RObert do you want a 1792- ake-it-or–else-girl situation?

I think a dependant spouse has every right to seek “special treatment” to redress “those wrongs rather than perpetuating a protected status” especially if the provider spouse uses that protection to control the other or if the dynamic is that that MW posits. You are arguing to take away the choice for a dependant to move out of a damaging or unfulfilling relationship if you take away state assistance – back to 1792 situation.

RObert I didn’t talk of conspiracy. And victimlike you grab at things to bring attention to your male - centred problems. Gee that’s annoying –write your own article (: Concede it must be frustrating trying to get people to listen and see.

You say: “…to move forward on issues where womens and mens freedom to make real choices are limited by perceptions about their gender rather than by the abilities of the individual.” What happens if the dependant spouse’s individual abilities are limited because they are and have been the primary carer of the children? While suggesting others lack insight (“limited by perceptions about their gender”), you display an almost tragic (and genderised) understanding of a dependant spouse’s predicament.

What you’re argument suggests RObert is that you want to trap dependant partners into staying in a bad marriage. Your belief that state assistance in a crisis will “perpetrate a protected status” suggests you think women are innately dependant and helpless beings. This seems uncharacteristic?

RE: victimhood. Current orthodoxies aside - being a victim is not a crime. Remaining one is unhealthy though.

RObert seems to say that coercion is bad, then goes on to advocate it for dependant spouses, but only if that coercion is societal and personal (by denying state assistance in crisis). For some reason though this personal coercion which denies choice is, for RObert, good – but state assistance which allows a choice and ought to help pull someone out of victim hood is bad but, illogically, for the same reasons that personal coercion is, for RObert, good . Your position is not reasonable.

ronnie peters

You go girl. Your socialism is that last vestige of feminism. All the real fems left the cause once they got what was necessary, balance. Now feminism is socialism by another name and a holdover of The Womanfirsters Club. There are already so many woman only organization out there waiting to lunge in at the first female burp that there isn't enough money to keep them all afloat. Your victims of male dependency are already well covered by society and tax dollars. They have there own homes for recovery, tax paid education courses for employment, and a judicial system that will make sure that awful man supports her.
Here's a question for you. How come you and your fems want to pass a law that prohibits fathers from getting a DNA paternity test with out the mothers consent?

Ronnie, I'm hoping that you have misunderstood my point.

"So, for Wollstonecraft , the power structure disabled women. Indeed it was such that women perpetrated their own disempowerment."

- My view is that in most cases this is more about roles than power as such. There will be exceptions but the guys who went down a coal mine and died young coughing their lungs out don't seem like a good supporting case for those men holding power. If there was power it was the power of someone with responsibility for anothers welfare distorted by social convention.
- I believe that the roles placed on women and men and perpetuated by both have disabled both. With power and freedom come responsibility (and sometimes visa versa). With the freedom to choose to stay or go comes the responsibility of living with the consequences.

Societies responsibility is not to protect individuals from the consequences of their choices but to ensure that the consequences faced are fair (I don't like that word in this context but it's the best I can think of at the moment). The kind of society I support will add some compassion in there to help people move on from poor choices but not give freedom with no responsibility.

I agreed with Ena's post on the Womens Work thread although it made no mention of the practical issues facing an individual. Both men and women find themselves trapped in relationships, not just "dependent spouses". Both can suffer serious emotional and financial hardship from a choice to leave (or stay).

Those who continue to perpetuate the role of men as protector and provider rather than partner perpetuate the limitation of women and men to be the best they can be.

R0bert

Interesting thing this 'economic coercion.'

Research shows that married men are the highest income earners, it must be economic coercion.

Having and raising children is not cheap, I think that has something to do with economic coercion.

Bettina Arndt wrote an article that the men least likely to get married or to have a partner are those on the low economic scale. Even today it appears that women still want men who earn more than they do.

Melaine Phillips in "Saying the Unsayable"
http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=471
Looks at examines the welfare state in Great Britain.

Carey Roberts in "The Feminization of poverty"
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/roberts/061003
"Far too many women are stuck in the cycle of poverty from which there is no escape."

"During my life I've traveled far and wide, visiting some of the most poverty-stricken regions of the world. And I've never seen anything that resembles a sex-based imbalance of poverty.

When economist Victor Fuchs of the National Bureau of Economic Research combed through the figures from the 1970s, he concluded: "Statistical decomposition of the changes shows that an increase in the proportion of women in households without men was the principal source of feminization of poverty."

Translation: Divorce places a woman at risk of becoming impoverished."
Fuchs went on to note, "between 1979 and 1984 poverty rates rose for both men and women, but they rose relatively more rapidly for men." So according to Dr. Fuchs, the real crisis was the masculinization, not feminization, of poverty.

A few years ago sociologist Martha Gimenez sagely observed that the feminization of poverty myth only serves to fuel "conflict between men and women, young and old, and white and nonwhite."

As Robert has pointed out particularly western governments have stepped in a become the de facto protector and provider. Although the role of the protector is rather redundant these days.

Now in an ideal situation this only last for a period of time until as Ronnie puts it "women find their feet."

Research shows however neither men or women gain economically from divorce as both experience a fall in the standard of living.

It was man as protector and provider that gave feminism legs. Not sure who designed the shoes.

the lawyers my friend, the lawyers

Take the biggest part of Feminism Made Flesh, the Family Law Industry which runs at $20 billion pa [that's each, to the lawyers and ladies]

It follows perfectly the laws of marketing/sales - the marketing sows the seeds, the sales reaps the harvest

a perfect marketing platform by lawyers [based on female desire for power and greed, and blokes ruled by dicks, hence swallow all the red herrings you people are talking to , ie gender war] and a huge sales force of women, hence 50% of married blokes become victims