posted on July 17, 2001 07:46:47 PMfemale famliy relation
Fuzz, I find your gender specific reference offensive. I realize that you mean no harm, but know that you create a slippery slope when you continue to polarize the species. It is the logical conclusion of such sexual slurs i.e. the eventual oppression of men, that I wish to avoid.
posted on July 17, 2001 07:56:14 PM
OH NO ..... I have offended all the uncles in the world AND the animal kingdom .....
I'm about as useless as tits on a boar.
Never mind - I'd probably get in trouble for that one .....
[ edited by bobbi355 on Jul 17, 2001 08:00 PM ]
posted on July 17, 2001 08:23:13 PMwhew It's hotter than blue blazes here tonight .... I'm about as nervous as a whore in chuch to get my electric bill cause I keep my bedroom colder than the testicles on a brass monkey. But then, I can sleep like a baby if it's nice 'n cold. And when it's not so hot, I don't have so many nightmares about the boogieman either!
posted on July 17, 2001 10:24:44 PMborillar: I guess I would have more sympathy for & understanding of your POV on this if you had jumped in with the same vigor & anger during the thread about the woman who killed her children. Dads who kill their children were not mentioned in that thread. So, by your standards, the assumption to be made from the thread (& newspaper articles) is that only mothers kill their children, but never dads...and, BTW, that only women ever get depressed. Don't think so.
posted on July 17, 2001 10:37:28 PM
I'm not looking for sympathy, thank you. Only your understanding -- which is a lot more than was ever afforded to me in the thread where i got >>SLAMMED<< for using the term 'lezbo' without knowing that it was derogatory. I still have no idea why the term 'lezbo' is derogatory, but I won't use it again in conjunction with any other context than I have been using in this thread. I guess it's double-standards all the way!
But, to understand this, I can't provide anyone with reading material, URLs, or anything to verify what I'm about to tell you. Simply appleaing to posters logic and reasoning isn't working, so I'll have to explain it a bit more.
For a long time in Oregon, as I first stated, there has been a double-standard in the courts when it comes to domestic affairs. True, much has changed since the 1980's and 1990's, but I want to give you an idea of what it has been like.
First, if a amn commited a crime - any crime, they got the usual treatment. However, if a woman was even arrest for the same crime, let alone convicted of it, a gentle slap on the wrist was generally all that they got.
This also applied to deadbeat parents. Men routinely were incarcerated to encourage them to "pay up" and the courts would lean on them afterwards to ensure that they went through with it. However, when a woman was a deadbeat here in Oregon, they got no punishment at all. Period. I have one friend who paid a lawyer for taking his ex-wife to court ten frick'n times to get the courts to lean on her to pay up. Only on the tenth occasion did she get forced to spend a weekend in jail. Compare that with the usual 90-day incarcerations for men in Oregon for the same offence.
If you can't understand how drumming in the term deadbeat dad makes a difference in public perception and how the courts react to the public's perceptions, then we may as well stop posting in this thread. I certainly won't keep explaining it until only a complete idiot couldn't understand it.
posted on July 18, 2001 01:10:19 AM
After thinking about it awhile part of the problem is that the standard of care is different.
It is usually the mother who retains custody of the child and raises it. We expect that but we also grant a custodial parent a great deal of leeway in how they take care of the child. We don't look ever their shoulder unless there is such a big problem it gets reported as child abuse.
On the other hand the non-custodial parent is held to a performance standard of so many dollars per month they contribute to the welfare of the child without any real feedback to demonstrate to them that it actually goes to the welfare of that child.
The custodial parent is in a position of trust and the noncustodial automatically in a not trusted position. No wonder there is resentment. Usually if the mother is noncustodial it is because she is such a mess that there is no real possibility of her contributing finacially. So it does break down by gender lines that the male has to give an strict accounting and can't say well I have a car repair that came up so I will put off
spending money for school clothes a couple weeks, but the mother gets that freedom to make those sort of decisions. It may be a small freedom but the difference is one of perception. It is always harder to be in a ridgid sort of arrangement than one of trust.
Especially if his experience with this person from whom he is probably divoriced makes him see the court's trust as misplaced.
[ edited by bobbi355 on Jul 17, 2001 08:00 PM ]