You Didn't MEAN to Lie? You've Got to be Kidding!

Boston College Researchers Slam Slate Article Claiming Fathers Lie About Parenting
By Robert Franklin, Esq.



It seems I'm not the only one to criticize the Slate piece entitled "Why Do Dads Lie on Surveys About Fatherhood?" (Slate, 6/17/10). In fact, the article has received such a storm of complaints that the author, Katherine Lewis, has posted her own comment to it, trying to make a silk purse and failing. First, she used a recent study done by Boston College researchers for the proposition that fathers lie when asked about their parental behavior. Here's the response to her assertion by the people who conducted the research.

"While we appreciate your time and attention to this topic, the study authors at the Boston College Center for Work & Family want to make it clear that our research never addressed nor did it imply that the fathers we interviewed were "lying" about the time spent with their children. On the contrary, in the interviews we conducted we were impressed with the earnest and heartfelt commitment expressed by these men toward their families and their new role as fathers. As a qualitative research study, we sought to chronicle these men's personal experiences as fathers and professionals. While we did not validate their self-reported estimates of time spent in parenting activities through other sources (e.g. their spouses or direct observation) as one might do in a time-use study, that was never our intent. We therefore [have] no basis to state that these numbers are accurate or inaccurate.

Our hope was that our research would provide a view into the quiet revolution that is taking place as men become more highly engaged in parenting. We believe all of us should be supportive of the efforts of these men and hope research like ours will lead to more equitable treatment of all workers as they deal with the challenges of balancing their professional and personal lives. To infer that our study is about how men misrepresent their parenting role is out of touch with our intent and in no way reflects our findings. We encourage readers to access the full study report here.

Stated more bluntly, it's a lie to say that their study was about men lying about their parental behavior.

Now, to be scrupulously honest myself, Lewis never said in so many words that the study was about dads lying. But what it did do (and, I would argue, intentionally so), is leave that impression. That's what happens when a writer entitles her piece, "Why Do Dads Lie on Surveys About Fatherhood?", leads off with the study, and then moves into the phenomenon of aspirational lying. If you don't believe that's the impression the piece leaves, just ask yourself, "Why did the Boston College researchers feel the need to post a comment describing what their research actually does as opposed to what Lewis suggests?"...

In Lewis' comment to her piece, she claims, "I'm surprised at the perception that this piece was an attack on men."

Well, Ms. Lewis, that's what happens when you call people liars in the headline of your article. It makes them angry. Toss in a little intellectual dishonesty of the sort I pointed out in my first piece, and they get angrier still.

Look UP "Reversion to the Mean"

Prices can only remain at levels where they are supported by real wages produced by the sale of goods and services. In a system such as ours, which has enjoyed ever expanding amounts of credit for nearly 20 years, when that credit is removed (massive excess credit), which it inevitably must be, prices do something very typical called REVERSION TO THE MEAN. That is, they wildly fluctuate around (in a general downward trend) until they find a level of price support, meaning HOME PRICES WILL FALL UNTIL REGULAR PEOPLE MAKING GENUINE, DURABLE SALARIES CAN AFFORD THEM. This little nugget of wisdom is otherwise known as supply and demand or else, COMMON SENSE. Buttressing this common sense argument is something very important in economics called DEMOGRAPHICS, that is, the layout in a given region of women, men, age, race, education and the like. Our current demographics in the U.S.? DREADFUL. We're not Japan, but the picture ain't pretty. Essentially, we are mostly baby-boomers, that is people between the ages of 46 and 64, roughly. These people will be looking to retire. This almost always means DOWNSIZING and selling their McMansion to.... someone. See, that's the sticky part of economics. Prices (stock, bonds, real estate, etc.) are up! Sell! Get rich! Ok, sell to whom? If there is no buyer, no sale can take place. Now every government imbecile (official), every realtor, bankster and fraudster (mortgage broker) for 6,000 miles is preaching YOU MUST BUY NOW! PRICES HAVE FALLEN! They have also completely corrupted most government programs making home ownership loans so as to encourage you to buy more house than you can afford by raising the limits of the loan awards in these programs to 4, 5, and 600,000 dollars. This is of course, insane and will be a total failure. You can give Joe Sixpack a home loan for 800 grand, but if he can't cover utilities, taxes and insurance plus the mortgage plus all his other bills with 36% of his income (banks and mathematicians know what you can afford far better than you can, genius), called Debt to Income ratio or DTI, then it doesn't matter how much he's loaned. He can't pay it back Cuz he JUST DOESN'T HAVE THE MONEY. And when his interest rate resets or when the house needs a new roof or water heater or furnace or mold removal or if his wife loses her job or has his hours cut or his income cut, THAT'S IT, GAME OVER.

People late on their mortgage? They're right here:



And sadly, THEY'RE SCREWED. They're not paying because they can't afford to pay. They were sold a home they couldn't afford and now they're extremely screwed. Meanwhile, the bankrupt banks holding their "paper" (loan documents) are insolvent, that is BANKRUPT FOR THE NEXT TWO DECADES OR MORE. But these banksters own - literally have bought - our government officials, men and women who seem to have made a life out of trying to sink to new depths of deceit and corruption.

NOW we shall revert to the mean. We shall revert to what people can afford and by people I mean that small chunk of folks in their late 20s and early 30s who can afford a 200k to 350-400k (at the very high end) home with many starter homes of 1000-1400 square feet going for much less. Or as your grandfather will tell you: "You know what something's worth son? WHAT SOMEONE IS WILLING TO PAY YOU FOR IT." Good luck baby-boomers. You'll need more than luck to sell that McMansion to someone your kid's age. You'll need a goddamn miracle. And banksters don't take miracles as collateral.

A Radical's Hatred - Not as Extreme as it is, sadly

The most terrible part of this is that the extreme elements of the feminist movement are not very far from the ideas contained in this obscene hate rag. In fact, Andrew Dworkin, Gerda Lerner and others would wholeheartedly endorse this type of pure, unadulterated discrimination. Most of the people I reveal this to (directly quoting from the work of the authors mentioned), simply refuse to believe how anyone could believe "every time a man has sex with a woman its rape," or a man would "fuck a tree if it had a vagina," and other such deplorable ideas. I post it to give people an idea of how extreme misandry can be and how these kinds of ludicrous ideas can actually influence mainstream society in the worst possible ways. When people even consider such ideas and consider men capable of such things, then the slightly less bloodthirsty hatred only sounds "harsh" and not totally beyond reason. Of course a work of similar hatred aimed at women would be wildly denounced and the author accused of a crime or else thrown in prison for slander and defamation. The work would be dismissed as the wanderings of an insane man full of confused, misdirected hate.

The woman that wrote this attempted to execute three unarmed, innocent men, one of whom she never met, all of whom begged for their life. When she surrendered, she claimed "He had too much control over my life;" a man who she sought out and saw of her own free will. Andy Warhol barely knew her of course. And other than giving her the hope her work would be published or made into a movie, he never harmed her in any way and she came and went as she pleased as everyone else did to his private residence, referred to as "The Factory."

"SCUM"

by Valerie Solanas

Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.

It is now technically feasible to reproduce without the aid of males (or, for that matter, females) and to produce only females. We must begin immediately to do so. Retaining the mail has not even the dubious purpose of reproduction. The male is a biological accident: the Y (male) gene is an incomplete X (female) gene, that is, it has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.

The male is completely egocentric, trapped inside himself, incapable of empathizing or identifying with others, or love, friendship, affection of tenderness. He is a completely isolated unit, incapable of rapport with anyone. His responses are entirely visceral, not cerebral; his intelligence is a mere tool in the services of his drives and needs; he is incapable of mental passion, mental interaction; he can't relate to anything other than his own physical sensations. He is a half-dead, unresponsive lump, incapable of giving or receiving pleasure or happiness; consequently, he is at best an utter bore, an inoffensive blob, since only those capable of absorption in others can be charming. He is trapped in a twilight zone halfway between humans and apes, and is far worse off than the apes because, unlike the apes, he is capable of a large array of negative feelings -- hate, jealousy, contempt, disgust, guilt, shame, doubt -- and moreover, he is aware of what he is and what he isn't.

Although completely physical, the male is unfit even for stud service. Even assuming mechanical proficiency, which few men have, he is, first of all, incapable of zestfully, lustfully, tearing off a piece, but instead is eaten up with guilt, shame, fear and insecurity, feelings rooted in male nature, which the most enlightened training can only minimize; second, the physical feeling he attains is next to nothing; and third, he is not empathizing with his partner, but is obsessed with how he's doing, turning in an A performance, doing a good plumbing job. To call a man an animal is to flatter him; he's a machine, a walking dildo. It's often said that men use women. Use them for what? Surely not pleasure.

Eaten up with guilt, shame, fears and insecurities and obtaining, if he's lucky, a barely perceptible physical feeling, the male is, nonetheless, obsessed with screwing; he'll swim through a river of snot, wade nostril-deep through a mile of vomit, if he thinks there'll be a friendly pussy awaiting him. He'll screw a woman he despises, any snaggle-toothed hag, and furthermore, pay for the opportunity. Why? Relieving physical tension isn't the answer, as masturbation suffices for that. It's not ego satisfaction; that doesn't explain screwing corpses and babies.

Completely egocentric, unable to relate, empathize or identify, and filled with a vast, pervasive, diffuse sexuality, the male is pyschically passive. He hates his passivity, so he projects it onto women, defines the make as active, then sets out to prove that he is (`prove that he is a Man'). His main means of attempting to prove it is screwing (Big Man with a Big Dick tearing off a Big Piece). Since he's attempting to prove an error, he must `prove' it again and again. Screwing, then, is a desperate compulsive, attempt to prove he's not passive, not a woman; but he is passive and does want to be a woman.

Being an incomplete female, the male spends his life attempting to complete himself, to become female. He attempts to do this by constantly seeking out, fraternizing with and trying to live through an fuse with the female, and by claiming as his own all female characteristics -- emotional strength and independence, forcefulness, dynamism, decisiveness, coolness, objectivity, assertiveness, courage, integrity, vitality, intensity, depth of character, grooviness, etc -- and projecting onto women all male traits -- vanity, frivolity, triviality, weakness, etc. It should be said, though, that the male has one glaring area of superiority over the female -- public relations. (He has done a brilliant job of convincing millions of women that men are women and women are men). The male claim that females find fulfillment through motherhood and sexuality reflects what males think they'd find fulfilling if they were female.

Women, in other words, don't have penis envy; men have pussy envy. When the male accepts his passivity, defines himself as a woman (males as well as females thing men are women and women are men), and becomes a transvestite he loses his desire to screw (or to do anything else, for that matter; he fulfills himself as a drag queen) and gets his dick chopped off. He then achieves a continuous diffuse sexual feeling from `being a woman'. Screwing is, for a man, a defense against his desire to be female.

Simply Brilliant

Dr. Tara Palmatier: What Makes Your Control Freak Wife or Girlfriend Tick..

This is so rare that I could not resist cutting and pasting it. Good to see that at least some people will actually admit that women are just as much the culprit at destroying relationships (more so). Remind yourself of who is the main divorce instigator (still topping 70% plus as far as I am aware)...

What Makes Your Control Freak Wife or Girlfriend Tick
Monday, May 10, 2010
By Dr. Tara J. Palmatier

Does your wife or girlfriend tell you what to do most or all of the time? Does she become enraged or sullen and withdrawn if she doesn’t get her way? Does she needle you endlessly until you capitulate? Controlling behaviors and attitudes are just another aspect of abusive women personality traits.

It’s natural to want to have control over your own life. However, most of us realize you can’t control everything, especially other people. You can make requests or try to influence others, but you can’t control them. Psychologist Dr Thomas Schumacher writes, “When you have to be in control of the people around you…when you literally can’t rest until you get your own way…you have a personality disorder.”

Here’s the rub: You can’t control others. Not really. When you spend your every waking moment worrying about what others are doing, compulsively trying to control them, you’re the one who ultimately becomes controlled by your desire to control. It’s a paradoxical effect. For those of you who are involved with an emotionally abusive, controlling woman, you probably recognize that maniacal, “out of control” look in her eyes when she’s trying to bend you to her will and you’re trying to resist.

Are control freaks and Narcissistic and/or Borderline women one and the same?

There’s a lot of overlap between the characteristics of “control freaks” and emotionally abusive NPD/BPD women. This isn’t a great leap since many men who are involved with these women describe them as “controlling.” If you think of this woman as a cubic zirconia, “control freak” is just another facet that flashes in the light like “bully,” “professional victim,” “pathological jealousy,” “hypercritical,” “entitled,” etc. Put another way, it’s another piece of the fragmented BPD/NPD woman jigsaw puzzle.

Control freaks and abusive women both:

* Have difficulty trusting others.
* Have a profound fear of having their flaws exposed.
* Cannot tolerate feeling vulnerable (and, therefore, can’t handle intimacy).
* Are riddled with anxiety, fear, insecurity and anger.

What’s really going on.

Why does she invest so much in trying to control you and your reality? Because she tries to manage her anxiety by trying to control you. Control is her anxiety management technique of choice. She doesn’t experience anxiety like a relatively healthy person does—an unpleasant sensation that will eventually pass. To this woman, anxiety is a painful reminder that something is wrong with her. To acknowledge this is akin to being lowered into a dark, bottomless pit with no way out. There is a way out, of course; facing her issues and feeling her feelings, but she’s not going to do that. Controlling and torturing you makes her feel better about herself.

Facing her fears and working through her issues would mean admitting she actually has issues, which would mean holding herself accountable and not blaming others. It makes much more sense (to her and remember, she’s the only one who matters) to deny and ignore her problems and push and poke at you because in her mind you’re the one with the problem, not her.

Her strategy is unconscious for the most part and goes something like this: If you’re both totally focused on and consumed by what a useless, screw-up jerk you are, she believes no one will notice her glaring flaws. Get it? I feel dizzy from typing that last piece of illogical reasoning, but that’s what goes on in the dark recesses of her brain.

She tries to stave off her deep-seated fear of having her true self exposed by controlling every aspect of her life and her relationship with you, including imposing her distorted version of reality upon you. She views her ability to control you as a matter of survival—her psychological survival, that is. “Being in control gives her the temporary illusion of a sense of calmness. When she feels she is prevailing, you can just about sense the tension oozing out of her” (Schumacher).

Think about it. When does she come close to being in a good mood or smile with pure pleasure? When she feels like she’s in the catbird seat because she’s gotten her way, pulled one over on you or pulled the rug out from underneath you. The size of her smile is in direct proportion to the number of times she twisted the proverbial knife.

Other Favorite Defense Mechanisms: Projection and projective identification.

Projection and projective identification play a part in her controlling behaviors. She maps her feelings onto you and controls you by inducing these feelings within you. Her controlling facade masks her true internal experience. Deep down she feels frightened, out of control, incompetent and helpless.

Les Parrot (The Control Freak) writes, “People who want to exert control over everything can make those around them feel inadequate, insecure, nervous, angry, anxious and physically sick. Their message is: I don’t trust you to be able to do it right; I don’t respect your judgment; I don’t think you are competent; I don’t value your insight.” Whether or not this woman is aware of it, this is how she feels about herself. Once you recognize the defense mechanisms at play, it becomes a little easier to take her hurtful behaviors less personally. She’d be like this with anyone.

In order for me to win, you must lose.

Because this is a matter of psychological survival to her, she has to steamroll you in order to avoid feeling helpless. “To relinquish control is tantamount to being victimized and overwhelmed” (Schumacher). Unfortunately, her fears also fuel her lack of empathy toward you and create the mindset: “Victimize or be victimized; dominate or be dominated.”

To the abusive woman, it’s not enough to merely control you. She only feels in control and good about herself if she makes you feel less than. Her mood becomes buoyant as she cuts you down. She has to make you feel useless, disoriented and helpless, so that she doesn’t feel this way.

This is evidence of a faulty belief system. She has a one-up/one-down mentality. She believes that in every interpersonal interaction there’s a winner and a loser and she will fight tooth and nail against being the “loser.” This is why it’s virtually impossible for this woman to compromise or make concessions. To her, compromise and concession are humiliating defeats. She’d rather blow the house up and everything in it than compromise or take personal responsibility.

Her need to control, however, will come back to bite her on the backside. Instead of feeling and appearing in control, this woman comes across as out of control when trying to exert control and the people who are under her tyranny eventually stage a revolt and/or bolt from the relationship.

Losing control.

Schumacher cites the rapid phases this kind of woman goes through when she’s not getting her way or feels she’s losing control. For example, when you challenge her or threaten to end the relationship, she probably exhibits the following emotional states in quick succession:

1. Angry and agitated. (You’re treated to a rage episode and/or nasty commentary, blame and accusations.)
2. Panicky and apprehensive. (She exposes fleeting vulnerability as she tries to “feel you out” in order to see how and if she can regain control. She may worry that she’s gone too far and is testing the waters before gearing up for another control maneuver.)
3. Agitated and threatening. (Because anxiety is ego dystonic—i.e., painfully uncomfortable—she quickly reverts to form and begins to bully you and issue ultimatums and threats of punishment.)
4. Depression and despair. (When all else fails, she becomes sullen and withdrawn and suffers a temporary identity crisis.)

Her unhealthy coping mechanism (control) becomes an unhealthy and rigid pattern. Because it’s impossible to control others, she’s locked in the endless loop of fighting off real and imagined threats to her control. Since she won’t look at her own issues and focuses solely on controlling you and her environment, she never gains mastery over the fears that plague her. Her attempts at mastery (control) over her emotions and fears instead become a replay of misery for herself and others. But remember, she’ll probably never be able to see herself as part of the problem, which means it’s highly unlikely she’ll ever change.

Fellow Psychologist, Dr Patricia A. Farrell, states: “They’re highly resistant to any therapy, and there is no medication for the personality disorder.” To seek help themselves, she says, “the control freak has to be convinced the price is too great not to, and that doesn’t happen very often.”

Yes, this woman is deeply troubled, but it is NOT your responsibility to tolerate, accept or change her. The only way to gain mastery over a relationship with this kind of woman is to end it. Otherwise, you’ll begin an endless replay loop of your own misery.

Next week I’ll post ways to manage an emotionally abusive “control freak,” so please check back.

by Dr Tara J. Palmatier, PsyD

Originally posted at Shrink4Men on August 3, 2009.

Want to Keep a Man Ladies?

THEN PAY ATTENTION!

You Are Not a Princess! 25 Points for Women and Men to Consider
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
By Dr. Tara J. Palmatier

I’ve been writing my own blog, A Shrink for Men, for almost a year now. In that time, I’ve noticed many double standards and gender inequities that seem to be culturally acceptable in relationships. Here are some of my observations for women to consider in terms of their own behavior and for men to consider in terms of their own enlightenment when it comes to women and relationships. [*Please note: The following points don't apply to all women.]

Hey ladies, and you know who you are:

1. You are not a princess. You do not deserve to be treated like royalty just by virtue of your sex. You deserve to be treated no better or worse than you treat others.

2. You are not any more “special” nor any more “entitled” than anyone else. You don’t deserve special privileges and nobody “owes” you anything by virtue of who you are or because of your gender.

3. You are just as “lucky” to have found your husband/boyfriend as he was to find you. Have you ever considered that there are times when you are lucky that he puts up with and tolerates you?

4. Men have feelings, too. They hurt just as much as you do when you criticize, reject, dismiss, ignore, make fun of, disrespect, invalidate and/or mock them. In fact, they may hurt more because they don’t have as many emotional outlets as you—especially if you tell him his feelings “don’t count” or to “be a man” when he expresses his feelings that you mistakenly claim he doesn’t have and/or is “wrong” for having. He has feelings and he has a right to them even when they’re not the same as yours and/or are expressed differently than you express yours.

5. If it’s okay for you to have male friends and maintain friendships with your exes, it’s also okay for your husband/boyfriend to have female friends and maintain friendships with his exes. It is not different for you because “you’re a woman.” It’s faulty logic to suppose women are inherently more trustworthy than men. This is called a double standard and it’s not okay. Otherwise, the culturally acceptable pronouncement, “Men are all dogs” should be met with “Women are all bitches” (i.e., female dogs) and should be equally culturally acceptable. For the record. I think both statements are unacceptable.

6. A father is just as important in a child’s life as a mother. Period. Just because you have a uterus doesn’t make you the better parent by default.

7. Children are not “hers” and “his” objects. The correct possessive pronoun is “ours.”

8. Your husband/boyfriend does not “owe” you. He shouldn’t be expected to financially support you and shower you with gifts unless you’re willing to reciprocate and equally support him without question or complaint. You’re neither his child nor his dependent. You’re supposed to be his equal partner.

9. Your husband’s/boyfriend’s desires, needs, wishes, feelings, likes and dislikes are just as important as yours. It’s not all about you all the time. You’re supposedly in a mutual and reciprocal relationship; not a service industry/client-vendor relationship.

10. If you’re not willing to make changes in yourself and your behavior, you’ve no right to demand that your husband/boyfriend do so. Nor is it reasonable to demand or expect your husband/boyfriend to make all the changes you want first before you’re willing to do your own work.

11. You are not a better human being by virtue of being a woman. You’re not a goddess. You’re not a sacred cow. You don’t “rule.” You’re a person, just like your husband/boyfriend is a person. You both deserve to be treated with equal dignity and respect when you act and treat each other with dignity and respect.

12. It’s a lie and a manipulation to say you “sacrificed” your career when you never really wanted to work in the first place. If you see your husband/boyfriend as your ticket to freedom from being a wage slave, be honest with yourself and your husband/boyfriend and most important of all, BE GRATEFUL. Having another person pay your way through life is not an inalienable right; it’s an enormous gift for which you should express gratitude on a regular basis. You might also want to consider the burden by placing on your husband/boyfriend by not carrying your own weight.

13. It is wrong to use your child(ren) to hurt, control or extort money from your husband/boyfriend/ex. In fact, it borders on child abuse. Children are not pawns or human shields to be used for your own selfish reasons. They’re people who will later grow to resent you for using them in this fashion and will likely develop psychological problems of their own as a result.

14. It is wrong to expect or demand that your ex continue to financially support you after the relationship ends. The children are entitled to support until they become adults at the age of 18. You’re already an adult and, as such, you’re capable of and should legally be expected to take care of yourself— unless you’re willing to continue to support your ex by doing his grocery shopping, cooking cleaning, errands, etc. If your obligations to your husband are finished after a divorce, so should be his obligations to you.

15. Your husband/boyfriend is not responsible for your happiness. It isn’t his job to make you happy; that’s your job. Just as he is responsible for his own happiness. He’s supposed to be your equal partner, not your emotional wet nurse.

16. The desire for sex in a committed, loving relationship is healthy and natural. Using sex to control, shame or hurt your husband/boyfriend by withholding affection or making sex transactional is unhealthy and wrong.

17. Your husband/boyfriend should be more important to you than your child(ren) just as you should be more important to your husband than the child(ren). In other words, you should be each others’ first priorities; children second. You don’t need a husband if your sole desire is to have children—unless you see the man as a source of income for yourself and the children. If you can’t support yourself, you probably shouldn’t be having children. Marriage is a bond between two grown adults; not a bond between parent and child (Marc Rudov, 2008). You vow to honor your spouse and put him or her before all others, this includes your children. Children eventually fly the coop. If you make them the focus and raison d’être of your marriage, don’t be surprised when you no longer have much of a marriage as the years pass.

18. You are only entitled to what you earn or produce. Men are neither beasts of burden nor “working boys” to be pimped out in the service of their partners or ex-partners. No one owes you a living. As an adult, you’re not entitled to be taken care of by another party unless you have documented cognitive or physical disabilities that prohibit you from working. Last time I checked, being a wife, ex-wife, girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, mistress, ex-mistress, mother and/or simply a woman wasn’t considered a disability.

19. It is just as ABUSIVE when a woman slaps, kicks, hits, spits, at, scratches, shoves, pushes, punches, pulls hair, uses a weapon, swings a golf club at or throws objects at a man. It isn’t funny, cute, justifiable or deserved. It is indefensible, inexcusable, criminal and just as prosecutable as when a man acts violently toward a woman. Period.

20. The same goes for emotional abuse. It is unacceptable.

21. It is neither “normal” nor “acceptable” adult female behavior to throw temper tantrums, withhold sex, cry, rage, pout, have disproportionate reactions to events or be unable to control emotions and behaviors. At the very least, these are signs of emotional lability and poor impulse control; at worst, these are indicators of serious pathology and quite possibly some kind of personality disorder.

22. It is not okay to divert money from your joint checking/savings account(s) or open credit cards in your husband’s/boyfriend’s name without his knowledge and explicit permission. The first instance is stealing and the second is considered identity theft and fraud. Signing your husband’s/boyfriend’s signature to financial and legal documents is forgery. All of these actions are illegal.

23. It is irresponsible to live beyond your means and abusive to expect your husband/boyfriend to foot the bill or go into debt to cover your expenses. If you can’t responsibly use a credit/debit card then, much like a child, you shouldn’t have one.

24. It is never acceptable or permissible to threaten to deny your husband/boyfriend/ex access to the children you share. It is not okay to make up abuse allegations because you’re feeling angry, hurt or out of control. This is an act of slander (spoken) or libel (written) and if you swear to it in court, it’s also an act of perjury.

25. It is not fair to commit to or marry a man and then try to change him. If you don’t accept him as he is, just like you expect him to accept you and your faults, then you have no business being with him. Everyone has a right to feel accepted for who he or she is in a relationship. If he’s “not good enough” for you from the get go; keep looking and cut him loose so he can be with a woman who appreciates him.

All of these observations seem self-evident to me, which leads me to ponder, how did we get here?

by Dr Tara J. Palmatier, PsyD

MEN ARE FOR SALE

http://www.akidsright.org/support_jm.htm#bottom


As a man, once you've realized you are for sale, with the state making the laws the bankrupt you, the courts enforcing the laws made by politicians that are paid off by women's organizations that are some of the wealthiest PACs in the country (yet plead they and their members are something like surfs; lowly, societal castaways with no food, money or support), its just way too late. The state GARNISHES your wages, your bank accounts are emptied, the reasons why your spouse divorced you are ignored and you soon find yourself impoverished, depressed and wondering how this happened to you in a "free" country.

Men No Longer Needed!

Thank God. Now I can pay my bills without that 1,000/month child support. Since my ex took up with another man, I've been suspecting all along that she and the state were planning to "cancel me out" as a parent. Now I can finally "start over" and move on with my life.... right ladies?


http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/05/are-fathers-necessary/8136/

The State.... Broke Again

Must be getting time to double and triple child support awards again. The state is getting broke.... AGAIN. Hey fair is fair, right? You can't let those lying, cheating bastards not pay, right! I mean, THEY ALL JUST MUST HAVE LIED AND CHEATED, RIGHT?

After all, they're men! That alone sums it up!

(Sarcasm is free. Its just so warm and lovely to be grouped with a fantastically small subset of domineering alpha-male monomaniacs out in Hollywood when the rest of us are anything but).

Great post again, Karl.

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/2399-Charge,-Charge,-Charge.....html

On The Economy

Read the whole article, its great.

But on the whole, allow me to sum it up: The country will resume its downward spiral without a resumption of the MASSIVE borrow-and-spend caper Congress and The Fed have pulled for the last oh, 18 months..... And can we do that? Answer: no, not really. But let's go ahead and try, I've never see the bond market for a 12 trillion dollar economy crash instantaneously.

http://mandelman.ml-implode.com/2010/06/i-guess-nobody-wants-to-read-bad-news-fed-chair-ben-bernanke%E2%80%99s-testimony-to-congress/

911 - Quick! I Need a Husband! Hurry!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VsAE9ORDrA&feature=player_embedded

NO MORE MEN! WOO HOO!

Picture is worth 1,000 words of femi-nazi idiocy. If this read The End of Women, someone would be sued, shot and hung.

FATHERS-4-JUSTICE

WE WANT JUSTICE N-O-W.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvxSQKqyX0A

The Feminist College WAVE

‘Classical Liberal’ Alex Knepper Fights the Power!
A little old but still relevant.

American University, Washington D.C. –An opinion piece on Campus censorship in the campus rag The Eagle has turned into a full blown media circus. The Washington City Paper was first to pick up the firestorm, with FOX, NBC, and now CBS’s The Early Show climbing onboard. What’s the entire hubbub about? What’s the big deal about some college kid writing an article for the University’s paper you ask? By now, you have undoubtedly heard of Alex Knepper. If not, read further.

In his initial piece titled Dealing with AU’s Anti-sex Brigade, Alex commented on how “Jeremiah Headen likely lost the vice presidency of the Student Government over a hyperbolic Facebook note.” The comment? An all-caps final sentence “call to raid booty and women from neighboring villages”.

Alex couldn’t see what the issue was. In his opinion, it was most assuredly a “silly” comment, but it really had nothing to do with the content of the total writing.

In his own words, Alex states:

“The comments on The Eagle’s Web site, mostly by Gay Party activists and feminists, condemned Headen for being an “anti-queer misogynist” and for undermining American University’s commitment to being “safe space” for the “gay community.” He was also rebuked for using the term “hermaphrodite” instead of “intersex.”

What a sniveling bunch of emotional cripples! I have never encountered a more insular, solipsistic view of human sexuality than at this college. The rigidity of Pat Robertson has nothing on feminism.”

Knepper further opines on the feminist dogma of “social construct” and the religious like fanaticism with such gems as “Sex isn’t about contract-signing. It’s about spontaneity, raw energy and control (or its counterpart, surrender). Feminism envisions a bedroom scene in which two amorphous, gender-neutral blobs ask each other “Is this OK with you?” before daring to move their lips any lower on the other’s body.”.

As with anyone that challenges feminism or gays, Alex states that “For my pro-sex views, I am variously called a misogynist, a rape apologist and — my personal favorite — a “pro-date rape protofascist.””

Knepper’s words hit a feverous pitch with his opinion on the feminist Holy Grail, rape. In an attempt to put his prose into prospective, he states;

“Let’s get this straight: any woman who heads to an EI party as an anonymous onlooker, drinks five cups of the jungle juice, and walks back to a boy’s room with him is indicating that she wants sex, OK? To cry “date rape” after you sober up the next morning and regret the incident is the equivalent of pulling a gun to someone’s head and then later claiming that you didn’t ever actually intend to pull the trigger.

“Date rape” is an incoherent concept. There’s rape and there’s not-rape, and we need a line of demarcation. It’s not clear enough to merely speak of consent, because the lines of consent in sex — especially anonymous sex — can become very blurry. If that bothers you, then stick with Pat Robertson and his brigade of anti-sex cavemen! Don’t jump into the sexual arena if you can’t handle the volatility of its practice!”

[JB Here. This statement is a little immature for me - but I'll explain that its basically right. Here: women with a few drinks in them may want some love and attention. Men with a few drinks want to f*ck. So the ladies have a plan - a sloppy plan when you're drunk. Go back to his room and makeout and maybe some oral sex and that's it. Man's idea of same room-rendezvous? S-E-X. Period. Many women(and I've experienced this and no, I'm not a rapist, ladies), love the feeling of being wanted, so they like to run up to the line of sex and then put the brakes on. It was the feeling they were after, not the actual sex. What is this like for the guy? Absolutely miserable. As she's effectively using him. They're using eachother, but he feels especially used as he is programmed to f*ck and now her actions say to him "I picked you above the other men because you were the most dominant, most sexual male to me, but that was a lie; I don't want to have sex with you after all. I just wanted to feel wanted for a few minutes. Thanks. Later on I will find a more dominant male than you and screw him instead." Women's response? Men feign feelings to get sex so I can feign sex to get a feeling. No ladies. Two wrongs don't make a right. Don't want to get used? No problem. Date a guy for 6 months before sleeping with him or wait until marriage to have sex. What? That won't work because men will seek sex elsewhere? So the Hell what? That's not my fault or problem! I didn't tell the women to get "liberated"! The Feminists did! So embrace your fellow femi-nazi! She has inadvertently screwed you over! Oh boy! Fun to be equal, isn't it! Turns out equal doesn't mean "the same as." Because it turns out you and men had different agenda's all along. And confusing your agenda for his has caused this ruinous mess. Men have instincts, so respect them: we're after sex. If forced, we will wait, otherwise we will pursue sex. We're not inhumane, we're programmed and driven by hormones. We will marry and have kids BUT we will always need sex. So quit thinking he's going to just ADOPT your hair-brained idea of a little PG-13 action when hiss blood is pumping straight down into his penis and he has mother nature screaming in his ear as loud as she can FORNICATE NOW! Want us to respect your instincts and be closer emotionally before sex? Demand commitment and don't jerk us around. We're not women, don't expect us to act like them. And don't expect a horny, young, drunk male animal to stop mid-intercourse because you suddenly remembered you didn't intend to f*ck when you went back to his bedroom VOLUNTARILY. Men get no excuses and since we're equals - you don't either.]

One would expect that with his creative words to define feminists and feminist ideology with lines like “Put down the Andrea Dworkin and embrace the fires of sexuality!” he would garner a few dissenting tongue lashings in the comment section, but you would be wrong.

At last view, over seven hundred comments to date is a telling indicator of the can of worms Knepper has opened. At one point, the comments section was closed (somewhere around six hundred) due to issues with “personal attacks” and “threats”. Considering that Knepper was attacked and labeled a ‘rape apologist”, conservative, and in need of psychiatric help, all in the second comment alone, it is no wonder that Alex responded in the third and fourth comment stating;

“Believe it or not, this column went through about five edits to remove remarks deemed too inflammatory.” And “Also, I am not a “conservative” and do not want my viewpoints associated with it.”

Reading further, Knepper is additionally labeled with such shaming words as misogynist, woman hater, metapod, a-hole, insensitive, and the coup de gras, he has ugly cats.

On April 1st 2010, Alex responded to his critics via op-ed in the Newsbusters titled “Sex, Lies, and Media Bias: A Chronicle of Censorship in Campus”. No, he did not offer up an apology. Nor did he retract his statements. He merely, as with any good journalist, fledgling or not, offered up an explanation, within a chronology of sorts.

The first indication that Knepper had opened the preverbal can of worms was a call on Monday afternoon by Amanda Hess of Washington City Paper. Hess was calling to inquire as to Knepper’s feelings on the fact that hard copies of The Eagle had been gathered up, replaced with signs stating "NO ROOM FOR RAPE APOLOGISTS" and thrown back at the main office of The Eagle.

Upon further investigation, Knepper discovered that members of the cultural-Marxist campus "social justice" organization called Community Action and Social Justice (CASJ) and Women's Initiative were responsible.
JB Again: "Women's Initiative?" What is that? Sounds equal, fair and unbiased doesn't it? Like maybe the decorate their COLLEGE FUNDED office with men's heads? Who's interest do they represent? Sounds like female-only. What about males? What college funded office do we have to represent their interest? Perhaps we don't need a male-office and female-office and we could just have, you know a little campus justice system BASED ON EQUALITY THAT RESPECTS MEN AND WOMEN AS MUTUALLY EXCLUIVE AND UNIQUE, i.e. INHERENTLY DIFFERENT CREATURES BY DESIGN).

Knepper finds this both confusing and humorous. For removing information from public consumption that one doesn’t like is exactly what he was initially speaking of – censorship.

Described as a “classical liberal”, Alex states that the article was “designed to elicit strong responses and spur a spirited debate. But the reaction from the campus left, and feminist groups in particular, has been simply beyond the pale of reasoned debate and does a supreme disservice to the notion of a liberal education. It is an attempt at de facto censorship.”

[Why do we even have feminists groups in college? Colleges now teach more women than men. Fewer boys even APPLY to college - so few that many colleges actually WEIGHT boy's applications in a desperate attempt to keep the population from becoming even more skewed in favor of women - and at these predominantly female colleges we have how many "organizations," nay INTEREST GROUPS, funded and aimed at promoting women's interests OVER THAT OF MEN, or AT THE EXPENSE OF MEN'S INTERESTS? Ladies and gentlemen, this is gender fascism. Its stunning that men aren't MORE extreme in their anti-feminsm views. Modern day feminsm is aiming to reduce them to women's PETS.].

That evening the CASJ held a special meeting to discuss the “Alex Knepper Question”. Knepper felt that it would be prudent for him to attend along with the thirty or so people – to hear what they had to say and even to answer questions.

Immediately upon arrival, an organizer approached Knepper and asked him to leave for “safety reasons” Alex responded, “Do you think I'm going to hurt someone?” To which she responded: "I think you've hurt enough people already." An attendee, Knepper claims is a feminist, identified herself as a rape victim and asked him to look her in the eyes and tell her that she deserved to be raped. Knepper writes, “Almost in disbelief I told her calmly that this of course was not the case.”

[And right on time, the radical feminstas stir up the ladies and skew the issue so that no one has any idea what the disagreement was about in the first place. You think feminists aren't radical? Where on earth did that girl get the idea that he was pro-rape?]

As the meeting progressed, Knepper discovered just how adamant the feminist and CASJ members were about this being a political “talking point” and that someone had to pay, specifically Alex Knepper. Ideological political pressure was abounding.The meeting was filled with questions as to how the editors (women) could allow such a ‘pro-rape’ column to be published, what they had to say to all rape victims, and whether or not Knepper was to be fired.

[Again, where was he pro-rape? No one offers any evidence. They are emotionally upset and ignoring facts of any kind. This at a place of "higher" education. When emotion replaces facts, you're in a dangerous environment ladies and gentlemen. People may get upset over something that has little to nothing to do with Knepper and then project their feelings onto him - this is ludicrous]

Within the next 24-hours, the attendees had constructed a list of demands which consisted of firing Alex, print the Sexual Harassment code in the next publication, apologize for the column, removal of the column from the archives, and the resignation of the Editor-in-Chief. Additionally what Knepper found to be odd was that many of the students that under normal circumstances could care less about the paper were also rallying to “take it back”. Admittedly, Knepper doesn’t expound on what “take it back” actually refers to.

In true fashion, Knepper was asked to resign his position. He responded; “I'd sooner be fired than send the message that CASJ has a free-reigning veto over the rest of the campus' behavior.”

In the end – of this chapter anyhow, Knepper has agreed to finish out the semester with The Eagle and to not apply for the columnist position next semester. An agreement he willingly accepted since he was told that new editorial policies would be put in place to “weed out provocative columns”. Again, censorship, the point of Alex Knepper’s articles all along. And something that Alex could not sanction. At the time of this article, The Eagle has suspended all opinion pieces and issued an apology which can be read here.

[Communists, Nazis, Fascists and the like don't like disagreement either. It spurns their single-minded, maniacal agenda. History teaches that one quite well. Something else they don't seem to study at this school]

Knepper cannot decide if the main stream media is indeed bias or stupid but it would appear that the coverage of his statements is out of context. His interviews with NBC, CBS, and ABC have all been shot and he has seemingly seen the to-be-aired version and he claims that they edited the interviews in such a manor that alters the context of what he actually stated.

IF anything comes from this Alex admits that “the fight against campus Stalinism will proceed -- and as more and more media pick up on this, the more we can expose what's happening on college campuses all over America.”

[He's dead-on. The actions of these people are classic Pravda-esque type of state-dominated propaganda. God Bless the New Femerica]

Sources:

Alex’s Original Article:

http://www.theeagleonline.com/opinion/story/dealing-with-aus-anti-sex-brigade/

Follow-up Article:

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/alex-knepper/2010/04/01/sex-lies-and-media-bias-chronicle-censorship-campus


The "Apology" from the Eagle:

http://www.theeagleonline.com/opinion/story/a-message-from-the-eagle/

TMOTS
posted by The Man On The Street at 7:12 AM

2 Comments:
Alex Knepper said...
While Googling myself, I came across this. Since you find the incident so amusing, I should tell you that there's more.

1. http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/03/30/how-feminists-judge-he-looks-rape-y/

2. http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/04/15/au-president-prostrates-to-feminists-date-rape-column-was-a-mistake/

3. http://www.theeagleonline.com/opinion/story/why-im-leaving-the-eagle/

My final interview on the matter was conducted for NPR, and was edited pretty fairly: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125988719&ft=1&f=46

Here is one of my better interviews, which occurred on a DC-area news station. Look under Thursday, April 1st: http://www.letstalklive.tv/showpage.cfm?a=v

- Alex Knepper

WAKE UP

False accusations been a common tactic for YEARS. Why? They work. And there are NO RULES in family court. Anything goes.

Parent Trap
Are false abuse charges a common tactic in child custody battles?

Cathy Young from the December 2006 issue
Child custody disputes are some of the bloodiest battlefields in the gender wars—battlefields upon which allegations of spousal and child abuse are widely regarded as a nuclear weapon. But there are two opposite views of this problem. Fathers’ advocates claim abuse allegations are routinely used to deny divorced fathers contact with their children and to poison children’s minds against their fathers, in what the activists and some psychologists call “parental alienation syndrome.” Feminists argue that well-founded accusations of abuse are often dismissed and even turned against the accusing mothers. The explosive claim that batterers and molesters frequently gain sole custody of their children while protective mothers are branded as liars has gotten a lot of media attention in the last year. In the fall of 2005, PBS broadcast the documentary Breaking the Silence: The Children’s Stories , which profiled several children placed in the custody of allegedly abusive fathers and presented these cases as representative of the system’s failure. After an outcry from fathers’ groups, PBS commissioned a review but eventually declared that the program met the network’s standards of fairness and research. (Corporation for Public Broadcasting ombudsman Ken Bode, by contrast, found the film “so totally unbalanced as to fall outside the boundaries of PBS editorial standards.”) A year later, Newsweek weighed in with a story in its September 25, 2006, issue, “Fighting Over the Kids,” which asserted that many battered mothers were losing custody of their children after being slapped with the “parental alienation” label.

A look at some cases publicized as judicial outrages against women and children shows just how difficult it can be to sort out the truth. A major segment of Breaking the Silence dealt with 16-year-old Fatima Alilire-Loeliger and her mother, Sadia Alilire, who had lost custody of the girl in 1998 to her father, Scott Loeliger, but then regained it. (The mother and daughter appeared under pseudonyms, but their real names were revealed in the subsequent controversy). Men’s rights activist Glenn Sacks charged that Alilire, far from being the heroic mother portrayed in the film, was a child abuser herself—a charge he backed up with documents posted on his website. Alilire responded on the website of feminist blogger Trish Wilson, claiming the abuse charges were engineered by her ex-husband with the help of a therapist with whom he had a close personal relationship. Yet the documents posted by Wilson and Alilire themselves show that Alilire had a history of violence toward her ex-husband and toward his babysitter, and that another therapist with no connection to Loeliger reported Fatima’s allegations of physical abuse by her mother. The records generally paint a depressing picture of two parents behaving badly, rather than a case in which a clear line can be drawn between wrongdoer and victim.
The Newsweek story has an equally problematic poster girl in Genia Schockome, a New York woman whose ex-husband, Timothy, received sole custody of their children after a six-year battle. While giving virtually full credence to her allegations of physical abuse by her former husband, the article doesn’t mention that after the divorce the father initially had custody of the children nearly half the time and was never accused of abusing them, or that Schockome defied numerous court orders and quit a high-paying job in an apparent attempt to avoid child support payments. As Newsweek went to press, an appellate court rejected Schockome’s claim of bias against the judge in her case. Similar issues have dogged Amy Neustein, a leading activist on behalf of mothers penalized for abuse accusations. Neustein lost custody of her own daughter, Sherry, in 1986 after accusing her former husband, Ozzie Orbach, of sexual abuse—charges repeatedly rejected by the courts and by family service agencies. Her crusade has attracted support not only from feminist groups but from politicians from both major parties; in May 2006, she appeared at a press conference in New York with Jeanine Pirro, Republican candidate for state attorney general, and Democratic congressional candidate Chris Owens. Yet a year earlier, Sherry Orbach, then 24 and a student at Columbia Law School, had published an article in The Jewish Press in New York strongly stating that the only abuse she had suffered was her mother’s effort to brainwash her into accusing her father. Orbach wrote, “I, for one, owe my existence as a normal young adult to the family judges, Ohel foster care, and the Legal Aid Society attorney who helped me reunite with my father in the face of considerable opposition in the media.” (While Neustein’s supporters have insinuated that the article was a fake, Orbach confirmed its authenticity when contacted at her law school email address.) o:p> /o:p> /span> /p> p> The bigger picture is as muddy as span class="c2">the individual cases. The Newsweek article, for instance, asserts that “according to one 2004 survey in Massachusetts by Harvard’s Jay Silverman, 54 percent of custody cases involving documented spousal abuse were decided in favor of the alleged batterers.” But the study, published in The American Journal of Public Health , was based on a nonrepresentative, self-selected sample of 39 women recruited by the Battered Women’s Testimony Project. Moreover, the “documentation” of abuse could be nothing more than a restraining order or an affidavit by the woman.

Typical

State Tries to Steal Child Support Money From a National Guardsman Who Was Seven Years Old at the Time the Child in Question Was Born? How "Odd"!
Matt Welch | February 18, 2010

United Press International, I love you, I miss you, I used to work for you...but this story does not belong under "Odd News":

A Florida man says the state is trying to force him to pay child support for a child who was born when he was 7 years old.

Rusty Cole, a National Guardsman from Port Orange, Fla., said his tax return was delayed by the state because officials told him he owes support payments for a child born in 1995 -- despite the fact that Cole was born in late 1987, Central Florida News 13 reported Wednesday.

Cole said weeks of phone calls and office visits failed to yield any results.

"They were like, 'Oh, yes, we have it on here that you are the father,' and I was like, 'Ma'am, there's no way,'" Cole said to News 13.

This case, as older Reason readers will know, is not some kind of quirky accident, but the direct and predictable consequence of a system that incentivizes states to locate any dependable male source of revenue regardless of plausible (let alone provable) connection to the child.

Link via Amy Alkon, who is one of the only journalists working who seems to care about a system that declares you guilty until proven innocent, tries mightily to avoid DNA testing, and results in innocent men losing their passports and professional licenses, among many many other outrages.

The Reason for This Blog and Others Like It

This post is an old Reason Magazine article. It is one of the best pieces of journalism for new viewers to this site and others like it because the author takes the view of someone ignorant to the legal and metaphorical raping of single dads everywhere in this "free" country of ours.

And what's behind the great evil being perpetrated? Its always the same: MONEY.


Injustice by Default
How the effort to catch "deadbeat dads" ruins innocent men's lives
Matt Welch from the February 2004 issue

Tony Pierce remembers vividly the exact moment in November 2000 when the state of California began trampling on his life. "There was a loud angry pounding at my door at five o'clock in the morning," he recalls. "Very scary."

It was a female police officer with a complaint accusing him of being the father of an 8-year-old girl in Contra Costa County, east of San Francisco. "I'm like, 'Great! I'm definitely not the father of anybody,'" he says.

There were excellent reasons to think so. He had never met or heard of the mother of the child. He had never lived in Northern California, and at the time of conception (spring 1991) he was attending the University of California at Santa Barbara, beginning a monogamous relationship that would last for two years. What's more, he's a condom fanatic -- only once in his life, Pierce swears, has he failed to use a rubber during intercourse, and that was "many years after." (He's been a friend of mine for 15 years, and I believe him.) And if the summons had included the mother's testimony (it was supposed to, but did not), he would have seen himself described as a "tall" and "dark" black man named "Anthony Pierce." Pierce is a hair over five feet, nine inches; he is so light-skinned that even people who know him sometimes don't realize he's black; and no one calls him Anthony except his mom.

The front page of the court document gave simple but misleading instructions: "You have 30 days to respond to this lawsuit. You may respond in one of two ways: 1. File an Answer to the complaint with the Superior Court of Contra Costa County, not with the District Attorney....2. Settle the case with the District Attorney. You may call us at (925) 313-4200 to discuss your case." Concluding incorrectly (but understandably) that he could settle the matter over the phone, Pierce called -- three times that day -- and tried to weave his way through a labyrinthine phone tree. Finally he found a human being, who instructed him to leave a message with a home phone number. The department called him back the next day and left a message; it took another three calls from Pierce before he reached a caseworker for the first time.

"I said, 'What do I need to do? I'm not the father,'" he remembers. "And they were like, 'OK, well this is what you do: You just call in every day, and then we'll understand that you're not it, because if you're it, you're not gonna call us every day.'"

Pierce did everything he was told over the next three weeks of phone tag, except for comprehending that the 30-day deadline for denying paternity in writing was etched in federal law, regardless of what he discussed with Contra Costa employees -- who he says never once told him the clock was ticking. "All they were doing was delaying me from doing what I needed to do," he says. "It's a huge scam -- huge scam....They're just counting the days. They're like, 'Sucker, sucker, sucker, sucker.'...And this is the government!"

Two months later, after the phone conversations had ended and he assumed he was off the hook, Pierce received notice that a "default judgment" had been entered against him, and that he owed $9,000 in child support. He was between dot-com jobs, and his next unemployment check was 25 percent smaller; the state of California had seized and diverted $100 toward his first payment. Suddenly, he was facing several years of automatic wage garnishment, and the shame of being forced to explain to prospective employers why the government considered him a deadbeat dad. "That's when it hit me," he says. "I mean, it's mostly my fault -- 'Fill out the form, dumb-ass!'...But it's so rigged against you, it's ridiculous."

Dad Blamed
What Pierce didn't realize, and what nearly 10 million American men have discovered to their chagrin since the welfare reform legislation of 1996, is that when the government accuses you of fathering a child, no matter how flimsy the evidence, you are one month away from having your life wrecked. Federal law gives a man just 30 days to file a written challenge; if he doesn't, he is presumed guilty. And once that steamroller of justice starts rolling, dozens of statutory lubricants help make it extremely difficult, and prohibitively expensive, to stop -- even, in most cases, if there's conclusive DNA proof that the man is not the child's father.

This stacked deck against accused dads has provoked a backlash movement, triggering "paternity fraud" legislation and related legal challenges in more than a dozen states. Combined with advances in genetic technology, this conflict may end up changing the way we define parenthood. For now, the system aimed at catching "deadbeat dads" illustrates how a noble-sounding effort to help children and taxpayers can trample the rights of innocent people.

Here's how it works: When an accused "obligor" fails, for whatever reason, to send his response on time, the court automatically issues a "default judgment" declaring him the legal father. It does not matter if he was on vacation, was confused, or (as often happens) didn't even receive the summons, or if he simply treated the complaint's deadlines with the same lack of urgency people routinely exhibit toward jury duty summonses -- he's now the dad. "In California, you don't even have to have proof of service of the summons!" says Rod Wright, a recently retired Democratic state senator from Los Angeles who tried and failed to get several paternity-related reform bills, including a proof-of-service requirement, past former Gov. Gray Davis' veto. "They only are obligated to send it to the last known address."

In fact, a March 2003 Urban Institute study commissioned by the California Department of Child Support Services (DCSS) found that "most noncustodial parents appear to be served by 'substitute' service, rather than personal service, which suggests that noncustodial parents may not know that they have been served." In Los Angeles County, which is notorious for its sloppy summons service and zealous prosecution of alleged fathers it knows to be innocent, nearly 80 percent of paternity establishments come in the form of default judgments. In the state as a whole, which establishes 250,000 paternities a year while collecting $2 billion in child support, a whopping 68 percent of the 158,000 child support orders in 2000 (the last year studied) were default judgments.

Once paternity is "established," even if the government has never communicated with the father, the county court imposes a payment rate and schedule under the statistically mistaken assumption that he makes a full-time salary at minimum wage. (State audits have found that a full 80 percent of default dads don't make even that much.) To collect the money, the county may put a garnish order on the purported father's paycheck or place liens on his assets. If the mother has received welfare assistance after the child was born, the man will be hit with a bill to pay back the state, plus 10 percent annual interest. "That's what they're trying to do, is get some reimbursement to the state," says Carolyn Kelly, public relations officer for the Contra Costa County DCSS. "As you can imagine, [that's] millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars."

If the father falls 30 days behind on his payments, he will be blocked by law from receiving or renewing a driver's license or any "authorization issued by a board that allows a person to engage in a business, occupation, or profession" -- a category that includes teaching credentials, fishing licenses, and state bar memberships. If his credit rating was good, it won't be any more. If his past-due tab exceeds $5,000, the U.S. State Department won't issue him a passport. (An average of 60 Americans discover this each day. Meanwhile, Congress has been pushing to cut the limit to $2,500, while urging the State Department to begin revoking passports, which is allowed under the law.)

"When you tell people about the inequities of the system," Wright says, "they're surprised. They go, 'This is America! You couldn't do that!' And I go, 'Yes, you can.'