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Feminism: Allegations of Sexual Violations


Tywin Manderly

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I'm not sure why fathers having rights to contact their children is particularly repugnant. There are many laws where multiple rights come into play, and this is one of them.

Well, all I can say is there's good reasons why things are the way they are, society protects the rights of the parent who actually has to bear the child and realizes expanding those rights for men would be destructive to children and families.

Usually the reasons are 'because we've always done this way' or occasionally 'because God said so'. Appealing to authority isn't a particularly good appeal, here, given the overwhelmingly sexist authority that has been in place.

One thing you're not considering here is the rights of the child - and in general there is a strong case to be made that the child has the right for a variety of reasons to know who both biological parents were. Denying that right to protect one of the two parents because she simply does not want to (as opposed to unfit or dangerous situations) is pretty wrong. One party involved should not, typically, have 100% rights over two other parties.

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I think it is really strange that you [sJW] think there will be some epidemic of men who are dying to prove they are the father of children they previously didn't know about, given the financial ramifications of such a discovery would be tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in child support payments.


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and grant parental rights to that child against the wishes of the people actually parenting the child, then it stands to reason that the courts should be able to force a man to act as a parent for children that he conceived.

No; rights are allowed, not required. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the rights provided are. Rights in this case are something entered into willingly. They're not a requirement. There has never been a case of forcing a parent to act as a physical presence of a parent.
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I'm not sure why fathers having rights to contact their children is particularly repugnant. There are many laws where multiple rights come into play, and this is one of them.

Usually the reasons are 'because we've always done this way' or occasionally 'because God said so'. Appealing to authority isn't a particularly good appeal, here, given the overwhelmingly sexist authority that has been in place.

Are you purposely ignoring the prior posts where I explained why those rights are not granted and the logic behind it? I'm not saying "It's this way because it's this way and that's the law", I'm saying "It's this way because if it wasn't the potential abuse to the freedoms of others would outweigh the benefit of granting the right".

It would be nice if I could easily get a warrant to go search a person's house if I suspected they stole something from me, even if I had no evidence that they did…until someone exercised that right against me wrongfully. Because of this, you have to have some way of proving you are the father before you can try to establish parental rights, and courts are (rightfully) loathe to force families to re-arrange based on the testimony of one person.

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I think it is really strange that you [sJW] think there will be some epidemic of men who are dying to prove they are the father of children they previously didn't know about, given the financial ramifications of such a discovery would be tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in child support payments.

Obviously there are men who will do that. What's to stop a very rich man who gets it in his head that he should be a father from hiring an investigator to look up all the names in his little black book and see if any of them have children, then demanding paternity tests on all of them?

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Are you purposely ignoring the prior posts where I explained why those rights are not granted and the logic behind it? I'm not saying "It's this way because it's this way and that's the law", I'm saying "It's this way because if it wasn't the potential abuse to the freedoms of others would outweigh the benefit of granting the right".

Yes, and you came up with a fairly stupid hypothetical that ignores most basic facts about the world. The reason that it hasn't been changed is that it hasn't been particularly challenged in law circles yet. There have been no real direct challenges and no one has tried to do so. It isn't because lawmakers said 'no, this is bad'.

Obviously there are men who will do that. What's to stop a very rich man who gets it in his head that he should be a father from hiring an investigator to look up all the names in his little black book and see if any of them have children, then demanding paternity tests on all of them?

And if he pays for the tests? What is the actual wrong here? He doesn't have to be in contact with the woman directly. He doesn't have to be in contact with the child directly. Hell, you could put all of this data in a national database and simply check very easily if someone is there. It could be done as a routine doctor visit and provide a huge amount of genetic information - all basically anonymously. This doesn't have to be an invasion of anyone's privacy.

Also, 'obviously there are men who will do that' is incorrect, as it actually hasn't happened yet. This is illogical. If there were men who would do that, chances are pretty good that they would already have done so or tried to do so. Popular culture already shows this to be a lie - there are plenty of reality shows that go out of their way to point out someone who is not the father - and what a relief that is.

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I think some males are overlooking another consequence of this desire for increased parental rights. If men had the right to demand the courts force paternity tests for children that they think they may have fathered, and grant parental rights to that child against the wishes of the people actually parenting the child, then it stands to reason that the courts should be able to force a man to act as a parent for children that he conceived. As it is, a man only has to be financially responsible - if an old fling proved I was the father of her child, she could not force me to take an active part in the child's life if I did not want to. I would have to contribute financially but I'm not going to get a court order to make me go to the house of some girl I may or may not be on good terms with, I can't be forced to add the kid to my already full household on weekends, I don't have to explain to some kid I never met why I have a connection to him and why I don't want it anymore.

Changing the laws as proposed would give men the right to be a father if they wanted to, but also the right to refuse if they didn't want to, which would be fundamentally unfair to women.

As someone else has pointed out, in every jurisdiction in the United States that I'm aware of (and certainly in my own jurisdiction), men do have the right to petition for the Court for an Establishment of Paternity. Of course, in the vast majority of Establishment of Paternity cases, for obvious reasons, it's usually mom who is seeking to establish paternity of dad because she wants dad to pay child support. I've seen a couple of cases where they had to test multiple potential dads before they finally got the right one. But, it's not uncommon for a dad to petition, especially when mom is clearly going to try to keep the child away from him. There is a standard you have to meet - you have to at least allege facts that, if true, would make it possible that the child is yours. So if the last time you had sex was 2 years ago, and the kid is only a year old, you're not going to get a paternity test. Incidentally, one positive test is definitive as to all potential claimants, so once you identify to a 99.99% degree of certainty that the child is someone's by genetic testing, all other potential fathers lose without the need for a paternity test.

In any case, your argument against (bolded above) this is absurdly reductive and circular. First, as stated above, dads already have this right.

But more importantly, if the only reason that Dad isn't "actively parenting" a child because he hasn't legally been determined to be the father and no judicial determination as to his parenting time rights has been made, how the hell does it make sense to argue therefore that Dad CAN'T seek a judicial determination as to paternity and his parenting time rights... because his rights haven't yet been determined? It's plainly circular.

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SJW-

I feel like your opinions on paternity and parenting are very heavily rooted in traditions and societal norms that the mother should be responsible for raising the child and, because she gave birth to it, should automatically be able to determine what is best for it. This is very unfair to women, men, and most of all, the children and is pretty anti-feminist. Just because someone is physically capable of giving birth it doesn't qualify that person to be a good parent, or mean that they want to or should be a parent at all.

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