'But that is usually a mutual decision '

Hahaha. I wonder why all the feminists of the world don't agree also then that women who haven't entered the workforce and aren't CEO's have done so by 'mutual decision' with their partners.

My point is pelican, that feminists paint this picture of an 'unfair' 'inequitable' arrangement that men 'imposed' on women re patriarchy. Never is it ever entertained that women made 'mutual decisions' with their partners on who would earn the money and who would raise the children.

Come on pelican, you're a massive fan of the 'chattel' diaries.

'caring of children is still an important role despite being demeaned to some extent in the pursuit of wealth and 'equality'.'

I think it was demeaned by those first feminists, the language they used and the projected image they put on women who were happy with the status quo. See those early feminists thinking housework and raising children were 'beneath them', thus painting men as the oppressors taking the spoils of the 'rewarding' wage slave gear. It's all about marketing. Setting up the 'glamorous' hard cash earning occupations against the 'drudgery' of house wifery.

Preaching the message that 'if you don't feel oppressed, you are being duped. You just don't understand that you're being conned' to any women who liked her nurturer role. See, what they could and should have done was raise the status of the job that 80-90% of women love to do, and campaign for financial independence while doing that job.

But, it was a campaign designed and motivated by doctors wives and university students who hadn't experienced motherhood. Silly really, they needed better advice and input from 'real women';-)

I'm just so against this black armband view of history for the suburban housewife in domestic bliss. I'm sure being a home maker was about as attractive to a 20yo university intellectual as working 2 jobs with kids in childcare all week is to most women now.

'Don't marry someone that wants a career if you prefer she stay at home for a time, or don't marry someone who just loves being a mum and housewife if you want her to contribute financially all the time.'

That my friend pelican is my standard reply to the gender pay gap.

Women marry up, even in this day and age. But then feminists complain women end up sacrificing their careers. Go figure, the person who ears more will more likely end up going to work full time. It makes financial sense.

Women's choice of partner is the main driver of the gender pay gap. If women wanted to have high flying careers, they would be looking en mass for men who didn't earn very much and those men would be the alpha males. Rooty Hill RSL would be more popular than The Establishment.

But once a baby arrives, I have more often seen women feeling duped that they earn more than their partner than the other way around. In my experience the guy is more open to a reversing of gender roles than the girl when faced with the harsh economic reality of the primary income being the womans.

Anyway, the feminists want women as CEOs who work 9-3 with time off for school holidays, and an equal representation of men and women in boardrooms even if say, as is likely, only 15% of the female population wants to do the job, and 30% of the male population wants to. And while ever that is feminist doctrine I will laugh my ass off at feminism.

As I will continue to relate the love filled marriages of my grand parents where grandma wore the pants, and the many families growing up where mother dealt out the fathers pocket money out of his pay, and gave him a list of outdoors jobs to do on the weekend every time a feminist paints their domineering patriarchal oppressor model of marriage pre-feminism.

Pelican
Without explaining what justifies equal right in respect of unequal facts you’re still using a double standard, conjuring “responsibilities” when it comes to men’s different interests, and “rights’ when it comes to women’s.

Antiseptic
“the responsibility is not to the mother, but to the children”

This of course is what women have been saying since physical paternity was first discovered.

Notice that it assumes that the interest of the sexes in a given child is equal, which is
a) factually false, and
b) precisely what is in issue.

It is indeed likely that women themselves initiated the reproductive pattern of patriarchy, to escape their pre-patriarchal problem of needing to freelance sexual services to *multiple* men with *no* guarantee of security, in order to get supplementary income for child support.

Once physical paternity was discovered, it enabled a woman to offer to provide sexual and domestic services for good to *one* man on demand, in return for his commitment to provide her with a joint share in his income and equity for life.

Feminism argues that half of this arrangement is a dreadful exploitation, that the man’s contribution is self-evidently valuable, but assumes it must go unquestioned and unchanged.

It is premature to appeal to a supposed male responsibility, because no-one has yet arrived at the stage of establishing that such a responsibility exists – that’s what’s in issue.

The argument of equal responsibility is this: “because biological causation, therefore justification of aggressive violence”. It’s a complete non sequitur. It’s moral nonsense.

Besides, only the man’s contribution of genetic code information is equal. His biomass contribution is one-trillionth of the woman’s. Therefore it’s reasonable his responsibility should be one-trillionth at birth, and declining thereafter, right? What happened to Pelican’s sexual equality “in all spheres” based on respecting differences and fairness and not being violent?

The assumption that the sexes have an equal obligation in respect of their unequal interests in a given child is biased in favour of women from the start.

“ the benefit to the children of having a guaranteed basic level of support”

Since the level of support varies with the man’s income, and since the mother can spend the money on whatever she wants, therefore it’s not about a basic level of support for the child, it’s about the woman getting a certain proportion of the man’s income.

In any event, the issue is not a certain level of support per se. It is why it should not be provided *by consent*. (No-one has even begun or tried to answer this central issue yet.)

Therefore the purpose of the payment is *not* child support, it’s to protect the mother from the pre-patriarchal need to use her vagina to get supplementary subsistence. These laws aren’t for child protection, they’re for vagina protection.

It’s nothing to do with child support, and everything to do with protecting women from doing work they *don’t want to do*.

Well guess what? Men don’t want to do work either! Whatever happened to equal rights?

Also a woman claiming child support is not required to prove that the man named is the father. Her mere allegation is enough. He must disprove it at his own expense. At least under patriarchy a man was only obliged for children that weren’t his, in a marriage he voluntarily undertook!

It’s not even a double standard, it’s a doubly double standard!

I have shown that compulsory child support is unfair, exploitative, unequal and cannot be justified according to either the biased feminist standard, or one that equally respects sexual differences.

My opponents have not even got to square one in fairly representing the issues, let alone in proving what they assert: - that only women, but not men, should be released from the obligations of patriarchy.

hi Jefferson, are you comfortable men control Australia through fifteen federal and state legislatures, a jurisdiction in the courts and a proliferation of local councils and corporate committees, all of which admit women under male supervision inclusive of leadership?

hi Houellebecq, patriarchy has broken down? That's not the case with the parliament, the law and the management of the economy. What is broken down?

hi Benk, if there's too much emphasis on the formal power men generally have more of why not resolve the issue with have a referendum on a women's legislature. Avoidance is the gateway to illusion.

"re you comfortable men control Australia through fifteen federal and state legislatures, a jurisdiction in the courts and a proliferation of local councils and corporate committees, all of which admit women under male supervision inclusive of leadership? "

whistler I know I'm probably just wasting a post but you have not managed to convince me and I suspect a lot of others that the idea of women admitted only under male supervision is a practical reality (any more than men are supervised by others).

Perhaps a wording that needs to be tidied up somewhere but in practical terms it seems to be a nonsense that you are obsessed with.

Who are the men who supervise the PM and are their practical powers and supervision any different to that applied to the previous PM?

R0bert