Friday, August 31, 2007

F is for Fees

...And Federline....

Kevin, you see, is making news because he is asking Britt to pick up part of his legal fees. This shouldn't be news. Britt makes about 737,868/month. Kevin claims to have no real income besides spousal support. (Yeah, he should get a job, but never mind that.) And our legal system has a long standing tradition of sticking the man with legal fees, and claiming that it's really just about distributing the fees to the person with the money.

In actuality, this is just another way that our misandrous legal system puts yet another finger on the woman's side of the scales, and applies pressure. With women taking time out for kids and wanting to be housewives, men naturally make more. - And what woman is going to settle a case, if she knows that the judge is going to make the man pay her legal fees? And why not bring action after action once the divorce is finally filed? The man's payin! Pony up to the bar!

Well, now the justice system is in a bind. Sure K-Fed is kind of a tick, et cetera, but we are in a brave new no-fault world here. Doesn't matter. Britt makes the money, and if Justice lives down to its own misguided standards, she should pay. It might even happen, with so many eyes on this one.

But it shouldn't.

My best to you in your struggles,
M

Monday, August 06, 2007

E is for Effect, as in ‘Cause And’

Traditionally Men work longer hours than women, at hard dangerous jobs, with less leave, in order to:

* win improved lifestyle
* win improved choice in mates
* win ability to have offspring
* win improved outcomes for offspring
* win comfortable retirement
* win ability to leave legacy to offspring

But today’s misandrist legal/social systems take away:

* Lifestyle – if you even date a woman, she can claim you said you would support her, and she gets a significant portion of your income for an indefinite amount of time.
* Mates – lacking assets or disposable income post legal action, men have reduced choice in mates.
* Offspring – legal action awards children to ex-wives/partners leaving men without children, and as children are used as weapons against men, with reduced desire to have more children, not to mention with reduced financial resources to rear children. They simply cannot afford them.
* Offspring Positive Outcomes – It has been very well documented that children from broken families do less well, especially in homes lacking a father. Funds transferred to the woman via the legal system are often spent for her comfort, and not for the care of the children.
* Comfortable Retirement – Retirement assets are subject to marital division, and can also be raided to create the funds demanded for the woman by the legal system. And as the man’s income is likely severely impacted by divorce/palimony, it is much harder post-legal action, for him to save for retirement. He is lucky if he can just get by.
* Legacy – As the man’s assets are pillaged in divorce, along with his retirement savings, and his future income, it is very unlikely that he will be able to leave any sort of legacy to the children who likely have been forcibly separated from him.

So, the benefits of the male work ethic of the 19th and 20th century have been eroded so as to make them almost nonexistent, especially when you tack on a significant tax rate.

I think that the impacts of this are many-sided, and far reaching, including:

Male-Female Relations:

* As the man has become not just disposable, but a cash-cow to women, men will be less interested in relationships, and so women must try harder to lure men with increasingly sexualized behavior, dress and body modifications (such as breast enlargement).
* Some women will use money as an incentive to men to enter into relationships with them – advertising that they don’t need the man’s money and he can feel safe. And how to advertise? Expensive clothing and jewelry.
* Meanwhile as relationships with women are hazardous, men are more likely to engage in anonymous or pseudonymous one-night-stands or brief affairs, where women are brought, not home, but to a hotel.
* Women having become ‘the enemy’, men are much less likely to include women in their social groups or outings, instead seeking company that they can relax, and be safe and stress-free with.

All these reactions to the elevation of women above men in the legal system tend to increase the objectification of women, and increase division between the sexes. A women’s movement that started out claiming it wanted equality and moved to superiority is now driving men and women back into behaviors that they claimed to abhor.

Economic:

* Men are much, much less likely to seek high-power jobs, or take on ambitious projects, knowing that they can get trapped in a very high-stress job, with all the income going to an ex-spouse or partner.
* Men are more likely to leave for countries that will not enslave them. (And as we know, many do and have.)
* Men are more likely to opt-out of the above-ground economy, working under the table or for cash jobs that are hard to attach to.
* Men may begin hiding their friends, and their friend’s assets from abusive spouses and girlfriends, and from the police that are sent to enforce unfair judgments.
* Young men raised in households without fathers are even less likely to pick up a strong male work-ethic, and instead are likely to live on the margins of society.

The economic reactions to the elevation of women above men in the legal system injure our economy, with workers choosing underemployment, black-market employment, or leaving the country entirely to take their labor elsewhere.

Both of these sets of reactions seem potentially to be things that can feed back upon themselves, with women needing to become more and more ‘sexy’ to get noticed, and men who do work to their full advantage within the legal/economic system being disadvantaged, compared to those working on the black market, or scraping by 'on the dole' rather than having it all taken away anyway.

And is this a picture of our culture today? Increasing sexualization of women, with men becoming more and more shiftless, as the economics of marriage and even mid-term relationships make it impossible to hang onto your freedom, your income, and your assets? With highly motivated men living double lives - one life for the aquisition of money and power, and another life of anonymity, to protect what is gathered? Is this the country we want?

It certainly looks like where we may be going.