A Fight for Men’s Rights in California Courts

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/13/style/mens-rights-movement.html

by rbanffy • 8 years ago

21 21 8 years ago

Paternity fraud could be solved easily by mandatory paternity tests upon birth.

tathougies3• 8 years ago

Paternity tests are accurate, but they are not 100% accurate. Firstly, there's simple incorrect calls. Then, there's a variety of conditions (for example mosaicism) that could cause a man's blood cells to have a different DNA pattern than his skin cells.

Finally, paternity tests are useless in the presence of identical twin men. A twin is not responsible legally for the children of his twin brother. What matters is who had sex with the mother. Any system needs to have ways to solve this.

Personally, I think we should look towards the most well-tested paternity system -- marriage (and the accompanying social stigma of adultery) -- for advice on how to move forward. Paternity tests can be a part of that, but they are not the panacea you make them out to be, including relatively common situations.

394549• 8 years ago

> Paternity fraud could be solved easily by mandatory paternity tests upon birth.
Paternity tests are accurate, but they are not 100% accurate.

I think most people would consider the problem solved if they were 99% accurate. Also, like all medical tests, a adverse result would require further follow up for confirmation to rule out potentially confounding factors.

rgrieselhuber3• 8 years ago

Nor is marriage, unfortunately.

manfredo3• 8 years ago

Sure, paternity testing has edge cases. But if the father disputes paternity and the DNA tests repeatedly comes back with no hereditary relationship between the alleged father and child that should be at least grounds to halt child support payments.

Semirhage2• 8 years ago

#MeToo is a hashtag women are encouraged to use as a way to share personal stories of sexual violence though. I’m not seeing the equivalent here.

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/07/is...

naasking3• 8 years ago

#MeToo is hardly mentioned in the article, so I'm not sure why you expected to see some kind of equivalent.

Semirhage2• 8 years ago

The title is a clear play on the hashtag.

laurex• 8 years ago

Interesting that they're going after "ladies nights" which aren't exactly emblematic of "safe spaces." My impression is that offering women free entry is largely an overall economic decision based on the logic that social spaces like nightclubs will be more attractive to "spenders" (i.e. men) if there are more women there. Interesting to see what would happen to overall culture in that world if entrance fee parity was enforced.

johnny3132• 8 years ago

This comes off like an attempt to turn a set of perceived slights into an issue of discrimination. "Men's rights" groups mostly seem to be a reaction against attempts to address institutionalized misogyny. Why is it hard to acknowledge that society has been and still is biased in favor of white men? (disclaimer: I am a white man)

naasking3• 8 years ago

I find this sort of reply irritating. Feminists rightly point out that the fact that female discrimination is far worse elsewhere in the world does not somehow diminish our obligation to address female discrimination here.

So the only way your objection carries any weight is if men (even white men) are not discriminated against at all, ever, at any level of our society. Do you actually believe that to be the case? If so, then I suggest you do some reading.

If not, then we have just as much an obligation to address challenges that men uniquely face as we have to women for the same.

manfredo3• 8 years ago

I don't think trying to eliminate policies that discriminate against men is denying that men have privileges. Simply because one group suffers from discrimination more than another shouldn't be a justification to turn around and discriminate the latter. I am Hispanic myself, and I would cringe just as hard at a "Latinx only" sign as I would a "Whites only" one.

johnny3132• 8 years ago

You make a fair point. I don't mean to imply discrimination is appropriate in any context, just that groups in power can sometimes frame threats to their privilege as examples of discrimination as a way to resist change [0].

[0] In the Name of Equal Rights: “Special” Rights and the Politics of Resentment in Post–Civil Rights America https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1540-5893....

sir_bearington• 8 years ago

Ultimately I think a lot of the hostility towards men's rights is counterproductive for people that want gender equality. This hostility had made a lot of people believe that feminism only purports to strive for equality and in reality only strives to advance the interests of women, often at the expense of men (as opposed to the real definition of feminism, which is gender equality for all).

asdsa5325• 8 years ago

Your logic is "white men have some privileges, therefore white men have absolutely no prejudice against them and absolutely no problems in society". This is sexist, racist, bad logic.

arprocter• 8 years ago

While the Super Bowl ad they mentioned in the article was tongue in cheek, I was recently discussing with my SO how a gender flipped version of this[0] which seemed to pop up every time I turned on the TV recently would never be allowed

[0]https://www.ispot.tv/ad/wjbM/optimum-locked-out-of-hotel-roo...

A Fight for Men’s Rights in California Courts

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