A correction to the above. I should have said:"The question is how best to provide those things while not disadvantaging either parent unfairly."

hi Jefferson, achieve equality between women and men and equality is achieved between all demographics comprised of women and men, which is just about everybody.

hi Antiseptic, a judge of the Family Court would be most reluctant to give disputed custody to an applicant who considered the question is how best to provide support while not disadvantaging either parent unfairly because the question places the interest of each parent before the priority of the offspring.

"I've said for a long time that what women seem to want is 100% authority and 0% responsibility."

Well if you think that there is no room to move is there? Given that you believe that to be the case do you suggest revolution or force or will you have some faith in women and men to come to rational and fair decisions over the course of time.

It seems like you've already decided what all women think and ignore the fact that most women agree that parenting should be a cooperative arrangement with shared responsibility. Your own personal situation, skewed against you as you claim (without knowing the other side), should not be held up as the norm. There are now Courts to ensure that men do have access to their children beyond just what the mother dictates. Most couples I know work this out between them so maybe things are different up there in sunny QLD.

"a judge of the Family Court would be most reluctant to give disputed custody to an applicant who considered the question is how best to provide support while not disadvantaging either parent unfairly because the question places the interest of each parent before the priority of the offspring."

False, the question says that the lives of parents are not inherently less valuable than that of children and that fairness to both parents always has to be a consideration. Especially if that fairness can be achieved without the children involved being significantly disadvantaged.

It say's that one party should not be allowed to gain advantage at the expense of the other while using children as an excuse.

Any judge or magistrate involved in family law who is not constantly asking the question is fundamentally unfit to serve in the position.

R0bert

“Jefferson, you are simply ignoring the offspring in your analysis.”

No I’m not. The point is, there is no reason why the sexes should be regarded as having an equal interest in providing for a given child because if a man agrees to do so on equal terms with the mother, he is making sacrifices of interests and values that she is not (because he can have further children at the same time; she can’t).

Therefore if he were to contract with her on equal terms, he would be unequally disadvantaged. This is because of the natural difference between the sexes, nothing to do with gender.

Therefore because of this fact, wherever relations between the sexes are based on consent, we would expect them to be unequal, which is what in fact we do see. The reason is because, considering their unequal interests, equal obligations would be unfair. Their *unequal* bargain is fair; that's why it has arisen spontaneously in all societies in all times.

”Once the child is born, whatever the circumstances, then it requires certain things. “

No-one’s disputing that. However that does not ethically justify using aggressive violence as a mean to supply its requirements, since they can and should be supplied by consent.

“The question is how best to provide those things while not disadvantaging either parent unfairly. You correctly point out that the way it has been done is coercive of the father to the advantage of the mother, which is not ethically defensible, it seems to me. It would be equally wrong to suggest that the mother should bear all of the cost merely as a consequence of the division of labour involved in the reproductive act.”

Why would it be equally wrong? No-one’s coercing her to do it. The woman decides whether to use contraception, whether to have sex, whether to have the child, and whether to adopt it. Having passed through all those decision gates, why should she have the use of aggressive force simply to protect her from having to bother obtaining his consent?

If a man has committed to support the child, it's common ground that he should be liable. But if he hasn’t, the fact he has *biologically caused* the child no more justifies violence against him, than the fact she has caused his sexual interest justifies violence against her.

He has to obtain her consent to have sex. He can’t just say, as the feminists say, ‘you biologically caused my interest’. Why should she be able to?

Put it this way: what would be wrong if the woman had to get the consent of any person from whom she wants contributions to the child she has decided to have and to keep? It’s the basic rule of civilized behaviour. Why shouldn’t it apply to women as well? Even if she has to provide sexual services to get it… so? Why shouldn’t she do that? Let’s say $200 a week – a few hours of sexual services – so? What’s wrong with that? No-one has actually addressed this issue yet – everyone just assumes that it goes without saying women should have the benefit of force to protect them from any need to obtain the man’s consent. I say, why?

Whistler
“achieve equality between women and men and equality is achieved between all demographics comprised of women and men, which is just about everybody.”

Not necessarily. Even if men and women had separate legislatures, there’s nothing stopping both of them from oppressing or persecuting any minority, whether on grounds of religion, or nationality, or politics, or membership of a particular social group.

Therefore the rationale for a separate women’s legislature, being based on nothing but the fact that the majority of politicians are men, applies equally to any category of minority whatsoever.

You have been completely unable to say what it means to say the sexes are equal, how they could be made equal, or why they should.

In particular, you have not shown how biological causation of a reproductive interest in the services of the opposite sex is any more a justification of compulsory child support than it is of rape.