Subject: Re: Excellent Background of Men's Movement From: Rex Ballard Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 21:59:14 -0500 (EST)
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Subject: Re: Excellent Background of Men's Movement From: Rex Ballard Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 21:59:14 -0500 (EST)
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	Rex Ballard - Director of Electronic Distribution
	http://cnj.digex.net/~rballard


On Tue, 13 Feb 1996, fathers wrote:

> On Mon, 12 Feb 1996 G.Little@az05.bull.com wrote:

> > I agree with the general principle stated here "that neither rights nor
> > responsibilities should be gendered."  I'm thinking particularly in the
> > sense of government sex discrimination at law.  So in the past we've had
> > laws prohibiting women from voting, owning property, working if married
> > (in some states), and so forth.

> > Still, I have serious objections to adding that "Feminism was about women
> > breaking out of gendered roles; so is men's liberation."

Practically speaking, true equality cannot be achieved without liberating 
men.  If mom wants to work and have a career, who is going to take care 
of the Kids?  The "burn-out of SuperMoms" in the 1980s was a symptom of a 
culture that expected women to choose "everything" while expecting men to 
be "money machines".  Warren Farrel first warned of this inconcruency in 
1974.

> > For the first part, feminism was *partly* about women breaking out of
> > gendered roles: winning the same right to vote that men had, doing
> > traditionally male tasks, and so forth.  But today feminism is far too
> > much about *protecting* women's traditional roles with special privileges:
> > allowing them to be mothers without either a job or a husband;

Our culture actually frowns on men who become "house-boys".  They are 
considered "dead-beats".  If a woman is otherwise self-supporting, 
earning her own income, and wants a "house-boy" both are honorable.
My objection is when a mother expects her "money machine" ex-husband to 
pay for her "house-boy".  House-boys are becoming much more common among 
women who are receiving child-support and earning supplementary income 
not originally figured into the support equation.

> > giving
> > women special protection against so-called "sexual harassment" as if they
> > were delicate flowers that are easily crushed; and many other examples.

Women are supposed to be able to dress any way they wish.  If they come 
to work in a short skirt, high heels, and see-through blouse, their 
employers can't even speak about it.  If a man wears a pink shirt to work 
in the corporate world - he can harrassed as a "faggot" (but not 
immediately fired).  Conversely, if I told a female subordinate that she 
MUST come to work in short skirt and heels, I'd be sued and fired.  My 
male subordinates must all wear loose pants (no spandex allowed :-), 
white dress shirts, ties, coats, and flat dress shoes. 

I remember someone being very offended because of a misunderstanding over
"dress-down day".  The memo said "no tee-shirts, blue-jeans, or tennis
shoes".  Over the next three months, the women came in in all three.  One was
very offended when a male co-worker pointed out to a woman who was wearing
blue-jeans, that she had not read the memo carefully.  This same person 
was reprimanded a week earlier for wearing black "sneakers".

> > Women are granted all these privileges chiefly at men's expense.  It's
> > mostly men's work that earns the money to pay for illegitimate children,
> > to pay so-called "child support" to a wife who no longer acts as a wife,
> > or to pay "damages" to women who sue employers.  Modern feminism not only
> > reinforces women's gendered roles; it forces men even further into one of
> > their gendered roles as provider -- though now without reciprocal
> > compensation from women, but with a mouthful of abuse instead.

Even beyond that, men have been virtually casterated.  It is unsafe to 
let a woman know you find her sexually attractive (sexual harassment), to 
follow her for more than 2 blocks (your stalking), or to express your 
sexual preferences publicly (lewd).  Each can result in lawsuits in most 
situations.  This puts women completely in control of determining the 
appropriateness of sexual discussions.  Her primary criteria for opening 
that venue? - How much does he make?, What kind of car does he drive?, 
and Where does he live?  What matters is not how much he makes, but how 
much he is willing to spend on her.

> > The point is that a community of men and women, left to negotiate and
> > contract freely among themselves, both individually and collectively, will
> > form themselves spontaneously into a pattern of gendered roles that suit
> > their different natures, capabilities, and needs.  This is as it should
> > be.  It fits what humans need, and it works.  Not everybody will get
> > everything they want out of it, but we have no right to expect everything
> > we want out of life.  Gender feminists think they do, though.

Actually, because men are so repressed, it is nearly impossible to 
determine what their role is.  Men are expected to conform to the 
"uniform of the day" which may be a military uniform or black t-shirt and 
blue-jeans, depending on the group of men.  Women will get upset if they 
see another woman wearing a similar looking dress.

> > Of course a number of people don't fit the gendered pattern at all, and
> > many more don't quite fit it.  The problem in history has been that we
> > always operated in an economy of scarcity, in which labor of all kinds was
> > in high demand in order to secure the most basic necessities of life.
> > This economy required more stringent rules to make it work.  It worked
> > better overall if people were held more firmly in their gendered roles,
> > even if this exaggerated and rigidified those roles.

Actually, women were once producers.  They spun the thread, wove the 
fabric, and sewed the clothing.  The men caught fish or hunted.  The 
women harvested nuts and berries.  These sweets were a gift of love 
from a women to a man.  Today, textiles are spun and woven by machine.  
The food is purchased at a grocery store, and both men and women compete 
for distribution rights.

> > Taking military service as an example, someone had to do this job.  If it
> > were left to chance and choice, not enough people would volunteer.  If
> > equal numbers of men and women were drafted, the army wouldn't fight as
> > effectively as if only men were drafted.  And if men were drafted and
> > women allowed to volunteer, something else back home might be left undone.
> > The best course was to draft men and exclude women, although this meant
> > enforcing gender roles by law.  It also meant women had the privilege of
> > being protected by men who were not.

Actually, it's even simpler than that.  During a war, people get killed, 
especially other warriors.  One man can enseminate several women.  In the 
VietNam War, about 10% of the American Male population of that generation 
was killed.  The remaining men, through serial monogomy and illegitimacy, 
were able to repopulate and replenish the supply of soldiers.  
Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your point of view), we have 
an abundance of men who are trained to fight and kill, and now war to 
send them to.

In the ancient wars, the most important part of the conquest was the 
redistribution of women.  If the women were left in the country where the 
war was faught, they could breed with their own tribe and breed a new 
generation of warriors.  By taking the women and either killing them or 
assimilating them into the tribe of the victorious, the women could only 
breed children for the victorious.

Even today, there is a shortage of men by the time they are 30, due 
largely to homicide, suicide, and drug related deaths.  The remaining 30 
year old men are either violent and irresponsible, or compassionate and 
responsible.

Isn't it ironic that responsible men are those most easily discarded, due 
to child support laws that milk them of all their earning potential, 
while irresponsible men are most likely to become "household fixtures" 
because they are dependent of the Mother's child-support.

> > Today, thanks to slowly growing business productivity and resulting
> > affluence, we're not short of labor as we were.  We have the luxury of
> > allowing more people to choose their roles in life, without regard to
> > gender, rather than ramming a number of square pegs into round holes.

Today, the abundance of labor is directed toward marketing and 
management.  Women often excel in the marketing arena.  Many single 
mothers set up their own businesses "Off the Books".

> > It's reasonable to lift all legal prohibitions that keep people in
> > gendered roles, when many of them would rather step out.  Why shouldn't
> > a man be a househusband? 

It might be legal for him to do so, but if his wife got bored with him, 
there would not be the "safety net" to catch him.  He might end up in the 
Red Cross Shelter.  This prospect makes most men reluctant to become 
totally dependent on their wives for income.

> > Why shouldn't a group of women start a company
> > of their own, as men have done all along?  But we haven't had any laws
> > against such things for decades.  And if a woman chooses to have a baby,
> > work to pay for it, and raise it on her own, even though I'd rather she
> > didn't, I would say that's her right.  But then it always has been.
> > 
> > Today's problem is the opposite.  Labor, rather than being in short
> > supply, is plentiful relative to most of our needs.  Instead, society
> > overall has a shortage of roles.  Consequently we're thrust into role
> > competition with one another, including men against women.  Betty
> > Friedan's *Feminine Mystique* was first and foremost a complaint that
> > women at the time didn't have enough to do.

The irony is that we are coming back to an economic equivalent of the 
"extended family" that had existed up until the turn of the century.  The 
difference is that women get paid cash for running the "bizarres", 
counseling, and matchmaking.  They now have to pay cash for day-care.
Unfortunately there ARE laws that prevent men from taking certain roles 
within the day-care.

> > That's why "roles" are such a burning issue.  It wouldn't work out so
> > badly if government left people alone to sort it out among themselves.
> > Instead, government has intervened to give women more special privileges
> > over men: reverse discrimination in jobs; the privilege of using marriage
> > as a way to extort money from men, to finance playing the role of mother;
> > the privilege of guaranteed financing for motherhood even when a woman is
> > poor and all the men she might marry are poor; and so on.

This is the core of the issue.  The assumption when the support order is 
first issued, is that the circumstances will never change.  The second 
assumption is that if they do change, that the benefit should not be used 
to reduce child support (most guidelines permit a drop of 1%/10,000 
earned by the mother).  The assumption is:
	She will never be able to make more money.
	She will never marry someon who makes money.
	She will never inherit money.
	She will never have a successful business.

A quick short-cut to success, for a woman is to marry a man who makes a 
good income (doctor, dentist, or engineer), and stay with him until just 
before the youngest starts school.  This means that mom needs to be 
there all the time, that she will need maximum day-care, and that she 
will receive maximimum award for the longest period of time.

Step two is to start a business using the day-care that won't be needed 
once the kids start school (which hubby is still oblgated to pay anyway) 
as a capital source.  When the business succeeds (as is likely in a 
business that pays no rent, has no investors, and no debt), she owns it 
free and clear.  She doesn't even have to pay her husband dividends.

If she actually makes $1,000,000/year, the child-support from daddy's 
$35,000/year income might actually go down to $7,000/year (20% is the 
"floor" on many states).

> > Those men in turn are poor because their labor is no longer worth as much.
> > Demand for it has been reduced by business productivity, mechanization,
> > and automation.  But guaranteeing their women a role through welfare robs
> > these men of any socially approved role in life.  It's not surprising they
> > turn to crime and gangs to create male roles for themselves.

From the woman's point of view - a drug dealer has $1,000/day to spend ON 
HER.  A divorced man making $6000/month has about $300/month to spend ON 
HER.  That makes the drug dealer about 900 times more attractive, largely 
due to her "programming" that doesn't include consideration of value 
systems.

> > So if we think "men's liberation is about men breaking out of gendered
> > roles," it's only addressing a small part of men's problem.  By far the
> > greater part is millions of men being forced out of their natural roles,
> > as husbands, as fathers, and as providers who are personally appreciated
> > for it -- by greedy gender feminists and government bureaucrats who profit
> > from all this.

Suprisingly enough, the big winners in this crunch are not the women.  
The big winners are the government (who gets a cut of this "special 
tax"), and subsequent boyfriends or husbands.

> > I also see a problem inherent in this statement:
> > 
> >      The nascent men's liberation movement began as a divorce reform
> >      movement in the 1950s, when the gendered balance contemplated by the
> >      commonlaw began to change drastically by expanding women's rights
> >      while not reducing men's responsibilities.
> > 
> > We can debate whether that expansion of women's rights (or were they
> > privileges?) led toward or away from gender equality.  The problem is that
> > if it gave women too many "rights" compared with men, then reducing men's
> > responsibilities on top of that might be the wrong fix.

The key here is that women were given the RIGHT to make choices that were 
not previously available to them.  Of course with each choice, there are 
consequences for which one must be responsible.  The equation was 
disrupted when women were given the right to make choices and hold other 
MEN responsible for the consequences of those choices.  Male bosses were 
held responsible for women who came to work dressed for an evening of 
love and romance.  Male coworkers were held responsible for accepting 
requests they might not have accepted from a man or a less attractive 
woman, and yet punished if the woman felt the man expected something in 
return.  Women who decided to have kids and put them in day-care so that 
they could work minimum-wage jobs expected men to be responsible for the 
day-care and supplementing the minimum wage job.  Women who decided to 
major in "medieval dance history", leaving them with now marketable 
skills expected their husbands to take responsibility for the 
consequences of their choice of majors.

When a woman NEEDS child-support, it either because she made a series of 
choices for which she is not being held responsible, or it is because her 
HUSBAND made choices for her - for which he will be held responsible.  If
he beats her for wanting to go to school, then HE is responsible for 
providing for her until she can finish school.

This can NEVER be assumed either way.  I haven't heard aonyone on this
news-group tell of the man who married her, got her pregnant, and then
started drinking and drugging every night, beating her up when she even
talked about going to school, and raped her before he passed out.  We 
need to hold these men responsible for their choices.


> >  The combined
> > effect would be to reduce the responsibilities men and women have in
> > total.  What happens then?  When individual responsibility is no longer
> > required, government stomps in and takes over people's rights at large.

The issue is that government overstepped its bounds.  There is an entire 
process by which one's responsibility can be determined.  In the 
constitution it is called "Due Process of Law".  According to this law, 
the accused (the man whose liberty and property are in jeopardy) may call 
witnesses on his own behalf, may cross-examine witnesses, may be informed 
of the exact nature of the complaints against him, and may not be 
compelled to testify against himself.  He has the right to an attourney, 
one paid for by the state if he cannot afford one.

> > That's a criticism I have of one sector of the "men's movement."  It seems
> > to be moving in the same direction as gender feminism: to complain about
> > men's disadvantages in life, then ask that government fix them; in return,
> > obviously, for yet another dose of government interference in our lives
> > and loss of rights.  Instead, we should demand that government get out and
> > leave the balance of gender roles to restore itself naturally.

I suppose we could just wait until one spouse KILLS the other.  Then we 
wouldn't have that little problem of custody battles, would we?  
Seriously.  Short of forcing couples to stay married "no matter what" 
would only create the basis for slavery that could go either way.  The 
woman could become the man's slave, or the man could become the woman's 
slave.  In a codependent marriage, one partner dominates and the other 
becomes dependent for money, sex, love, or security.

If a husband witholds money or beats his wife (taking her security), the 
court might appropriately prosecute him for embezzlement or assault.  On 
the other hand, if the woman manipulates a man through sex, the state is 
very reluctant to prosecute her for prostitution.  If she forces him to 
give her all is money or she'll reveal his sexual secrets, the state is 
reluctant to prosecute for blackmail and extortion.  If she promises to 
love him for live and later tells her friends that she never loved him, 
the state is unlikely to prosecute for fraud.

We then create the mockery of justice called the "Uniform Dissolution of 
Marriage" with "No-Fault Divorce".  The judge then dares to interfere 
with a settlement negotiated over a year under the guidence of a marriage 
councellor and a lawyer chartered to represent the common interests.  
Then a federal Marshall or Sherriff's deputy arrests that man for 
"contempt of court".  Since when did the proceedings of family court even 
meet the minimal requirements of a "small claims court"?  

> > Government denied our First Amendment right to freedom of association when
> > it demanded that private businesses owned and run by men give jobs to
> > women -- and preferentially at that.  I'd even go so far as to say it
> > infringed on the principle of collective bargaining (long treasured by
> > labor unions) when it enacted "equal pay" laws.  The point is that while
> > we have no shortage of labor overall (though much of it is wasted in
> > bureaucracy; hence our Federal debt), certain jobs in society are now
> > badly understaffed.  These are responsible marriage partners (on both
> > sides) and responsible parents.  Government policy drives both fathers and
> > mothers away from each other, and away from their children.

The minute the Government started trying to "legislate morality", it 
started undermining the entire structure of relationships.  With the MPAA 
ratings, children were encouraged to associate love and romance with 
disfunctional and asexual relationships.  As teenagers, they were taught 
to associate sex as something funny, a joke.  As 17 year-olds (actually 
much younger but...) they learned to associate sex with violence and 
horror.  As adults, if they watched XXX rated movies, they finally saw 
fully expressed sexuality, but with no context, no love, no romance, no 
seduction, no relationship, just a parade of people fornicating on a 32 
foot screen or a 16 inch video monitor.

We spend 1 year teaching people to drive.  We spend 2 years teaching them 
how to use a computer, we spend 3 years teaching them their 
constitutional rights if they are charged with a felony.  We spend 3 
weeks on a unit of "sex education" that teaches them that "they can be 
celebate" (but don't describe how to create structures that support that 
choice), then they teach them how to put a condom on a banana.  They do 
include a few films or slides on reproduction, using cartoons that look 
more like the training center for "loony tunes".

We use ignorance, guilt, shame, and terror to keep them from getting 
married while they're in the peak of their reproductive state (the period 
when marital bonding is designed, by God, to occur).  Then we watch them 
masturbate and fornicate until they are "ready for marriage", usually 
after they finish college and have started to establish a stable work 
history, but before they actually start earning real money.

Finally, after waiting 12-20 years to get married, these sexually 
frustrated adults, filled with fantasies of their imaginary partners that 
they have been perfecting since they were 4 or 5, about 20-30 years, are
confronted with the shock of being committed, for life, to a real-live 
flesh-and-blood, farting, snoring, smelling, sneezing - human being.  
This isn't what they bargained for, what kind of rip-off is this, get me 
outta here.  Worse yet, she thinks my sexual fantasies are sick, 
perverted, and disgusting (I've had 20 years to "perfect" them with no 
feedback from another human being, what do you expect.  She expects me 
to take her on a round-the-world trip every weekend.   Welcome to the 
real world - - - of marital hell.

At this point, we begin a cycle of manipulation, each partner trying to 
bring the other closer to their image of perfection.  Each partner 
resisting each time their partner can't "get it right".  Then one of them 
decides that a baby will fix everything.  Suddenly, mom wants to throw up 
all the time, then she has these back-aches and hemeroids, and she starts 
feeling really fat and ugly.  Daddy now finds himself living with 
"Syball", and can't figure out which of the 200 personalities is lying in 
the bed next to him.  No matter what he does, it's wrong.

Finally the baby arrives.  Our durable nuclear family, now hundreds of 
miles from any type of support network due to career moves, suddenly 
finds us with a mother who tries to clean when the baby takes her mid-day 
naps, and tries to fix dinner and stay up for her husband.  She's getting 
an average of about 3 hours/day of sleep.  Dad isn't doing much better.  
He gets a little more, but he wakes up everytime the baby starts crying.

Pretty soon, the two sleep-deprived parents go from mutual tolerance to 
mutual hatred.  Worse yet, the husband is jealous because he has lost his 
lover and playmate, and she's upset because he doesn't seem to be taking
his fair share of the load.  Why can't HE nurse the baby so SHE can sleep 
through the night once in a while?  Every time that baby gets hungry, 
mom's breasts are in pain until the kid locks on.

Eventually, after about 3 years, things almost get back to normal.  The 
couple might even have a few minutes of time together.  By now, she is 
asexual and he is a sex-crazed maniac.  Just about that point, she 
decides that another baby will be good for the marriage.  The guy is 
willing to do almost anything for some good wholesome sex.  A few weeks 
later, the strip comes up "blue", and we're off for another 3 years of 
"Syball" meets GodZilla.

Even the relationhsip with the kids is not what was expected.  Mom, who 
was expecting this "dolly" full of unconditional love is confronted with 
this screaming, screeching baby who gives her no rest for 20 hours/day.  
Dad who was expecting a little "monster that fills his diaper and barfs 
all over him" actually finds the 4 or 5 hours he spends with the children 
quite "delightful".  He loves to play with them and talk to them.  He 
reads them books, and just loves it all.

Sometime after that second child, mom decides that she actually has three 
kids instead of 2 and that 2 is more than enough.  She is usually a 
zombie, hasn't had sleep for about 72 hours and everyone in the family as 
the flu, but in this moment of rational thought, she decides that killing 
him would be too humane, that she wants to twist his balls for 20 years.

This is the point where she begins torturing him into submission.  She'll 
come on so hard he wants to take her on the living room floor, and then 
she'll tell him everything he has done wrong for the last month and say 
that's why he won't be getting any for at LEAST a MONTH.  Daddy has 
blue-balls so big he needs a wheel-barrow to carry them!

By now, it's anybody's bet how it will play out.  The bottom line is that 
he will find some kind of substitute for love and sex.  He may work until 
3:00 AM, he may drink himself into oblivion, or he may just start 
checking out the local "ladies of the night".  Pretty soon, he can see 
his wife naked on the bed and he hands her the flannel granny-gown.

Mom, sensing she is losing her leverage in the relationship, starts to 
make certain adjustments.  She quits her job so she can be with the kids, 
she gets a part-time job at minimum wage "to keep from going nuts".  And 
she cuts him off sexually.

After about a year, dad decides something must be done, and agrees to 
another round of marriage couseling.  The marriage councelor, misguided 
soul that he is, has the couple sit face to face and tell each other how 
much they hate each other.  He encourages them to really vent their 
anger, to "vomit all over each other".  This is supposed to strengthen 
the relationship.  He now sees her as the screaming banshee that crushes 
his nuts for the delight of seeing him suffer.  She now sees him as this 
2 year-old ogre that bellows when he has his temper tantrums, and let's 
hope he never hurts the kids.

Finally, just after the 1040 is mailed in, and before the little one 
turns 5 and starts school, mom pops the big demand.  She wants a divorce.
She has already cleaned out the savings accounts, the checking accounts, 
the IRAs and the 401Ks.  The house is in her name, the cars are titled to 
her, and the sherrif is waiting at the front door with a summons and a 
restraining order.  Dad's suitcase is pulled from the living-room.  He 
drives the car he thinks is his, to a motel, or to a divorced friend's 
house, to "crash".

For the next few months, he is in shock.  He meets with is wife and the 
lawyer, accompanied by his down-on-his-luck lawyer with a drinking 
problem.  The laws are outlined and the numbers are figured.  He can 
barely think.  He sees the woman he once loved, looking more beautiful 
than she ever did in the marriage, and wonders why that woman never came 
out for him.  He soon discovers that mom has a new boyfriend, someone she 
met while they were still in therapy.  He imagines the day, when this is 
all over, that he will be able to look for someone too.

The settlement is signed.  The judge orders the decree.  Then the shock 
begins.  He receives his next check.  It's much smaller than it used to 
be (at the Single rate).  If the child support wasn't taken out of the 
paycheck, the check was written or the transfer was made - by his bank.
If he's a real masochist, he will write the check by hand, put it in an 
envelope, address it to his wife, seal it, and leave it in the company 
mail.  Worse, he'll mail it to the court.

The bills still have to be paid, and he gets to pay them all, AFTER he has
paid the child support.  He is suddenly confronted with the grim reality that
the check that used to just make ends meet, isn't enough.  He has to juggle
payments.  He still has his own rent to pay.  He's either sharing a place
with a friend, or renting a room in a "No-tell Motel" for $70/week.  The
sound of hookers, faking orgasms, reminds him of what he has been missing, of
what he wonders if he will ever have.  Will he ever be able to love again?

He goes out, to socialize.  Women come up to him and act real friendly, 
and then tell him how they need a few hundred dollars to pay the rent 
because her room-mate didn't pay his share of the rent.  They need $400 
for car repairs, or they need $1000 for legal fees, to get their 
boyfriend out of jail.  Even in church, all you meet is "respectable 
hookers".

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The government, who mandated all of this ignorance in the first place,  
Who made no effort to support the marriage during it's trauma years, who 
didn't provide day-care or even tax relief for the period that the couple 
was married.  The government, that didn't provide training on how to be 
married, how to be parents, how to cope with stress of child-rearing, or 
how to heal a damaged marriage, now claims that it has the right to put a 
man in jail because he hasn't given enough.  They feel that they owe 
nothing toward a situation they helped create.

Our "great morality" has resulted in the highest divorce rate in the 
history of the country.  In some minorities, as much as 75% of the 
children will not live with the same two parents they were born with.
A little training, a realistic management of the expectations, and a 
support structure for handling sex-related issues after the marriage.
These would make a difference.

> > Labor shortages like this disappear when free market forces are allowed to
> > operate naturally.  There was a good societal reason all along for what
> > many people called "unfair."  We can see how men, whose labor produces
> > most of the wealth, would find it of less intrinsic value to employ women
> > for paid work outside the home, when what they need more is to employ a
> > paid wife and mother inside the home.  This also buys them children and
> > roles as fathers, and provides the children with both fathering and
> > mothering.  Why should anyone be obliged by law to pay more for what they
> > need less of, at the same time reducing the supply of what they need more?

Child rearing has always been one of those peculiar situations where the 
cost (based on supply/demand) has never been able to attract producers.  
This is simply because the buyer has only limited resources to pay.  
Traditionally, these chores were given to the elderly.  Since the elderly 
now collect Social Security and don't need to take care of children, they 
don't.  Besides, the elderly used to be grandparents by the time they 
were 30 or 40.  Todays grandparents are in their 70s.

When one bakes a cake, it is advisable NOT to put the frosting on the 
cake until after it has been baked and cooled.  The government has set 
up, through a series of infrastructures, a society in which people wait 
until they are an age where they should be grandparents, before they 
become parents.

> > I don't mean for a moment to suggest that women shouldn't be working
> > outside the home, either full or part time, starting businesses of their
> > own just as men have, or whatever.  Women were doing this anyway, long
> > before we had our current crop of laws.  These are all negotiable,
> > individual choices.  What I do suggest is that a free market takes care of
> > everyone's needs best, and that this market has been bent out of shape by
> > feminist and government encroachment on men's natural rights.  We might be
> > better off if we simply abolished every law and regulation that contained
> > any reference to gender whatsoever.

Are you suggesting that we go back to the days when a mother would put 
her child on the doorstep of an orphanage?  Should we bring back the 
work-houses?  Is it realistic to assume that every father of every child 
would be ready, willing, and able to support any woman that claimed to 
have his child?

> >       Gordon S. Little
> >      (G.Little@bull.com)
> > 
> > ________________
> 

From rballard@cnj.digex.net Mon Feb 19 23:22:00 1996