| MND COMMENTARY |
Men’s Rights 101 September 12, 2003 by Drew Taggart “We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we'll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won't. And we're just learning this fact…” - character Tyler Durden in Chuck Palahniuk’s “Fight Club.” Today men and boys are told from the earliest days that females are somehow ‘noble’ and that males, by virtue and gender, are expendable and somehow of lesser importance. Into this maelstrom of anti-male propaganda we bring our issues, concerns and arguments to the table of public opinion with one simple idea: We are Not Anti-Women, We Are Pro-Men. Is it Misogynist to give men the Right to Choose parenthood? Try this; What are the Reproductive Rights of Men? If a woman gets pregnant she has the Choice, Safe and Legal, to carry the child to term or to abort the fetus. If she chooses life for the child, then the man is automatically obligated to provide monetary support for that child, regardless of his desire whether or not to be a parent, with no legal guaranty of any kind he will ever have contact with this child. In many states, a woman can obligate ANY man to these payments simply by naming him as the father. Conversely, if she chooses to abort the pregnancy, he has no say in the decision whatsoever, even if the couple is married. The sad, sorry truth is that men currently have No Reproductive Rights. Do we Hate Women by proposing that accusers in Sexual Assault cases should be publicly identified? So often the utterance of the word ‘rape’ can crush average men who, supposedly innocent until proven guilty, watch their careers, friendships and reputations disintegrate almost overnight. Meanwhile the accusers remain anonymous comforted by friends and family, while prosecutors, deathly afraid of appearing soft on sex crimes or hoping to make a name for themselves, pursue even the most baseless of accusations. And when these poor, hapless males have finally been acquitted in a court of law of what is usually a false accusation, he then must face the court of public opinion in a usually futile effort to pick up the pieces of a now shattered life. Are we ‘Woman Bashing’ to prevent custodial parents from moving away from non-custodial parents? To this some would respond ‘you can't prevent a parent from making a living - even if it is in another state.’ To which many of the Men’s Columnists would retort: They are welcome to move anywhere they want, but they can give the kids to the non-custodial parent and move without turning everyone’s lives upside down for the benefit of one person…Themselves. Being the custodial parent (90% of the time the woman) is not a ‘winner take all’ proposition… Marriages may end, but families should not. Are we ‘Counter-Feminist’ because we think Paternity Fraud is actually a serious crime? Should we not be outraged when men routinely thrown in jail for failing to pay support for kids that DNA tests have proven are not theirs? How long are we supposed to stand idly by and allow hundreds of thousands of men to have the lion’s share of their incomes forfeited via government condoned fraud? Our hope is to raise awareness that the males in our society, from kindergarten to retirement, are currently getting a raw deal and we would like that to stop. The Men’s Rights Movement isn’t looking to degrade the status of women; sadly plenty of ladies in the pursuit of the Almighty Buck do a fine job of that with no help from us. Do the names Christina Aguillera or Jenna Jameson ring a bell? No, we are not crazed ‘alpha male’ control freaks or bitter ex-husbands; we’re simply people looking for a ‘fair shake’ for men of every color, creed, race, origin, etc. But of course, in fighting for such reasonable goals as ‘equality’ and ‘respect’ there are those who will always label us ‘Woman Haters.’ |
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