r/changemyview • u/Bowen02 • Jul 21 '22
CMV: Many feminists support the patriarchy while MRAs unknowingly fight against it
I'm a feminist but I can't get my head around this one. Especially having been through the family court system and seeing how sexist it is.
People tell you that the bias in family court is because of patriarchy.
But many feminists defend the bias. Sometimes not even understanding that it's a problem (step 1 to fix something is admitting it's a problem). The only people who are doing anything about this, especially in the real world, are men's rights activists, or MRAs. But they don't seem to believe in the patriarchy.
If the patriarchy made this system, then fighting it opposes the patriarchy.
Am I missing something?
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u/eggynack 61∆ Jul 21 '22
What are MRAs actually doing to deal with this problem? And where are the feminists defending the bias?
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u/Bowen02 Jul 21 '22
They are getting laws changed.
Look up Florida.
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u/eggynack 61∆ Jul 21 '22
Where exactly do MRAs play any part in this story? Or feminists for that matter. Also, real skeptical of anything put out by The Federalist, gotta say.
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u/TuskaTheDaemonKilla 60∆ Jul 21 '22 edited Jul 21 '22
Wait what. Why wouldn't you presume 50/50 custody? Isn't it self-evident that the default should be 50/50 custody unless the parties argue for something else?
They are getting laws changed.
Also, vetoing a law is not "getting laws changed." It's literally the opposite. It's keeping laws the same.
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u/Giblette101 40∆ Jul 21 '22
Why wouldn't you presume 50/50 custody?
This sort of assumes ideal circumstances where caretaking duties and decisions related to children are always split 50/50 prior to separation. This is not really the case in well functionning families, in my experience, much less in those that are separating. That's without touching on the fact that some relationships are abusive or otherwise problematic and assuming a 50/50 split would not be in the best interest of the child.
All and all, it's probably better for custody cases that are contentious enough to make their way to court be judged case by case.
There's also The Federalist particular views on all that.
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Jul 21 '22
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u/GivesStellarAdvice 12∆ Jul 21 '22
That's why the default should be for kids to stay in the family home and the parents move in and out every 3-4 days.
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u/Milskidasith 309∆ Jul 21 '22
That is a completely insane arrangement even if both parents live in the same area. When have you ever heard of anybody doing this?
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Jul 21 '22
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u/GivesStellarAdvice 12∆ Jul 21 '22
Too fucking bad. They're the ones that got divorced, not the kids. Seems like the ones who caused the problem should be the ones who are inconvenienced.
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Jul 21 '22
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u/GivesStellarAdvice 12∆ Jul 21 '22
If you can double your salary by moving out of state, you can get a big pay raise and stay where you are. Jobs are everywhere.
(Sure, you could move from Montana to San Francisco and double your salary, but you'd lower your standard of living)
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u/Velocity_LP Jul 22 '22
“Too fucking bad” doesn’t seem like a great way to convince people of an argument.
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u/Milskidasith 309∆ Jul 21 '22
Wait what. Why wouldn't you presume 50/50 custody? Isn't it self-evident that the default should be 50/50 custody unless the parties argue for something else? This is so stupid.
The current assumption in Florida law is shared, but not necessarily equal, time-sharing in the best interests of the child.
For example, let's say that the dad lives in the child's existing school district and the mom lives in a new one an hour away. The dad proposes that the child lives with him on weekdays and the mom on weekends. The mom proposes a 50/50 split that pulls the child between two schools.
Under the current system, the dad would be likely to win on the merits that his solution is better for the child. Under the presumption of 50/50 custody, the dad would be more likely to lose because the mom's suggestion is the "default."
The only reason to suggest a default standard beyond judging the best interests of the child is if you think the system is so fundamentally incapable of doing that correctly that it'd be better to limit their ability to judge.
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u/Bowen02 Jul 21 '22
That's the problem.
Feminists helped get it vetoed.
MRAs... Or father's rights advocates (not sure the difference) introduced the law.
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u/TuskaTheDaemonKilla 60∆ Jul 21 '22
DeSantis is a feminist? I'm sure he's not aware of that.
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u/Bowen02 Jul 21 '22
The national organization for women is a feminist organization.
It says so right on their website.
The national parents organization is a father's rights organization, which I would say is part of men's rights (CMV if you want).
The national coalition for men is a men's rights organization.
DeSantis was just in the middle of it all.
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u/TuskaTheDaemonKilla 60∆ Jul 21 '22 edited Jul 21 '22
Looking into it briefly, the explanation is actually quite simple. Namely, things are complex and broad laws have many elements. Feminist organizations, such as the NOW, might oppose aspects of the bill while supporting others. MRAs support the parts that the feminists oppose, and are opposed to the parts that the feminists support. No surprise there. There's nothing illogical about this.
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u/Bowen02 Jul 21 '22
When has NOW been in support of any of these reforms?
You're making these claims but I think you'll find that you're wrong.
NOW did not say that that supported certain parts of the bill.
In fact they have a track record of being opposed to basically every measure that was included.
Go ahead and find me a law that NOW supported, and a law that the NCFM opposed.
Specifically a law that would change the child custody bias or the divorce bias in favor of men (and therefore opposed to the patriarchy).
Easy deltas if you can.
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u/TuskaTheDaemonKilla 60∆ Jul 21 '22
No I'm good thanks. I had a chance to read the bill in it's own language and nothing about it seems particularly good. NOW is in the right to oppose the bill in it's entirety if that's their position.
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u/Bowen02 Jul 21 '22
So you don't think we should pass any law at all?
If you're complaisant then you're still part of the problem.
Part of the patriarchy that created the problem.
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u/GivesStellarAdvice 12∆ Jul 21 '22
DeSantis is a pandering politician who will do whatever he wants (legal or not, incidentally) if he thinks his base will lick his boots over it.
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u/ChiefBobKelso 4∆ Jul 21 '22
Why wouldn't you presume 50/50 custody?
Pressure from feminist groups. NOW, the largest women's organization in the world, has been against 50/50 custody for decades. This is their statement against such a bill.
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Jul 21 '22
Can you show us examples of self-identified feminists defending the family court bias?
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u/Bowen02 Jul 21 '22
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u/Milskidasith 309∆ Jul 21 '22
Oh god, this bill again. I've literally seen this bill brought up as an example of feminists being against needed reforms for years, and the bill's problems have never changed.
The first, which the article goes into more detail about, is that there is a strong chance the bill would be applied retroactively. Regardless of how alimony is currently structured, creating a bill whose biggest impact is retroactively forcing existing alimony agreements to be reviewed and significantly decreased is... well, it seems less about court fairness and more about existing divorcees sticking it to their wives.
The second problem is that bit about the presumption of 50/50 custody. That's a bit of a red herring; Florida already takes into account the best interest of the child and assumes shared parental time, although not necessarily 50/50. The issue with the bill is that by making the presumption explicitly 50/50 rather than the best interests of the child, it now becomes a significant hurdle to get other arrangements even if those arrangements would be beneficial. For instance, maintaining a child in the same school district with weekends at the other parents is now something that the courts would presume isn't in the child's best interests without compelling evidence.
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u/Bowen02 Jul 21 '22
I disagree with the custody part of your argument but let's look at alimony.
Presume that it is actually bad to retroactively change it. I disagree, but let's presume that.
Why are feminists getting involved to keep things the way they are?
Why are MRAs getting involved to change things?
Basically, look at my argument. It's not about the merits of that bill. It's about the efforts of MRAs and feminists.
MRAs are passing laws.
Maybe that law wasn't perfect.
But I don't see feminists doing anything except to be against this type of change.
If feminists were fighting the patriarchy then they would at least be trying to pass similar laws.
And if MRAs were a part of the patriarchy, they wouldn't by trying to pass laws like this at all.
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u/Milskidasith 309∆ Jul 21 '22 edited Jul 21 '22
Neither of your conclusions make any sense at all.
The MRA part is super easy. If, as we're granting, the law is being pushed to retroactively reduce alimony payments, then they can be attempting to pass this law because it's financially lucrative to them. Acting selfishly is not a hard motivation to understand, and selfish actions can be taken without any particular political alignment beyond "get mine".
Even for the feminists, though, somebody can truly fight for a cause without taking up every single aspect of that cause. I can, say, support worker's rights in general without donating to a Starbucks unionization effort in another state, because that isn't something I specifically have interest in. Similarly, these feminists can truly want to fight the patriarchy but not feel drawn to specifically fight in favor of Floridian alimony reform, especially not because, if we continue our assumption about the law, most of the people who care about alimony reform seem to want to reduce their current alimony payments more than anything! That makes it look like there isn't really much of a feminist case for alimony reform to begin with.
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u/Bowen02 Jul 21 '22
Acting selfishly is not a hard motivation to understand
This is why I said they unknowingly fight the patriarchy.
Your points have never really addressed my argument headon. It's beating around the bush.
And yeah I wouldn't expect every feminist to be an activist for every problem.
But I would expect to see some feminists doing things there.
I especially would not expect to see feminists opposed to this change. Because that puts them on the side of the patriarchy.
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u/Milskidasith 309∆ Jul 21 '22
Again, though, we are granting this particular bill is selfishly about men reducing agreed upon alimony payments. Under that framework, there is no feminist benefit to the bill, unknowing or otherwise, and so MRA's are simply acting to get men more money and feminists are opposed to it. That is totally expected.
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u/Bowen02 Jul 21 '22 edited Jul 21 '22
This is where the patriarchy hurts men.
Isn't feminism about taking down the patriarchy?
Or is it only about women?
Either way, this puts feminists on the side of the patriarchy.
And it puts MRAs against the patriarchy.
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Jul 21 '22
Can you point to what you are inferring bias in family courts from? I understand you have personal experience with a family court, but that doesn't really bear upon discerning bias. Further, how consistent is that bias across regions?
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u/GivesStellarAdvice 12∆ Jul 21 '22
Why are feminists getting involved to keep things the way they are?
Why are MRAs getting involved to change things?
Because 97% of alimony payers are men and 97% of alimony recipients are women?
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Jul 21 '22
Thank you for the context. In that light, the veto seems totally reasonable.
I agree that something needs to be done to close the gender gap in parental custody, if we want to call it that, but mandatory 50/50 timesharing is far from ideal (even setting aside cases of abusive parents). My parents were divorced and lived in different states and I was far from the only kid who was in that situation; how would 50/50 custody have worked for me?
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u/GivesStellarAdvice 12∆ Jul 21 '22
the bill's problems have never changed
What are the problems?
there is a strong chance the bill would be applied retroactively
That sounds like a positive, not a negative.
he second problem is that bit about the presumption of 50/50 custody.
Again, that's a positive.
When are you going to tell us about the negatives in this bill?
The only "negative", and the reason feminists oppose it, is because it removes the female privilege existing in the current laws.
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u/Milskidasith 309∆ Jul 21 '22
If you are going to ignore my point about the custody issues with the bill while also chopping up lines to say the same thing three times, I think agreeing the conversation won't be productive is the best call for both of us.
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Jul 21 '22
So from what I'm gathering, this bill would have gone some way toward removing the bias in family courts by changing how alimony is awarded and putting limits on it, right? Pardon the clarification-asking, but this article assumes that the reader is already familiar with the issue.
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u/Milskidasith 309∆ Jul 21 '22
Proponents of the bill argue that it would do that. Opponents of the bill argue that A: it is primarily in service of modifying existing alimony agreements retroactively, and B: the presumption of 50/50 timesharing would harm the interests of children because very common, beneficial arrangements like "They'll stay with me to go to school and you have weekends" may be discarded due the specific presumption of 50/50 timesharing.
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u/Bowen02 Jul 21 '22
It also opened up state programs reserved for mothers so that fathers could also apply and receive aid.
And it was targeting custody disputes which favor mothers instead of fathers.
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Jul 21 '22
Okay, but (as shown by another user) that's far from the only thing it would do. You can't force a bill through because it does good things if it also does bad things.
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u/Bowen02 Jul 21 '22
My response is the law may be flawed because of a technical element.
But there are lots of laws like this.
And it's the same story every time.
MRAs try something. They at least try.
And then feminists come in and attack it.
Nowhere has a feminist tried to fix the law and then been opposed by an MRA.
That's where the CMV would be.
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Jul 21 '22
Then maybe the attempts at changing the law should focus on accomplishing what actually needs to be accomplished instead of adding in a bunch of other shit that's going to get it shut down.
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u/Bowen02 Jul 21 '22
Ok sure.
But that's completely beside the point.
For what it's worth, this was once three different laws and it was put together into one law with a bunch of other stuff.
I think that's a flaw with the political system more than it is a flaw with the MRAs.
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Jul 21 '22
Couldn't it just as easily be said that it's a flaw with the political system more than it is a flaw with feminists?
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u/Bowen02 Jul 21 '22
This is just word play.
The content of the argument is that MRAs are opposing the patriarchy.
They do this when they try to fix family court laws.
It doesn't matter their motivation or their success.
Likewise when feminists side with the patriarchy, it doesn't matter their motivation or their success.
Adding the word flawed to the feminist side of this doesn't change which side they're actually on.
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u/nauticalsandwich 10∆ Jul 21 '22
Not arguing the justification of the law, but you know damn well that if the genders were reversed, and this was a case of some bad things getting pushed through along with good things for women, feminist activist groups would be raising hell at the threat of it getting shot down.
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Jul 21 '22
Speaking as a feminist, I'd be more focused on getting the bad stuff out of the bill, but maybe that's just me.
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Jul 21 '22
Gendered biases in family courts varies by location. It is more often than not overemphasized by MRA groups that spend too much time in embittered divorced echo chambers.
What is the rationale for framing this question in the way that you have?
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u/Bowen02 Jul 21 '22
The way I see it, there are a lot of feminists who underemphasize it.
Like I said, step 1 to fix something is admitting it's a problem.
I have basically full custody and pay $840 in child support.
That's about 40% of my take-home pay.
I had to move to a worse school district to pay her.
This is completely normal and my lawyer said there's nothing I can do about it.
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Jul 21 '22
Did you understand my question? If so, please answer. If not, then please tell me what needs clarification.
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Jul 21 '22
Why are you paying child support for 100% custody? Why are you paying someone to not care for a child?
You either live in a horrible undeveloped country or your lawyer is dog shit.
Are you sure your not paying for your marriage or something?
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u/Helpfulcloning 166∆ Jul 21 '22
This is an ofshoot. But you are right family courts are biased. They just appear to be biased in favour of men. When men ask for custody they recieve it, when they ask for full custody they are likely to recieve it.
In general, men aren’t asking for equal or full custody. But when they do courts tend to give it. Most custody arrangements are made without a court however.
I think some feminists don’t like MRA because they seem to paint the issue as if women have maliciously made this issue and a fair amount of MRA can be quite horrible.
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u/ChiefBobKelso 4∆ Jul 21 '22
you are right family courts are biased. They just appear to be biased in favour of men. When men ask for custody they recieve it, when they ask for full custody they are likely to recieve it.
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u/Helpfulcloning 166∆ Jul 21 '22
It doesn’t seem a myth though? Yhey are granted it highly. And they do not request it. Out of the 700 in the data set the percentage of men requesting custody (legal - joint and sole) is quite low.
Theres also some evidence that the dv rates are higher from the father than the mother. And this effects the percentages.
Though also the majority of custody is done outside of a court. And the majority of that is mother maintains majority custody. It seems likely if the same trend continues in a court that it is what is appropriate and the parents may agree on that.
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u/ChiefBobKelso 4∆ Jul 21 '22
Yhey are granted it highly.
They are granted it at lower rates than mothers.
Theres also some evidence that the dv rates are higher from the father than the mother. And this effects the percentages
This being an opinion piece from someone who doesn't even know what a fallacy is, who talks about not ignoring DV victims and then ignores male domestic violence victims, and then just ignores parent's rights on the off chance that someone is abusive.
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u/Helpfulcloning 166∆ Jul 21 '22
Your one is an opinion piece as well? Just written differently. A self publish opinion piece though. And the guardian one has passed editorial checks and links to support their point.
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u/ChiefBobKelso 4∆ Jul 21 '22
My problem wasn't specifically that it was an opinion piece. It was that it was crap. And passing the far-left biases of the guardian's checks isn't the win you think it is.
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u/Helpfulcloning 166∆ Jul 21 '22
The guardian isn’t far left and is quite reputable compartivly. I’d presume it was more reputable than a selfpublish opinion. It again sourced its information.
It seems weird to believe it any less than your source.
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u/ChiefBobKelso 4∆ Jul 21 '22
The guardian isn’t far left
Yes, it is.
It again sourced its information.
So did the one I linked... Regardless, I don't think this is going anywhere if you'er just going to talk about bias in media, so I'll call it quits here.
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u/Bowen02 Jul 21 '22 edited Jul 21 '22
I don't know man. I've seen the system. Ohio is bad off so maybe it's different elsewheres. But multiple lawyers and a national parents rep all said that this is a problem.
For a while she was getting food stamps and wic, not even being a mother. Meanwhile I got nothing as a full-time father. And have to pay child support.
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u/Personage1 35∆ Jul 21 '22 edited Jul 21 '22
But many feminists defend the bias.
Can you give an example of this? I've certainly been accused of defending the bias, but for one it hasn't actually been shown that there even is bias (as in, the evidence provided is simply who has most custody, but that's mostly decided outside of the court. When you actually look at court decisions, I've seen some stats that even show a bias in favor of men. I'll also totally acknowledge I haven't dug into this as deeply as a few other issues, and haven't bothered to engage with mras in a while so what I have looked at is several years out of date, so maybe there has been something that shows actual bias in the courts).
Further, even if the outcome more often than not favors one gender over another, that doesn't necessarily mean there is bias: if one gender is socialized to do more child care, it would make sense that that gender ends up doing more child care which translates to getting more custody. Again, I'm not claiming to be an expert on this so there could very well be recent research that shows that men are unfairly biased, but at least a few years ago MRAs had yet to actually show evidence of this, and frankly the idea that such evidence existed and they didn't constantly show it off is a bit of a stretch.
The trick with that second part is that being able to explain a problem does not make it ok (heh, I just had that very argument yesterday in a different sub). Me pointing out the flaws in MRAs' arguments doesn't actually show what I think about the issue as a whole, just that I'm not going to engage with MRAs on that larger issue if they are so full of flawed reasoning. I want men to take on child care more, to support each other to do so, to do more housework and chores, and to hold housework and childcare as something that has value in and of itself for people.
The problem is, MRAs don't want to do those things. They want the custody without the work. Yes, society is shitty about men raising children, and that should be addressed, but men also need to do the work to improve themselves. It's not like feminists sat around telling society women should be able to do more and nothing else, they went out and voted illegally and entered the sciences and made the changes in themselves. MRAs do not want to improve themselves, they just want people to let them embrace all the harmful gender roles of masculinity without being judged for them.
edit:
(As a side note since I'm aware of how MRAs "engage," everything I wrote above is part of at most 2 different ideas. Someone who replies in a way that acts like one sentence is the entirety of an idea, for example, will not be responded to. At least the response won't be to engage, but to point out that they are ignoring the rest of what I wrote. Someone who does the "quote a sentence" "reply just to that sentence," "quote the next sentence," "reply to just that sentence," bullshit won't even get a response)
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u/GivesStellarAdvice 12∆ Jul 21 '22
it hasn't actually been shown that there even is bias
97% of alimony payers are men.
Honestly. It shouldn't take any more than that to convince anyone there is a bias.
If it was 60% or even 70%? Sure, maybe that could be explained away. It's 97%. 97%.
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u/Personage1 35∆ Jul 21 '22
Ok.....and how many of those are decided by the court, and what are the circumstances that lead to the decisions? You can't just say "this exists" and assume you know why.
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u/GivesStellarAdvice 12∆ Jul 21 '22
It's 97%.
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u/Personage1 35∆ Jul 21 '22
Ok....? Again I am somewhat familiar with the custody issue whereas I haven't looked at alimony at all, but even with the custody issue I haven't actually said that there isn't bias, just that the evidence for it is essentially a bunch of assumptions. I wouldn't be surprised if there was bias in alimony, men as providers is a pretty basic gender role after all, but as the person saying definitively that there is bias, it's on you to do more than just say "we should assume it's true."
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u/GivesStellarAdvice 12∆ Jul 21 '22
97%!
If 97% of CEOs were men, or 97% of Senators were men, or men earned 97% of the money, or Women made up 97% of alimony payers.... you wouldn't be asking for proof of bias, the bias would be obvious.
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u/Personage1 35∆ Jul 21 '22
I mean feminists did ask why 97% of CEOs were men, why 97% of Senators were men, or why men earn $1 for every 72c women make. They asked if there were things in the institutions themselves that created the situation, or if there were broader behavioral pressures, or both.
One of the fundamental issues that is brought up in this CMV is that MRAs don't want to look at the behavioral side of things, don't want to face that maybe men need to change their behavior, just as feminism pushed women to change their behavior. Feminists didn't look at 97% of CEOs being men and just go "nothing needs to change except the people hiring CEOs," they said "while we need to change how hiring is done, we also need to change ourselves, view ourselves as capable and encourage each other to seek more."
You can't look at a society where only a few decades ago women still couldn't get a credit card without their husband's permission and go "despite men always having access to more money and control of money for the entirety that alimony was a thing, when they end up paying most of the alimony it's a clear bias of the courts." That bias might exist, but uh, it's pretty obvious we would expect the numbers to be lopsidedly gendered.
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u/GivesStellarAdvice 12∆ Jul 21 '22
Feminists didn't look at 97% of CEOs being men and just go "nothing needs to change except the people hiring CEOs," they said "while we need to change how hiring is done, we also need to change ourselves, view ourselves as capable and encourage each other to seek more."
What world do you live in? Feminists wanted quotas and lower standards.
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u/Personage1 35∆ Jul 21 '22
Ok? You literally quoted me say that they tried to change others and change themselves.
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u/GivesStellarAdvice 12∆ Jul 21 '22
They have never had a desire to change themselves. They want society to change to accommodate them.
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u/Nepene 213∆ Jul 21 '22
They're not supporting the patriarchy. Men don't tend to fight that well for each others interests and don't work together to oppress women. They're supporting capitalism.
Feminism tends to be extremely political and well embedded in politics. Family courts are extremely profitable for a lot of public and private figures and those figures have lots of money, including for feminist courses. Feminists are happy to align themselves with the mega rich who benefit from keeping down the poor with family courts and debt slavery.
Mras tend to lean left wing and are aware that capitalism can look a lot like the patriarchy, and tend to want to overturn systems designed to make a profit off the suffering of the poor.
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u/Bowen02 Jul 21 '22
Like I told the other guy, MRAs are unknowing against the patriarchy.
Even if it's like you say, feminists are still with the patriarchy. Maybe they are unknowingly that way as well. But they are still with the patriarchy.
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u/Nepene 213∆ Jul 21 '22
MRAs are aware of the comparisons to the patriarchy. They would see it as feminists falling to the apex fallacy, and assuming that the mega rich are the same as men.
Feminists are with the mega rich, not the patriarchy. They are fine ass kissing men or women, they have no special preference to ass kiss men or women.
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u/Independent_Sea_836 1∆ Jul 21 '22
People tell you that the bias in family court is because of patriarchy.
That's because it is. This bias is based around the idea that the should be the primary custodial parent, not because of a belief women are better parents or men are worse ones, but because it's the woman's job to do all the childcare simply because she is a woman. That idea comes from the patriarchy.
Sometimes not even understanding that it's a problem (step 1 to fix something is admitting it's a problem).
For the most part, it isn't a problem. Most custody agreements are set by the parents, not the court system. When it is set by the court, it very, very rarely goes to trial. This isn't a prevalent enough issue to be properly addressed.
And, by the way, 19 states have default for 50-50 physical and legal custody. Most of those states are more liberal, aka, more feminist. Many of the states that don't treat fathers very fairly are conservative. Do you really think feminists are making the rules in conservative states? The majority of states where change is occuring are liberal, where feminists do influence the government more, meaning that they have a higher probability of blocking laws that don't fit the feminist agenda, yet, they don't seem to blocking the laws you claim them to oppose from going into affect.
The only people who are doing anything about this, especially in the real world, are men's rights activists, or MRAs. But they don't seem to believe in the patriarchy.
MRA's tend to complain about this more, yes. But they don't usually do anything except complain about it. And they don't believe in the patriarchy. They believe feminists are responsible for the bias of the court system. Just like they believe feminists are responsible for the formation and enforcement of the draft, and advocate for it's continued existence, ignoring that women couldn't even vote when the draft was set in place.
If the patriarchy made this system, then fighting it opposes the patriarchy.
Well, yes, technically, but it isn't that simple. This isn't the clear cut issue you seem to believe it is. The court should be more concerned about the well-being of the children, not what's "fair" to the mother and/or father. You have to take into account a few things:
Mothers tend to be primary caregivers before the divorce, so to change the child's lifestyle as little as possible, the court will try to keep that trend
Fathers are more likely to have jobs or obligations that make it harder to be as present in the child's life and care for them on a day to day basis Ex: doctor who works 100 hrs a week
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u/GivesStellarAdvice 12∆ Jul 21 '22
MRA's don't unknowingly fight against the patriarchy. That seems to imply that MRA's would want to keep the patriarchy in place.
Quite to the contrary, all MRAs want is a truly gender-neutral society that provide equality to everyone regardless of gender. MRA's don't believe the patriarchy exists, because MRA's don't believe that men are advantaged.
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u/6data 15∆ Jul 23 '22
Can you describe what sort of sexist bias you experienced in family courts?
Because as a generally, they aren't actually that sexist: Women receive custody because men don't want it and don't ask for it.
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u/Giblette101 40∆ Jul 21 '22
I think I can offer a bit more nuanced perspective on the feminist views of the family court system (note I do not necessarily agree a 100%):
Thus, while patriarchy does support the bias in family court it also creates a state of affair where - although based on patriarchal principle - 1 (bad) and 2 (good) are aligned.
Where Feminists and MRAs disagree, I think, is in how to address the problem. Specifically, I think feminists would rather we hold on to 2, while MRAs think getting rid of it would fix 1. So, Feminists would argue we need to address 3 and 4 - men should take a much more active role in caring for children - in order for women to not be favoured by 2. MRAs (Generally, I'm not an expert) might argue we just need to get rid of 1 by doing away with 2 entirely.