ evidence of leading feminists supporting shared parenting. Meanwhile, you just asked me to find a smoking gun in the hands of a group with plenty of practise at hiding their ideological firearms. Get real. What you were given (though you deceitfully dismissed it) was clear evidence that NOW (and other feminist groups) oppose any dilution (by sharing, by equality) of the power of the female parent.
How could ‘you’ll dismiss anything Elam says’ make it look like your standards are too high? I like your tactic of suggesting I didn’t say what I actually said…no, hang on, I don’t like tactics like that at all, I want an honest debate. That’s alas not possible with highly invested ideologues.
It may be that your standards are dismally poor (falling for feminism would suggest so) and that you can be satisfied (you’re arguing for less than half, so perhaps you’re easily satisfied). And of course, since I suggested you’d just dismiss Elam, you’ve held off on that tactic (but let’s not pretend it’s not the stock response with any prominent ‘mra’ or ‘mantivist’ or whatever insult you’re using these days).
Meanwhile, there was no failure on my part. But if you say so, you’ll get a good-boy pat and in this busy life maybe nobody will bother to find out for themselves. So many “tactics” (your choice of word tells us so much), so little interest in actual equality. As previously noted, you don’t fight for equality by grabbing everything you can for one side. You do it by disdaining sides.
62% of children already live with their biological parents, another 5% with bioparent and stepparent. Among cohabiting couples living with children, women spend about twice as much time on childcare as men.
Some children’s biological parents were never married or even together.
Among the children who live with only one parent because of divorce, according to you 95% of them came to this arrangement due to parents’ mutual agreement.
So then why are you and other MRAs so obsessed with custody in contested divorces, which affects about 1% of children, instead of the vast majority of cases where the fathers are not putting in equal efforts in childrearing? Could it be that fathers participating more equally in parenting is not the main goal, but rather control?
[ul]
[li]Fatherless children are at a dramatically greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse, mental illness, suicide, poor educational performance, teen pregnancy, and criminality, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics.[/li]
[li]Over half of all children living with a single mother are living in poverty, a rate 5 to 6 times that of kids living with both parents;[/li]
[li]Child abuse is significantly more likely to occur in single parent homes than in intact families;[/li]
[li]63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census;[/li]
[li]72% of adolescent murderers grew up without fathers. 60% of America’s rapists grew up the same way according to a study by D. Cornell (et al.), in Behavioral Sciences and the Law;[/li]
[li]71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes according to the National Principals Association Report on the State of High Schools;[/li]
[li]90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes;[/li]
[li]Children from low-income, two-parent families outperform students from high-income, single-parent homes. Almost twice as many high achievers come from two-parent homes as one-parent homes according to a study by the Charles F. Kettering Foundation.[/li]
[li]85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes according to a study by the Center for Disease Control;[/li]
[li]Of all violent crimes against women committed by intimates about 65% were committed by either boy-friends or ex-husbands, compared with 9 % by husbands;[/li]
[li]Girls living with non-natal fathers (boyfriends and stepfathers) are at higher risk for sexual abuse than girls living with natal fathers;[/li]
[li]Daughters of single mothers are 53% more likely to marry as teenagers, 111% more likely to have children as teenagers, 164% more likely to have a premarital birth and 92% more likely to dissolve their own marriages.[/li]
[li]A large survey conducted in the late 1980s found that about 20% of divorced fathers had not seen his children in the past year, and that fewer than 50% saw their children more than a few times a year.[/li]
[li]In a longitudinal study of 1,197 fourth-grade students, researchers observed “greater levels of aggression in boys from mother-only households than from boys in mother-father households,” according to a study published in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology.[/li][/ul]
Some women do everything they can to limit their ex- (or soon to be ex-) husband’s access to their children, even to the point of trying to turn their children against their fathers. They hate their ex, so they want their children to hate them too. What they may not realize is they’re hurting their children too.
Yes. That is what I said.
I’ve already given my evidence. You’re just not listening.
But in the interests of fairness, why is it you think fathers don’t want to be with their children?
Are you the same person who randomly throws shit around, because you can’t handle the actual topic?
The best interests of the child are to have an actively involved father in their lives.
The fact that women file for divorce more often tells us nothing? Ok.
It’s not a cheap stunt. He shouldn’t say things he can’t support.
Now you’re pulling a “cheap stunt.”
Do not speak for me or tell me what I think. You have no idea. If you want to know, ask.
Explain why you disagree then. I did.
Nope. Your article doesn’t support that assertion.
If you want honest debate, stop calling me an “ideologue.” You have no idea what my ideology is or how strongly I hold it.
I don’t even know what “mra” or “mantivist” are. Never heard them before. Again, if you want honest debate, stop putting words in my mouth and ideas in my head and just have a discussion. You don’t even know if I’m a feminist or not - I haven’t told you either way.
I agree completely.
Does that surprise you? Maybe you should stop talking so much and start listening and you’d be more up for “honest debate.”
Correlation, meet causation. This needs to be controlled for income, education, age, etc.
Maybe that would be lower if more people paid their child support? Again, needs to be controlled for things like age of childbearing. Younger moms are more likely to be single and more likely to be broke.
Duh. Do you think people stay married to child molesters?
46% of kids life in families with two heterosexual parents, so 54% of these numbers are accounted for right there. If you control for income, etc. I expect you’ll account for much of the rest.
Control, please. Also note that marriages with special-needs kids are more likely to breakup.
Finally, a control! Can we also control for education?
Control, and account for the fact that marriages with special needs kids are more likely to break up.
Duh. People tend not to marry or stay married to abusers.
.
Control, please.
Control? Especially for age?
Perhaps one of the reasons they divorced is that they were disinterested fathers?
Control?
Because many don’t? Being a parent is hard, especially when you actually do the diaper changing and soccer driving. Dating, for example, is not easy with kids. Many men (and plenty of women) are eager to restart their lives.
Correct. To give an extreme example, some men like cheating but still enjoy coming home to a hot meal and clean house. When the woman finally get sick of that, is it her fault the marriage ended?
You have not given evidence that men who ask for or fight for custody are not likely to get it, so cut the crap.
Actually, I’m the person who answered the actual topic as per your OP (Who are these women in the women against feminism tumblr?)
You obviously didn’t like the answer (the tumblr is a PR campaign organized by A Voice for Men’s social media director), so you have been throwing out random shit ever since.
Kids need a stable, loving family, and they thrive in stable, loving, well-resources, highly educated families.
A two parent family is a relatively reliable way to get there. But it’s not the only way, and it’s not automatically the best way (say, if one parent is abusive.)
I don’t know about “educated,” but I agree with the rest of it.
It follows, then, that if - for whatever reason - parents divorce, both parents should continue to be actively in their children’s lives - right? Not just one?