Don’t Marry

Article by Gonzman, a MUST READ!
Post by Agitator on Sept 2, 2005, 3:18pm

The Men’s Movement, Lost Sheep, and how do these moccasins fit?

Since I’ve been singled out by Eva Ellesworth in her recent column, I hope nobody minds if I respond.

Yes, Eva, I am a loudmouth, Bomb-tossing radical advocate for change. And mainly because acting nice didn’t work. Since I turned into a loud and obnoxious man, and threw a few choice profanities in to get attention, it has come along nicely.

Your personal mileage may vary. Once upon a time I played nice. And I wasn’t listened to. To be honest, I’ve tried just about everything peaceful to get my point across, and becoming a noisy asshole is the last resort, but by gum, people are starting to hear at long last. And it’s a good thing, too. I was almost thinking that peaceful reform was a lost cause. And you know what they say about what happens when a society makes peaceful reform impossible, eh?

Eva, one thing I was taught a long time ago was the notion that “Any apology that has the word `but’ in it is NOT an apology.” I have found that such a philosophy carries over into other things as well. And when we in the Men’s Movement begin to complain about the raw deals we receive – I will spare the litany – what we hear so often is “Yeah, but, not all women…” and “Yeah, but, not my (insert personal anecdote)…”

But. Well, any agreement with a “but” in it isn’t an agreement, Eva. It leaves us with one conclusion to draw.

You’re not listening. You’re too busy excusing yourself personally, and to many of us it really doesn’t seem like you want to pitch in and help, you just want some sort of absolution.

Over and over we hear women complain that they never benefited from this, that they personally earned their job, or diploma, or whatever. Okay. Fine. Bravo. Problem is, Eva, that when you have 10 jobs open, and four are “reserved” for women (All in the name of Holy Diversity, dontcha know) SOMEONE in there is getting their job – scholarship – what have you – on a pass.

Are you really going to tell me that every woman who gets their goodie on a quota – and quota is what it is; when you have to resort to a quota to defend yourself from ruinous lawsuits, it’s a quota – gets it because she deserves it? That no man is ever knocked out of the running for something he earns and deserves because of these quotas? Are you really going to sit there and argue that point of view.

Maybe not you. Maybe indeed you’re the fifth woman who earned and deserves that cookie. What about the other four? Did all four deserve it? Did a man place higher than one of them? Two? Three? All four? How many men are empty handed because they got passed over due to institutionalized, legal, sexism? Ironically enough, all in the name of fighting sexism. Ain’t that a hoot?

Is it okay? Is one okay? Let us say that only one man comes up short because he failed the genitals test. Is that okay? “No, of course not!” responds anyone with a modicum of ethics – but we’re still sternly told not to talk about it.

Now here’s the kicker – which one of you – because I can’t tell on sight, there is no bar code, no flashing beanie that says “I benefited from Legal Sexism!” to tell – which one of you is the one who didn’t deserve their position? Which one of you got to hit from the red tees? I am sure it is aggravating to be tarred with that brush, but that’s the nature of that particular beast, and, I gotta say, it isn’t us Men’s Rights folks what set up that system of entitlements – but I guess we take the heat for it. And we really aren’t calling for quotas of our own – just a dismantling of undeserved entitlements. Trust me, Eva. The vast and overwhelming majority of us enjoy fair competition as opposed to a stacked deck, or the “Jokers wild for me but not for thee!” system now. Now asking for quotas, for “blue tees” – that would be real, re-treaded feminism.

Or is it our job to suck it up, take one for the team, and “Shhh! Shhh!” about that elephant in the room?

You know, Eva, Feminism has been running rampant for – oh – moving into decade number six now. I’m talking the really hard core feminism, too, not your granny’s “I want to vote and drive” feminism that conceivably could have really been about true equality under the law. Depending on how you count it, we’re working on the third, maybe even the fourth generation of women who have grown up under that.

This is three or four generations who have grown up being taught that it is okay for girls to hit boys, and expect not to be hit back, that they are entitled to equality of result as opposed to opportunity, thet “Grrlz Rule and Boyz Drool!” That they are entitled to lie, and cheat, and steal, and do as they please in respect to their “rights” to be a mother (or not) – and men be damned.

Care to take a guess at how many of these girls and women are perfect monsters? And even more so, I bet you don’t have a thing to do with them, or their cliques – so they are invisible to you, Eva. And you can do that. You won’t be thought of as a misogynist or accused of sexual harassment for shunning them, or accused of discrimination for firing them or not hiring them in the first place.

And even when you do interact with them, you’re not “The Enemy.” You aren’t scrutinized as a potential molester for reading your book in the park. Take your kid to the doctor for stitches, and you aren’t going to be looked at like you may have done it yourself, or asked to leave the room so they can interrogate your child. You are (queue sound of angels singing) “The Mother.” If the social workers come to your house because your busybody neighbor called them – so long as you aren’t a Christian or a Republican, God Forbid – they will more than likely be interested in keeping your family intact instead of trying to reunite them with (queue sound of angels singing) “Their Mother.” Assuming that Miz Nosy even calls them on you. After all, you’re a woman. Not one of those evil men who has no business around his own children.

Fifty plus years. Where were ya’ll back then? How come up until very recently – when the chickens have started flying back and roosting – the most scathing criticism of feminism from women has been, “I’m not a feminist, but…”

Um-hm. I’m not a feminist, but… I’ll be happy to graze at the buffet of entitlements. I’m not a feminist, but … I’ll cheerfully take custody of the kids, and the house, and the car when it’s handed to me because of my sex.

Of course, I would be remiss not to mention the Great, “You don’t speak for me, Betty Freidan” and “Gloria Steinem is not my Leader!” rallies of the sixties. Oh, yeah. They never happened. Well, How could we forget the “Real Equality for All in Family Court” and “Don’t Shaft My Son in My Name” organizations women started in the seventies. Ooops. Yeah. Um. They never formed either, did they? Anti-Paternity Fraud groups? No, none of them either. Hmm. The Protests against women who made false accusations? No, no – none of them either. Well, surely in the eighties we had petitions by women to their congressmen to not expand “Sexual Harassment” to include everything that merely displeased a woman.

Oh. Yeah. None of those, either. Except for Phyllis Schaefly, and a scant few followers, come to think of it, there sure as hell has been a lot of silent complicity in the excesses of feminism for a long, long time, now that you think of it – hasn’t there, Eva?

Of course while all this was happening, men were being ruined. Well, money can be re-earned. New Property can be bought, new businesses and careers built. How about families, Eva? Let’s talk about them.

Let’s talk about how men lost custody and access to their children, were hit with staggering child support assessments which required them to move far away, or take second jobs to meet (And for which they were further penalized). False accusations of sexual and physical abuse. Alienation, causing the flesh of their flesh to call another man – or series of men – daddy instead of them. Estrangements that continue to this day. Lost moments. Lost milestones. Birthdays and graduations denied because it wasn’t their turn to visit. Let’s just START there.

If you can turn back the clock and recapture those things gone forever, I’m all ears, along with a few million other men. I have got my second chance with everything else, personally speaking, but I’d sell my soul to get even a year or two of that time back, and consider it a fuckin’ bargain, Eva. Hell, Eva, I know men who would do it for even a day or two, with delivery to immediately follow.

Tell me, Eva, is it okay if we’re annoyed at that? Irritated? Mad? Angry? Maybe even enraged? Okay if we don’t believe in a system or institution that we were promised glorious things about, and which ripped out great chunks of our hearts and souls, leaving voids which can never, ever, be filled? Is that okay with you, Eva? Do we have your permission, here, to be just a touch aggravated that this was done in the name of “Feminism?” Might we even dislike it a little bit, even for a few minutes in the morning before anyone else gets up?

Very big of you.

Maybe we might also be a little disgusted that so many women are “Janie Come Latelies” to the party, especially when they couldn’t be bothered years earlier out of simple fairness and justice and waited until – how did you put it? They realized that “Making divorce and custody settlements more equitable helps women who want families because punitive settlements discourage men from marrying and becoming fathers” and that “feminism has probably hurt women more than it helped them.” You’ll have to pardon me a bit here, Eva. See, where I sit, it sounds like there is a lot of women who supped at the table of feminism in years gone by, but now want to get out of paying the bill for it. It sounds like a lot of women didn’t believe the water was rising until it was sloshing on them – and of course, now we men, once again, are expected to “do something” and make it all better.

You can reference a lot of “Pro Male” women writers for that one Eva – preaching at us how it is high time men stood up for themselves. But, by golly, do it in a “nice” way, and don’t be mad about it, okay, boys?

Crusty elder that I am, I’m part of that first fruits, the first generation of men who grew up under the scourge of feminism, who are now past the age where custody, visitation, support and all that are anything but a moot point. Like I said, my chance is past, and gone. And I’m not real eager to ask to be dealt in again, nor are many of my peers. Nor are many of our sons. We’ve learned through the baptism of fire that we’re about two flights of stairs lower than whale shit when it comes to our rights as fathers, and we’ve also learned that pretty much nobody really gives a bag of sour owl shit about it, either. Far as most of your sisters are concerned, we’re a soulless life support system for a fleshy dildo and a wallet, and a potential sperm donor if they ever decide they want to “be fulfilled as mothers.” And thanks, but – we really have to turn down the part. The pay stinks – you don’t even get scale – and the retirement plan is lousy. Plus there are no residuals involved.

I have to say, I’d be a lot more impressed over all the high sounding talk about men taking responsibility if this hadn’t come after years of urging – by women – to suck things up, to be a man, to not “judge” women by their “pasts” and make generalizations – those very things which would be the things to make us avoid poisonous women. We say, “Avoid College girls, they are infected with Feminism” and we are afraid of women with brains. We say, “Avoid Career women, you’ll always be second place” and we are afraid of capable women. We say “Avoid divorced women, single mothers” and we are judgemental. We can’t tell our sons and brothers to avoid promiscuous women. God forbid we preach a gospel of “Don’t Cater to demands and whims” because we are then insensitive. “Stand up for yourself” makes us abusive. If we look for women who have trained themselves for marriage and motherhood we are regressive control freaks. And so on. And so forth.

And add into it the very unreasonableness of that request – I know of no woman who has ever told me “I am going to use you for whatever you are worth, suck you dry of money and emotions, sleep with your friends in retaliation for wrongs I feel you have committed, take your kids away from you, and harass you with lawyers for the next dozen years.” In fact, especially such people will say quite the opposite – so when we are skeptical about things, we’re hateful to all women. Because, you know, after all we can read minds, except that we are too lazy, and can magically tell that you are different if we put our minds to it. I, mean, when you say “I would never do that” and the lying skank says it, the difference is so obvious, and the fact that we are dragging our feet while your biological clock is ticking isn’t because we are trying to be sure, but because as every schoolgirl knows, we men are just immature commitmentphobes.

And despite the fact that you yourself admit that “men often get raw deals in divorce court and family courts” and “our court system has made it too easy for women to file false charges of paternity, rape, abuse and sexual harassment” and that “the media portrays men as dolts” and that feminists are “over-represented in the media and academia” and “feminism has probably hurt women more than it helped them” and “male hostility (has been) wrought by feminism” and that “feminism (has) made divorce so unfavorable to men” it’s our fault for being sick and tired of playing the damn game. The day of “Everything Being Made Right” is surely coming, isn’t it, Eva? I mean, while you women were talking (but not much else) about how things were terrible, you’ve been asking us for decades to chill out, bide our time, and one day it would all be evened out.

A more cynical man than me might think we men have had smoke blown up our asses for years by women wanting us to wait until they had theirs secured before we finally rose up and said, “Screw this bullshit…” and commenced to cracking skulls, whether literally or figuratively. Such a man might even regard the common sentiments of “Well, this is terrible, but we have to deal with this carefully, and it will take some more time while (Holy, holy, holy!) THE SYSTEM(tm) grinds away. Chill out, guys, bide your time and we’ll get it sorted out and all will come right in the end.” as a continuation of do-nothing empty words.

Reverse the genders, Eva. For a moment. Badda-bing, abracadabra, hocus pocus, and bam-a-lam-a-ding-dong; and suddenly you’re a woman who is subject to losing jobs and opportunity for legal set asides for men. When you divorce, you’ll probably lose any material goods you have accumulated, and will be relegated to “visitor” in your children’s lives – if Daddy lets you get that far. Men will be able to accuse you of vile and despicable crimes, and you’ll be regarded as guilty until proven innocent; that the man has lied about such things before will be considered immaterial, and even if you prove yourself innocent, you’ll lose your kids and be forever suspected of being really guilty. A few loud mouth men get all the air-play, repeating myths that anyone with a computer can show to be false, and everywhere you look, women are portrayed as bumbling and incompetent nincompoops. Man can get a secret restraining order against you, call you, and YOU will be thrown in jail for violating the restraining order. And even if the man who has just taken your house, car, bank account, and kids makes six figures, he can quit his job to stay home with the kids, and he won’t be regarded as shirking work. And your child support will increase. And if you take a second job because what you have left over won’t pay your bills, he can get a chunk of that too, and complain in court that you are a piss poor parent because you are always working, never have time for the kids, and he shouldn’t be expected to accommodate your weirdo hours for visitation – and the court will side with him, because he’s a man. And he can berate you, punch you, kick, scream, throw things, and refuse to let you be, and if you so much as raise your voice to him, you can go to jail.

Want to live in that world, Eva? I wonder how long you might take there before you decided that men were more trouble than they were worth. And all this time many men will sit there and sanctimoniously claim, “Well, I’m not a masculist, but” and do sod all to help you for years on end beside give you platitudes, and tell you to keep a stiff upper lip, that it will all come right one day, until the day you wake up and realize that if that day were ever going to come, a couple years ago would have been too damn late to do you any good.

Think you might be a little bitter, Eva? Hm? And what do you think you might say to some man who comes up to you one day and says, “Hey, even though I took all the benefits of masculism for years, I have seen the light, and am now on your side, and have written a few columns in support of you. But you’re too bitter; and even though the movement I stood by and watched destroy you, and even supported at times, took years to make you what you are, you need to just get over it now. And stop talking bad about men – even though most of us have just stood by and let a few of us turn you into a second class citizen, we’re not all bad, you know.”

Well, Eva, I know what I might say if I was such a woman in that world. At the very least I might say, “You haven’t taken the first step, let alone walked the proverbial mile in my moccasins, boyo, and you have a lot of dues to pay before you are entitled to tell me how I should feel.” But I am a charitable sort at heart, Eva. I imagine other women in that dark place might have less charitable sentiments than me. In that alternate reality, such women might refer to Masculists with vulgar names. And given that so many men in that world just stood by and clucked while women were reduced to second class citizens, but did nothing but urge women to take charge of themselves and take responsibility for the evil that has befallen them; and of course, to suck it up, and take one for the team for now, it’ll all even out some day – at at the same time urge those women to be temperate in their speech while doing it – Why, Eva, I think those women in that horrid world might not really give a rat’s ass if a few men got their feelings hurt, especially when those men read “Masculist” and decide to infer it applies to “All Men.”

What becomes really aggravating in all this is the subtext and notion that there is some collective debt all men owe all women, which is not reciprocated; that absent conclusive proof to the contrary, men should give any woman the benefit of the doubt for being women, and no matter how often a man gets burned, with each and every woman that comes along, the slate must be washed clean. I reverse, though, it’s okay to collectivize men, and require each man to prove himself worthy of that kind of respect. Women want to be women, and of worth for their femininity alone – but when women collectively fall short, then it is time to “treat them as individuals.” We men are the go to guys when women have problems, and let there be bad men, it’s our responsibility to police our own, to go that extra mile to “show her” that we’re not like all the other guys. Because, gosh darn it, she’s a woman, and worthy of that respect, and she’s been burned before and has a right, as a delicate flower, to be re-assured – and we ought to be a little more empathetic, we insensitive louts. Guess what happens when that is reversed, though?

There is a broad picture one looks at when you get hammered by a corrupt system, Eva, and sadly, feminists, your sisters, have created a world in which a relationship is a minefield for men, but a gold-mine for women if they are willing to work the system. Too many women take it entirely too personally when we men get tired of playing a rigged game, of being the ones upon whose shoulder falls the responsibility of sorting the wheat from the chaff.

The men’s movement is chock full of us guys who have seen first hand past the romantic notions of marriage, by being chewed up and spit out by the family courts. For some of us, we have a couple tours of duty, and we know just how bad it can be. Divorce is a nightmare for men, and in the event of breakups of marriages there is a legal nuclear option that women hold, and are for practical purposes universally unwilling to surrender – we are expected to “trust” that she would never do that.

Past the anger and bitterness of those of us in the Men’s movement, though, the desires and goals of the men’s movement are pretty simple – and pretty clear. We want to be accounted as worthy a parent, and not subjected to the knee-jerk discrimination in the family courts. We want due process when accused, and a clean slate when acquitted. We want to be more than a wallet, a walking ATM, and we want these “equal” women to step up and throw their shoulder into the load of supporting families. We want consistent treatment – if acting the father makes us a father, and not acting one makes us not one, we don’t want to be hammered ten years down the road for support for some child we never knew we had, let alone were never a father to, because some feminism-addled chick decided years ago she wanted to be a mother and didn’t need a man – but changed her mind when reality bit her in the ass. Conversely, if Biology is the determinant, we don’t want to be mandated support for some offspring of another man we were tricked into, and made a fool of, into thinking it was our own.

We’re just sick of the spin that the moral and ethical thing for a man to do is whatever makes a woman’s life work for her; and more so, we are sick to death of being told that because we want women to have real equality, which includes all the bad of equality to go with all the good they are unwilling to give up, that we are somehow anti-woman and re-issued feminists.

You want men to take responsibility for their part in all this – collectively, as opposed to individual cases? Excellent. Done. It’s time, then, for women to take a similar collective responsibility – all this damage done by “feminism” has been done by, and at the behest of your sisters. The majority of women stood by and uttered nary a peep while this went on for half a century – and while those who spoke up deserve individually deserve honorable mention, on the whole the collective actions of women were pretty damn pathetic as their fathers, brothers, and sons were being turned into second class citizens and they just watched with pursed lips and really concerned looks but did or said sod all about it.

And if those of us who got splattered when the feces hit the fan want to go off, get a shower, and drink a beer, are saying, “Call us when you clean up the mess” well, it certainly is our right, I’d say.

Do you feel a lot of anger from men in the movement towards women? I’d say that is probably true Eva, and justifiably so because for years upon years all we have received from all but a scant few here and there is lip service, platitudes, and at best indifference. And what compounds this annoyance is that even though we have been banging drums and blowing horns, and raising sixteen kinds of holy hell for years upon years until we were blue in the face, now – because women are suffering the long-predicted fallout! – only now has it become a crisis worthy of mention. So I am afraid, at the very least, that you will have to suck it up and be patient for a while. We’ve been clamoring for our change first. Solving men’s problems is the first priority, then we can deal with yours. And to be brutally honest, if some women are inconvenienced by this in the meantime, well, their apathy up till now makes it the very least of what is coming to them.

Like I said in the beginning – agreements with “buts” in them aren’t agreements, and make me think people aren’t listening. And I am as weary of reciting the litany of “Women can be as bad as men too, women aren’t angels, men aren’t demons, and “Woman Good, Man Bad” is a horrible myth.” as some are of hearing it. But I’ll tell you, I will welcome the day when people stop merely hearing it, and start listening. Maybe I can shut up then and rest my voice. As it stands right now, though, if I shut up, the choir will be the only people who have heard me preaching – and weary as they may be of hearing the sermon, you aren’t the sheep I am trying to save.
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Re: Article by Gonzman, a MUST READ!
Post by thechief on Sept 2, 2005, 4:25pm

Interesting. Ag, can you post the article by this Eva Ellesworth that apparently started this whole shooting match?
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Re: Article by Gonzman, a MUST READ!
Post by Agitator on Sept 2, 2005, 4:32pm

Sept 2, 2005, 4:25pm, thechief wrote:Interesting. Ag, can you post the article by this Eva Ellesworth that apparently started this whole shooting match?

Most likely here:

http://mensnewsdaily.com/blog/ellsworth/
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Re: Article by Gonzman, a MUST READ!
Post by Snakey on Sept 3, 2005, 7:29am

Great article. I would love to see how Eva could possibly respond.
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Re: Article by Gonzman, a MUST READ!
Post by Agitator on Sept 3, 2005, 9:08am

The same way women usually respond – either she’d change the subject, or she’d bring the same old shit up again and again, hoping that perhaps he’d somehow “forgotten” what they were talking about moments ago. There is simply no causality to women’s thinking.
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Re: Article by Gonzman, a MUST READ!
Post by Chris Key on Sept 3, 2005, 9:24am

Brilliant article, I will ask the man if he would like me to add the article under the commentary section on my site.
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Re: Article by Gonzman, a MUST READ!
Post by khankrumthebulgar on Sept 4, 2005, 12:48pm

Gonzman has very accurately articulated the issues we are facing in 2005. And the status of Men in this culture. And the way the Women interact with Men and excuse the oppression of Men. That they feel entitled to mistreat us and shame us is hypocrisy of the first order. I had a run in with a FemNag this week at College. Where the ratio of Women to men in my class is 3 to 1. We are not utilizing our human capital. This is a plan designed to fail. If Men are absent our future is bleak.

If you want to read a Woman who sees it right. Read some of Resa LaRu Kirkland and her ranting about the Pussy Brigade. She has Sons and is sick of how Feminism has ruined our Women. I would love my sons to meet this kind of a woman to have children with.
www.warchick.com

Politeness and civil discourse has gotten us nowhere. The Women are unwilling to bring us to parity or even to equality. It is time to get medieval and ugly. This apparently is the only thing they will understand. And the Lesbians hate Men any way time to thin the herd. They will not and cannot be reasoned with. They are too embittered, irrational, unreasonable and full of vengeance.

I am sad to say the Moslems may have the only rational way of dealing with them. That is a sad commentary on our Women’s refusal to see reality.
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Re: Article by Gonzman, a MUST READ!
Post by rule on Nov 2, 2005, 3:07pm

“It is time to get medieval and ugly.”

Yep. and don’t forget to stay single.
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