Men Who Hate Men

One of the biggest problem facing the father's movement is guys like this:



That pinnacle of masculinity is Jeff Fecke. He's a liberal freelance writer from Minnesota. Fecke is divorced, and the father of "one really terrific daughter."

Not sure what kind of deal he got in the divorce, his blog doesn't say. He claims to be from the "moderate left." Which is to say he's only moderately confused. He also claims to have been conservative but has become more liberal with age. Right. Anyone have family or friends that became MORE liberal with age? I don't, and yes I know liberals. After having kids and paying bills and watching the government (Dem and Repub) promise a lot, deliver nothing and tax even more, most people have moved to the keep-your-hands-off-my-money crowd by the time they hit 35. And divorced men all the more so, because after child support and taxes we keep about 1/4 of what we make - yeah, that's fair.

Fecke has, in his supreme wisdom, written an article called "Real Men Don't Fight for Men's Rights." Jeff, what the Hell does that even mean? Your article title by definition means a select group of society should not fight for itself. Care to explain that? How about defend it? If I don't fight for myself, Jeff, who will? Everyone fights for themselves, Jeff. Welcome to the land of grownups; you should join us sometime. Did you miss that multi-trillion dollar bankster bailout? How about the 40% child support rate (for one child), where the politicians take N.O.W. money to enforce it using the "law" (the law - that thing that taxes GE and IBM at just above 0%), and the state gets a piece of the action as the Feds reimburse them for what they collect from divorced men. Sound fair and just to you Jeff? Forget to fight for yourself Jeff, buddy and you're sure to be the one everyone else wipes their feet on.

Now onto Jeff's advice for men to volunteer to be raped. This should be funny.

I have some sympathy for the Men’s Rights crowd.

For the most part, what the MRM claims to be for is good, even laudable. They support the idea that fathers should be given equal consideration in custody proceedings, and the idea that fathers are as important as mothers in the lives of children. They talk about how we need to recognize men’s contribution to children, how we should encourage society to accept that women and men both have a responsibility to parent–and to let the other parent parent, too.

Yes, Jeff. We want to be fathers. Regardless of whether mom has a mis-timed panic attack or screws her boss, we want to be what we are: dads. Go figure.

All good. And all things I believe. I do think that men are undervalued as parents, and subtly discouraged from viewing themselves as a primary caregiver to their children. One need only look at how few men are stay-at-home dads to see that as far as society has come, we still view men as the second-most-important parent.

So we need to find a way to move to equality in relationships. All well and good, and it seems to me that there are two strategies one could adopt.

No Jeff. There are not "two strategies." Just like N.O.W. in the 60's we ask for one thing only: equality. In our case, equality that is enforced in all things having to do with children. But define your brainy "strategies" for me. Maybe we could have a scotch-filled strategy session with action items afterward.

The first is for Men’s Rights advocates to recognize that they have common cause with feminists. Women are pressured to stay in the home as much as men are pressured to be good providers. For every man who secretly would like to stay home with the kids, there’s a mom who would love to get back into the workforce. By stating that we oppose the ideal of declaring one sex the “nurturing” one and the other the “providing” one, we could work toward a future where men and women were truly able to make decisions based on what was important to them.

Huh? Where do you live, man? What women are pressured to stay at home? All the women I know or know of have or had a career or else don't yet have one and expect to have one. Its not an option or a "alternative" anymore; if anything, being a stay-at-home mom is the alternative and a rare one - to be a mom who stays with the kids you have to be married to a rich guy more or less, and there are damn few of those running around single (they've all been snagged quite quickly by a woman who.... intends to stay at home with her kids, go figure. Competition for these men are fierce. Ask around). Let me sum up for you Jeff: a boy and a girl hold hands and one day start to kiss and then more and then one day there is a baby. Mom has the milk so it makes sense for her to feed the animal that must eat every 2 hours. Complain to mother nature if you or her or whomever does not like it. As the child ages, care giving is divided between a woman and her husband. Whatever they decide is what is best for their FAMILY (a word you somehow fail to use). FAMILY Jeff - that's mom, dad, junior, i.e. everyone. Not mom above everyone else or child or Davey crocket. All have needs, all must live, all must find a way to live happily. That said, parents tend to put kids before themselves.

Most women naturally want to be close to their children. While men have expanded their role here, they still tend to work because mom wants to be with the kids. Some couples may chose the opposite. Fine. But the majority chose the former. Either way, they do what is best FOR THE FAMILY. By the way, I don't know a whole lot of guys dying to stay at home, but I do know ones trying to get better jobs so their wives can stay at home.

The second would be to bitch incessantly about how women get too much child support.

Pardon? Bitch incessantly, eh? So in the 60's women bitched incessantly about not having equal opportunity and someone should've told them to QUIT BITCHING? Hard to imagine it would've been a guy like you, Jeff. Fathers want equality everywhere, including financial support. Mom has a career and so do we. Why are men stuck with the "SUPPORT" role? What if she was the primary financial support up until now? Does she get stuck paying us to take care of junior? Statistics say no - we pay in that case too.

Further, if a woman DOESN'T EVEN MARRY US, or divorces us, you're saying justice and equality equal me giving her half my income for the next 18 years? And what does she give me? ACCESS to MY OWN CHILD? That's not a gift to me, buddy. I have a right to my child and he to me. She has nothing to do with that equation. The child isn't anymore "hers" than it is "mine." So if mom doesn't have to provide financially, ever, she's just this old romance in our lives that now take nearly HALF of what we make for 20 years. And men are bitching. Call me crazy Jeff, but why shouldn't they? And since you're dying to give money away to women, what about the woman I do have a family with, Jeff? My wife. Should she stop bitching that my remarried ex lives like a pampered queen while my wife works 2 jobs to make up for my lost income? Perhaps you should tell my wife to stop her "bitching" too, eh Jeff? I mean, it is completely fair to the children I have with my new wife that they get access to less than HALF of what the child of my ex-girlfriend gets, right? The ex-girlfriend who cheated and ran off. The ex-girlfriend who is supported by an ex-husband, ex-boyfriend and current boyfriend? Clearly she needs help - but not the financial kind, Jeff, buddy.

Guess which tactic the Men’s Rights crowd has chosen?

Much as is the case with abortion, the Men’s Rights movement isn’t really about gaining equality in the home. MRMers don’t want equality, they want fealty. They complain about how “their” money goes to support “her.” They complain that feminisim destroys marriages by making women too critical of their mates–never questioning whether any of that criticism is valid.

You sound like you self-flagellate yourself nightly, Jeff. "Fealty" is defined by Webster's as extreme faithfulness. So... expecting my WIFE or even GIRLFRIEND to be faithful is a mistake? How is that? Um, what did you point out that was so untrue? My ex graduated from college with a 3.8 GPA. She went to high school on a merit scholarship. She began earning 65 grand as a proposal writer in Boston. Then she cheated on me with a co-worker, kept my son from me for 2 years while we battled for custody and then basically retired - quit her job to work as a masseuse and use my "child support" to plug the gap in her income. I made the money, and the state gives it to her so she can spend it WITH NO STRINGS ATTACHED - on herself, on her boyfriend, on my son, on a cult, on anything. No-strings-attached cash for 20 years - that sounds good to you, does it Jeff? You think everyone will do "good things" for "our kids" with that money? Right. And all the lotto winners give to orphanages too, right Jeff? Do ya think maybe, just maybe, some of that money is spent on consumer items for herself or her new boyfriend, or her kids with another man, buddy? That is what is happening. You act as though she has a right to my money. Where would that right come from? From having sex with me? You're calling her a Gold Digger now Jeff and a prostitute at worst. And I thought you defended women. She had sex with me willingly. She never married me. She cheated purposefully - no one held a gun to her head, Jeff. She deserves nothing but what she's earned - she wasn't a good partner, she's just some dysfunctional girl who slept with a man and once she learned she had gotten pregnant decided to keep the baby, regardless of what anyone else wanted. Then she demanded money. Sounds like extortion to me. That's a crime in this country Jeff. Not an accomplishment. She doesn't do the day to day work of a wife. She doesn't even work FULL-TIME, despite proving she can make 60k+, with benefits. She expects the person she ruined (me) to pay her a king's ransom. Interject when you think you see the "equal and Just" American way in here Jeff. I can't find it. She's not helpless, Jeff; not but in her own mind. How many college-educated 33 year olds do you know who work PART TIME BY CHOICE, Jeff, buddy? My son is 9, not 1. If you pay a little extra at his school he can stay until 5:30 and she can work all day, every day. Instead she demands I pick him up twice a week at 3:15 for which I must leave my FULL-TIME job to do so.

Men in my father's group have ex's that don't work at all. They remarried and they use their $1500/month child support as income. Or would you like to talk to my friend who's a doctor and lives on $20k a year because his wife left him and took their 4 children and FOUR GRAND A MONTH of his money with her? What does she do to earn that money? She had the kids years ago, Jeff. Being a mom she chose to do - the money and house comes with being a wife. Instead of being a wife SHE divorced HIM. He didn't "run off" with a nurse. He wanted to STAY MARRIED. These women are no longer the wives of the men THAT MARRIED them. You are advocating divorcing money from marriage; what incentive have these women to be married when they can have their husband's money and his kids without doing the job of being his wife? Zero. That's how much. But that fact you ignore Jeff.

What happened - did you cheat on your wife, so you're happy she ruined you in court? Or do you just wanna rescue her so badly you happily gave her half of what you make because you think sleeping with you enough times to get pregnant entitles her to half your lifetime earnings? Do you understand this means a one-night stand is enough to bankrupt a man and make his one-night partner a guaranteed second income for life, all for a single night of drunk sex? Why punish one party and enrich the other? Don't you advocate equality? What is equal about that? Equal would be SPLITTING all time and expense for the child. We don't have that Jeff, so therefore we have no equality. Women take the money, men are left financially broken - we even have laws that prevent a man from declaring bankruptcy to discharge any of his enormous child support obligation. So men go into bankruptcy some 90% of the time. Then they start to get depressed and many more than you would realize blow their heads off. But I hope you don't think I'm bitching too badly Jeff; after all I consider myself to be a "real man" even if it doesn't fit your description.

Perhaps if Men’s Rights activists really seemed to have the best interests of their children at heart, I could forgive that. But they just don’t. Complaining that too much of your money is going to your children, scheming to ensure that their mother is left in penury if you can pull it off, launching custody fights designed to bankrupt your ex–these are the actions of petty little men more stung by rejection than animated by a love of their children.

Missing the point YET AGAIN, Jeffrey. Why don't you ask the ex-wife of the man in my father's group who installs granite countertops in her house and in-ground swimming pools with his money, just how much she has her child's interest at heart? Or the ex of another father who flies her new family to Hawaii on vacation with his money? Or the ex-wife of another man who buys a new car every 2 years (2 door, and she has 3 kids). Or the ex-wife of another who has her Master's degree, and quit her job making 75k and became a clerk so that she could legally claim she makes zero money, thereby giving her grounds to demand EXTRA child support from her ex-husband. Or the man whose ex convinced a judge he "could" make more money so he should be therefore forced to pay EXTRA child support, and got it? Or the ex of a friend who lives down the street from him in his old house, takes $1,400 a month for ONE 7 year old girl, and demands all extra-curricular school activities and clothes HE pay for (and the idiot does) - the same woman who informs him of promotions at work SHE TURNS DOWN because she likes to spend plenty of time at home, while he works 12 hour days? But don't stop thinking women are always victims and men are CHEAP, Jeff, buddy. You wouldn't want to treat women the same as men, would you?

And that is why I have no time for them. Not that their stated goals are not worthy, nor that the current child support system is flawless, nor that women are “better” than men. No, my problem with the MRAers is that they don’t give a damn about their kids, not really. Real men–the men who do care about their kids, who fight for custody not to save a buck but because they think it’s in their children’s best interests–these men I can find common cause with. But those men are too busy helping their children grow into adults to complain about women–and if those men are honest, they know that whatever the faults of the woman they were not able to build a life with, their children benefit from having her.

No, Jeff, wide of the mark again. The men who don't complain are:
1)Much richer than I am, apparently
2)Probably Depressed
3)Tired of Fighting
4)Fantasize things will magically get better
5)Too exhausted to care
6)Only work and sleep so you'll never hear anything from them
7)Suicidal
8)Have moved to another state or country after realizing how FUTILE it is to fight

Further, your admission that the current system is less than "flawless?" Wow, that's a real gift to us, Jeff. You mean there MIGHT be something wrong with a system that DESTROYS men to the tune of 40% of their take home pay FOR ONE CHILD, without even asking IF THEY CAUSED THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO END OR EVEN WANT TO SEPARATE? You see, all men are not like you Jeff, and just because they just want to keep most of what they make (the founding fathers intended for you to keep nearly ALL of what you make - that's the entire premise America was founded on - keeping corruption in the form of government-sponsored theft out of your life) doesn't make them children-haters. In fact, I and other fathers, would be happy to raise our own children. In fact, I'd even be better off financially paying for EVERYTHING my son requires as it would cost less than what I pay his mother to supposedly support him (this proves I pay more than my son requires, Jeff, old boy). Because it doesn't take THOUSANDS of dollars a month to raise one 9 year old boy Jeff. And for a middle class man, that amounts to everything I have to offer a family; I've been forced to give it to a family, just not my own - the family is someone else's. My ex took up with another man and with my son and my money, she plays house. I live alone in bankruptcy, Jeff, like most divorced men. So if you'd kindly grow a pair and actually listen to some of us guys you seem to think are sleazy, cheap bastards, you might just see our point - you see, paying for someone else's family and having no money for you own is not equality or fairness or anything close to it, especially not when the mother who supposedly only has the kids in mind, QUITS HER JOB AND INTENTIONALLY MAKES SIGNIFICANTLY LESS MONEY. Equality loves company Jeff. So do some math, and hurry up. We're only getting poorer.