The Emasculation of America

The Case Against Feminism:

EmasculationOfAmerica.com
Text Box: FEMINISM’S EFFECTS ON MEN America is committed to seeking equality, but has allowed Feminists to set-the-climate and supply-the-rationale for it to be perfectly reasonable, natural, and even righteous to: Deprive fathers of the same parental and decision making liberties as mothers with respect to child custody, divorce, and abortion; Deny men equal legal rights, treatment, and protection in criminal prosecution and sentencing, spouse abuse, sexual assault, and discrimination as women; While concern for women’s well-being has escalated substantially, attention to men’s health during the 20ths century deteriorated to the point that men’s life expectancy became 5-7 years shorter than women’s. Some male-discriminatory and sex-stereotyping Feminism promotes are rooted in traditional beliefs about the sexes and gender. However, its activists amplify and expand upon such historic views about men, while emphasizing the positive and ignoring the negative attributes and qualities of women. The overall result is that one-sided views are translated into customs and laws that deny men equal liberties. Abortion and Parental Rights: In 1973, Roe V. Wade empowered mothers to abort a embryo/fetus during the first trimester, which was later effectively extended to the fetus’s viability outside the womb (i.e. approx. six months). The Supreme Court justified its decision on a Constitutional “right of privacy” of its own creation. This ruling has the force of an Amendment, act of Congress, or popular referendum. The U.S. Constitution only delegates the Court the duty of authenticating laws relative to itself, and interpreting the spirit/intent of its wording. It does not authorize it to rewrite or add to the Constitution. Since 1973, ~30 million single women have chosen birth control abortions without the natural father's formal consent. Another ~28 million fathers were denied the same parental rights as women to chose self-rearing or third-party adoption for their surviving children born out-of-wedlock. 1 History suggests that, if men had equal rights in these decisions, abortions would decline dramatically—perhaps by 33% to 50% or more. The key precedent for Roe was the Court’s 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut decision. Griswold prohibited states from restricting a married couple—as a unit—from getting preconception advice on preconception birth control. It presumed a combination Amendments effectively establishes a additional Constitutional right—the right to marital privacy with respect to medical counseling. [Re: 1st, the freedom of choice and association; 3rd, no peacetime troop quartering and privacy of homes; 4th, right to security in home and from unreasonable search and seizure; 5th, freedom from self-incrimination; and 14th, right to due process.) As a result of Roe, 46 of 50 state’s laws were basically overruled or liberalized. Abortion became a Federal, instead of the state’s realm of legal determination as well. Roe thoroughly examines the laws and precedents involved in the case from the mother’s, the states’, and physicians’—but not from the father’s—point of view. It converted a mother’s and father’s shared right to privacy in preventing conception into a clearly defined single mother’s liberty to unilaterally abort an unmarried couple’s potential child after conception. By failing to also define the father’s rights in such situations, the Court established a context that enabled later rulings (See: Abortion Overview) to conclude that state’s requirements that the father consent to abortion of a child he had an equal part in conceiving unconstitutional. These abortion rulings, in turn, provided one of several legal foundations for denying fathers equal protection and liberties in many other areas of parental and marriage as well. The Court also denied Roe was recognizing Feminist’s central propositions, like “It’s my body” (thus I can do whatever I please with it) and “It’s my choice” (thus I have the sole right to terminate a potential child’s life). But the Court’s accumulative rulings thereafter—opinions that include phrases like “women’s right to abortion”—legitimize Feminist’s declaration of these rights in the public domain. Another frequent Feminist proclamation is “A woman’s Constitutional right to privacy” or “abortion.” The Supreme Court’s various rulings do not address the issue of when life begins. It seems logical, however to conclude that the moment an organism is animate or active; begins producing it own new cells; or moves and self-propels it satisfies the definition of being “alive”. Living also refers to possessing energy, striving to survive, and not being dead. In other words, being alive is not determined by the acquisition of humanity’s unique capacities, like thinking, feeling, etc. If it were, a plant or animal could never be considered a “living” thing. Does a viable rationale for claiming that these species are not “alive” exist? Unlike any of the other liberties actually established in the Constitution, the Supreme Court’s “New Amendment of the mother’s right to privacy with respect to abortion,” to the exclusion of fathers, also fails to be applied to many other basically comparable circumstances. If a women’s body is indeed “a privacy domain” over which she is free from all outside interference to decide to end a living being’s (see above) growth through viability—why does the law not also apply similar freedom: [1] to euthanasia, which, not only ends the person’s humanly intolerable suffering, but also ends a living being’s life; [2] to driving under the influence and substance abuse cases, which, like sex, involves pleasurable voluntary acts of taking something into the body that potentially leads to accidents, suffering, a crime, and may have life-or-death consequences; and [3] to prostitution, which can be equally defended on a privacy basis and are basically cause society no harm? How can such contradictions possibly be explained or legally justified? In addition, most of the Court’s rulings on parental rights are premised on an unstated underlying assumption that an embryo, fetus, and child are a possession—more specifically, the mother’s property until viable. In 1865, the 13th Amendment made slavery illegal was based on the principles that all people are created equal and no one can own another person. A child and fetus are both persons in the sense that they share the determinative characteristic of being alive (above). Children are a parent’s progeny, a civilization’s source of continuity, and perpetuators of the species. Parents serve all of these diverse interests in their role as a fetus’s and child’s care providers and initial developers. A fetus or child is not an asset to be arbitrarily used, exploited, and disposed of as one or more parent pleases. If any event, if ownership is a valid criterion for defining parental rights, children “belong” as much to fathers as mothers. A father donates half of the child’s genes and DNA. He is also financially responsible for his children for 18 to 22 years. Gestation obligates mothers to nine months of sustenance of an embryo and fetus; to a few of months of substantial limited capacities; and to delivery of a child. In the above contexts, how unreasonable is it to require mothers to give birth to children they don’t want so the single father or someone else who wants to love and rear them can do so? Finally, prohibiting most birth-control-based abortions, which are ~95% of all abortions, is also consistent with “we-the-people’s” long-term preferences. For example, the New York Times reports 42% Americans want abortion further restricted and 23% more want them prohibited. This is almost a two-thirds plurality. Birth-control-abortions are mostly based on self-interest-driven reason for terminating a potential life (above). The father is denied an equal opportunity to decide to raise his child or equally share in decisions to abort or allow third-party adoption as well. There is also an astonishingly severe perpetual shortage of children available for adoption by adults who desperately want to be children’s parents. If a child of is conceived out-of-lock today, one-third of the time (0.7-1.1 million) the mother decides to abort the pregnancy, and one-third of the time (1.0-1.2 million) rears the child herself. The latter data compares to 5.3%, 10.4%, and 18.4% in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980’s respectively. In the 1960’s the situation was reversed: two-thirds of unwed pregnant couples married vs. one-fourth in the 2000’s. In other words, 40 years ago ~70% of children were reared in first marriage “nuclear families,” versus ~15% today.1 Such families include two blood-related parents to two or more children under 18, one of which is a full-time breadwinner, and the other a full-time parent and homemaker. (It is irrelevant which sex is the child care provider and breadwinner. The point is one parent needs the former thorough at least age 12 or so.) The above historic data suggests that, if men had the same parental rights in abortion, adoption, and self-rearing decisions, the abortion rate would decline by 33% to 50% or more. Child Custody: Two out of three American marriages fail. During the ‘90s, 5 in every 10 first marriages, and 6 of 10 second and succeeding marriages ended in divorce. In addition, 17% of couples are typically permanently separated. This is 75% more divorces than in the 50’s. Divorce now means fathers are almost inevitably unable to maintain a meaningful long-term parental relationship with his children. In a divorce, psychological, if not physical control over children continues to effectively reside with mothers in 85-90% of cases.1 Full custody provides immediate physical/emotional control of a child. Experiments with dual-custody most often prove to be parentally ineffective and detrimental to a child’s development. For example, mutual disrespect or animosity often accompanies divorce, and both parent’s lives soon change. They soon remarry, which brings a second same sex parent and confusion into the parenting picture, and one or both parents often relocate, sometimes at great distances apart. America’s customs and laws also function under Freud’s misconception that an exclusive and irreplaceable mother-child bond exists, and single fathers cannot rear a child as effectively as single mothers. This concept is unarguably discriminatory against fathers, as well as unsupported by objective scientific research or empirical studies. Modern investigations conclusively indicate both sexes are equally influential in and capable of childrearing. Finally, a child cannot be psychologically or physically cut in two. Thus dual-custody almost inevitably becomes effective full-custody by the mother. The odds that a father can physically or emotionally maintain a meaningful parental connection with his children under such conditions are incredibly small. Little research is done on these topics from the male’s point-of-view. Almost all such studies are done from women’s and children’s perspective. Two small studies, however, found that of natural fathers judged to be the “best” and most committed prior to divorce, ~50% were estranged from their children within two years, and ~90% after five years. It was the fathers deemed the “least” effective and interested fatherhood prior to divorce that were most able endure maintaining occasional contact after two and five years, ~75% and ~50% respectively. How many truly competent and motivated mothers would be able to tolerate a similar forced separation from her children? During the early 1800’s, mothers had few legal rights with respect to her children in most states. In divorce, parental rights were the opposite of what they are today [See: “paternalism” at Sexes Different & Equal]. Fathers almost inevitably gained full-custody, and mothers could be arbitrarily denied visitation rights. Such laws were as discriminatory and unjustified with respect to mothers as today’s laws are for fathers. Like slavery, however, these male-biased and female-prejudiced practices gradually disappeared. During the mid-1900’s, however, they reemerged in the form of today’s polar opposite belief and legal system. Can you imagine the uproar, not only from Feminists, but every woman, if they were forced to return to rules in 1800’s? Of course, neither of these extremes should be a legitimate option, should it? Custody that is father-prejudiced and mother-biased has another, perhaps more important, result. Father’s unequal custody and parental rights provide mother’s with disproportionate relationship power during marriage. Fathers live under the constant threat that 85-90% of the time he will lose his children in case of a serious breach. For women, 10-15% roughly represents the portion of their sex that is relatively disinterested in being a parent. Thus loss of custody is no real threat at all in many cases. This more or less fathers-only threat is constant, immeasurable, and has a very real impact on the marital relationship whether it is expressed or purposely exploited by the mother or not. Most fathers are at least subconsciously aware of this risk every time they “go-to-the-mat” or take-a-firm-stand in a major issue with mothers. Most mothers are also aware of the advantages accompanying these laws. Some mothers, of course, intentionally employ that power to their personal benefit. It is also important to note that wives file for two divorces for every one filed by a husband. Could this statistic in part be attributable to and consequence of the greater marital power these laws provide to women? In sum, objective scientific research or empirical studies find women and men have equal potential to be effective parents in the same situational conditions. There is also no such evidence to the contrary. Is there any legitimate excuse for child custody to not be base on sex-balanced and gender-neutral criteria that determines which parent is likely to be most effective in childrearing in each divorce case? If so, that means child-custody would naturally gravitate to becoming a 50-50 proposition. And, in turn, if that were the case, what would most likely happen to current divorce rates? Wouldn’t they dramatically decline? Prosecution and Sentencing: Social science finds the sexes equal in virtually every respect, including violence and aggression. So what explains so many more men than women in prisons? There are typically 13-15 times more men than women in federal and state prisons. Women also receive 30% shorter averages sentences, and actually serve 20% less of those sentences than men. In addition, 7-8 times more men than women are prisoners in local jails. Males are the victims of sexual assault and rape as often as females. Women perpetrate spousal abuse as often as men, and evidence cannot be found that wives are injured more severely than husbands. Yet it is men who are most often prosecuted and women who get services for such abuses. [See: Sexes Different & Equal. Law enforcement and social science find young men between 15 and 25 twice as physically violent with non-intimates (i.e. mostly other males), but this 100% greater than the rate for females, not 1400%. However research also indicates females of all ages are 50% to 200% more psychologically and indirectly aggressive with intimates and non-intimates of both sexes. [See: Sexes Different and Equal.] These basic patterns of differing prosecutions and sentences between the sexes are not new. It is rooted in traditional perspectives much older than Modern Feminism. But in an era that supposedly advocates sex/gender equality, why is this male-discriminatory trend allowed to continue without substantial proactive attention? [See: Bureau of Justice Statistics for more.] Perhaps the best explanation is, suggested by the last bullet above. Like sexual harassment [See: About Feminism—p2], America’s laws are administered in a ways that “criminalizes men’s more physical and direct ways of “behaving badly” than women’s “emotional and manipulative” ways of “being bad.” Another dimension of the disproportionate incarceration of men is the prevalence of three- to ten-fold greater unreported sexual assaults and rapes of boys and men by women in the public domain [See: Sexes Different and Equal]. The rape of men by other men (as well as women of women) in prison is grossly underreported as well. The most reliable estimates suggest that 20-25% of prisoners are so accosted while incarcerated. [See: Human Rights Watch Report.] A major consideration, however, is that Feminists make such a one-sided campaign of this topic that male’s equal sexual assault is casually brushed off as an “impossibly” and is treated as nothing more than a “nasty-little-joke” to be laughed at in the public domain. Consider of the way these horrible assaults are portrayed by comedians and the media. Another likely cause is judges, law enforcement, and lawyers being susceptible to selective perception. Like the rest of society, these public servants are convinced by both tradition and subjected to Feminist’s constant propaganda that males are innately more violent and aggressive than females. Thus they are preconditioned to recognize and readily accept men’s criminal behavior, as well as basically blind, disbelieving, or empathetic to women’s different but comparable forms of criminality. [See: Site Introduction.] In addition, academia, the media, and legal system is focused on exacerbating these one-sided perceptions, and doing nothing to alleviate this gross inequality between the sexes. Men’s 5-7 Years Premature Deaths: Perhaps the most shocking and costly indicator of male-prejudice and female-bias in today’s our culture is in the area of men’s versus women’s health. Men’s lifespan has decreased from being equal to women’s in the 1800’s, to between five and seven years shorter throughout most to the 1900’s for no natural, biological, or physiological reason. Meanwhile, women’s physical and mental well-being receive priority attention in education and research, by the media, in the medical professions, and by the government. For example, the 1964 Civil Rights Act led to huge investments for addressing unsubstantiated speculations discrimination against women—massive expenditure that could be invested in men’s medical/mental health research, as well as cultural studies. During the 1800’s, the sexes’ life-spans were equal, when adjusted for infant mortality. (Note that 5% more males are born each year.) The differential in lifespan seems to have gradually emerged over a period roughly corresponding with the long-term impact of industrialization. In other words, the actual “criminal” whom is still prematurely “murdering” men may be the Industrial Revolution’s (IR) effects on men’s lives. If the IR is the culprit, actions could certainly be taken to alleviate many of these problems. It is also noteworthy that, if factors like harder, longer, more stressful, unpleasant, and riskier work is even partially causing men’s premature deaths, there could be a major side-benefit for men resulting from Feminism’s pressure on women to fill more of men’s traditional roles. Masses of women taking over “men’s jobs” will not fix the underlying causes of the loss of lives, but it will gradually shorten women’s life-expectancy and lengthen men’s proportionally. Such are the “benefits” of most activism. Males suffer from 20% more severe psychiatric problems than females as well. 2 The cited research includes alcoholism, which is the largest category of “men’s illnesses”. Feminists may claim this data is misleading because some professionals interpret substance abuse as self-inflicted diseases. The study, however, also includes depression, the major “women’s illness.” Alcoholism, however, is frequently diagnosed as self-medication for depression in men, and depression is often assessed as a self-inflicted illness in women as well. In addition, in the majority of situations, the opposite sex is a partial cause of, an enabler, or a codependent in either sex’s substance abuse, depression, or other illnesses. In conclusion: As a result of the way men are acculturated in America, they seldom openly ask questions, complain about, or resist obvious inequalities like the above. While the existence of these realities may remain ill-informed, unformulated, and expressed, they are surely seen and vaguely understood throughout the male-subculture. For example, such realizations are often mentioned in “man-to-man” conversations in which sex/gender issues are arise. Thus males are quietly arriving at conclusions about such matters that certainly affect their thoughts, feelings, decisions, and behaviors; finding answers that are subtly and indirectly expressed in the form of confusion, frustration, sadness, and malaise. But regardless, it is hard to conceive of a substantial minority of men becoming self-interest-driven activists—at least not yet.

Last Updated: 7/26/08