Sunday, September 24, 2006

The Decline of Maiden Aunts and Others Forms of Social Controls

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,17909-2369094,00.html

Women

The Times September 23, 2006


Body& Soul
Is modern life ruining relationships?


It’s the question posed at a debate next month in which Body&Soul writers are taking part. Here’s a taste of what they’ll have to say…

JOHN NAISH

'In this feminised age, women are encouraged to expect too much'

My father was a tweedy bloke, brought up in an era when a chap should just have a job and a hobby and leave all the domestic stuff to his good woman. But Dad could be moved to tears by hearing something terrible on the news. And he loved to cook. So he was considered a bit of an odd fish.

These days, emoting and compoting are de rigueur for any eligible middle-class male.

Expectations of men in relationships have been growing hugely since the 1970s, with the advent of our feminised society. But expectations can be made to run too far.
In former times, a man could remain socially cack-handed but reasonably expect that a young woman would take him on. After all, until the 1970s young women had to find a man to marry in order be socially respectable, to have children born “on the right side of the blanket” and even to get a mortgage. Now that women don’t need a man to function in society, they are free to raise the bar on male behaviour. (Emphasis mine: AND of course, this is a bad thing to raise the bar on male behavior. God forbid men should have to obey the rules like women have always done everywhere and still have to do, for the most part, today.)

A lot of men are happy to meet the challenge. But many are just not wired that way. (Emphasis mine: Oh the poor dears. I guess that means we should change all the rules around for men and boys now, since they aren't wired to follow instructions or behave in an orderly manner. Why don't we just let them jump all over the classroom, for instance, while the teachers run around after them carrying aloft the lesson for the day printed on huge placards. Meanwhile the little girls will sit quietly in their seats being taught in the traditional manner which was children shutup, sit in their seats and listen to the teachers. But boys 'learn' differently I guess.)It’s surely no coincidence that we are witnessing an explosion in diagnoses of Asperger’s syndrome, a spectrum disorder that mostly affects males and runs from normal to mild autism.

Somewhere at the “normal” end, what we really get is “bloke being bloke-ish” syndrome: difficulty communicating or expressing emotions; obsession with arcane information such as football statistics or car engines. Modern society doesn’t like this and defines it as illness.

There have always been clashes of expectations between the genders. You only have to read Chaucer’s Wife Of Bath’s Tale to see how deeply it is ingrained. And high aspirations can indeed improve civilised behaviour. But this modern clash is spinning beyond reconciliation, thanks to our have-it-all society, and particularly the women’s media, which continually ups the ante for what gals should expect of blokes.

The latest perfect male should be a warrior in the workplace and six-pack god in the gym, as well as an angel in the kitchen, whore in the bedroom, deity of dadhood and metrosexual wonder in the wardrobe department. Faced with ever more expectations, how do men respond? Many gamely take up the gauntlet. But plenty of others just retreat into the sexist, lads’-mag world of Zoo and Nuts. Thus the number of male heterosexual paragons is shrinking, while the list of Sex And The City-inspired requirements grows ever longer. The result? Steadily accruing dissatisfaction on both sides.

John is the author of Put What Where? 2,000 years of Bizarre Sex Advice (HarperCollins, £9.99)

I think the above article says it all: “Women expect too much.” This is the modern excuse for men refusing to marry if women don’t accept the bad boy behavior that men have been allowed to get away with since time immemorial.

Of course, as the author noted, back in the days of yore women had to tolerate it. As if women didn’t tolerate it, we were just never allowed to participate fully in society: as in never getting a husband, and, thus never having any children or even our own homes to live within.

Historically, unmarried women just hovered around the edges of society living in other people’s homes, acting as unpaid maids or babysitters for them, grateful for a roof over their heads. They were the proverbial ‘maiden aunts’of the pre-WWII era that most people of a certain age are familiar with. These unmarried, middle-aged women were always around to help out with every crisis from a mother falling ill and needing her young children cared for to an adult invalid needing 24 hour care in their own home. The maiden aunt never had a life or home of her own. She just expected to be shuffled around from one relation’s residence to another helping out on an as-needed basis in exchange for a roof over her head and her meals. If she was lucky she got a small amount of pocket money here and there.

Many historic novels feature a maiden aunt floating around in the background and I, myself, grew up acquainted with one, my grandmother’s unmarried younger sister. Sometimes these inconvenient unmarried women were sent to live in convents and spent most of their lives praying, attending mass, mediating, etc., but at least they were provided for, not being starved somewhere on the outskirts of the cities or even forced into prostitution.

It was a very convenient system for men then and, of course, the more selfish amongst them would like to return to it again. In some sense they have: by giving themselves undeserved rights to children of women, who they haven’t bothered marrying. But, as usual with selfish people the thought is always why take half when you can get the whole?

Men refusing to marry, if women try to set any sorts of standards whatsoever, is a large part of the reason for the proliferation of single motherhood today. AND this situation will continue and worsen as long as men continue being able to work the legal system by making laws that give themselves undeserved rights to the children of women they refuse to marry. As why should men who are nothing but recreational sperm donors get the same rights to children as a married father does? Short answer: they should NOT.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Realistically Some Diversity of Family Forms must be Accepted Today


Norval Glenn: In defense of marriage

Some legal scholars value freedom over family. That's bad news for children and the future of our society.

09:04 AM CDT on Wednesday, September 20, 2006


Most recent public discussion of the law and marriage has focused on whether there should be same-sex marriage, but the issue of how the law should treat marriage goes far beyond that narrowly focused debate. More fundamental is the question of whether the law should promote and support marriage (possibly including same-sex marriage) or whether it should favor "family diversity" – the view that no family form is superior to any other. To the family diversity advocates, what others consider family fragmentation – including divorce, out-of-wedlock childbearing and the consequent weak relationships of fathers with their children – is not a social problem but something to be celebrated. While the "celebration" of family diversity has largely disappeared among social scientists who study families – because research has failed to support it – it has increased among legal scholars.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/viewpoints/stories/DN-glenn_20edi.ART.State.Edition1.3e474a8.html


Maybe ‘celebration’ is the wrong word to use here, since acceptance would be a better one.

Perhaps this difference in dealing with the world by lawyers versus social scientists stems from the different roles each plays in our societies. Legal scholars are ultimately still lawyers and have to deal with the law and the reality of the everyday world we actually live in; whereas a social scientist who only studies families does not. A social scientist can afford to sit around pontificating about the perfect family until kingdom come. Meanwhile our societies wither on the vine from the lack of children.

If we wish to continue we have to accept the inevitable, which is that the western world has changed, for better or worse. Everyone does not get married for life anymore (if they even get married) our divorce rate hovers at about 50%-60% and continuing to denigrate the real world compromises that women eventually have to make in this new world if they wish to have any children at all is not going to change that.

If we continue to paint these perfect marriages as the goal every woman must obtain before she has any kids, we are going to continue having few kids. This is a question of the perfect versus the good here. Not a celebration of family diversity but a realization that we either accept some diverse family forms or cease to exist.

I think if we look at it as a variant of the Hippocratic Oath "First, do no harm" to "the least amount of harm" then some sort of compromises can be made. Remember not all deviations from the tradition family are the same. Obviously the more radical and invasive the procedures (or legal contortions) that have to be used in order to create families, outside of marriage, the more we should be wary of them.

For instance: surrogate motherhood done only for money should not be given any encouragement or protection. This is obviously a deviation too far off the chart here. But is that really the same as a single woman deciding to use an anonymous donor to create a family of her own? Or a single person adopting a child who needs a home?

Again, I think operating under the concept of doing the least amount of harm (as in medical/legal contortions required to create a family) could be a better way to look at this. Just because we don't okay every family form doesn't mean we can only sanction the traditional one. It's not all or nothing and shouldn't have to be.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

More Evidence that Gender-Neutralized Feminists are Deserving of No Support from Ordinary Women

This was a rather interesting study published: Racial and Gender Disparities in Prison Sentencing: The Effect of District-Level Judicial Demographics, Author: Max M. Schanzenbach.

Overall it found that having more women appointed as Judges had the odd effect of no benefit whatsoever to other women. Every other group (black or Hispanic) had some measurable benefit demonstrated, at least in sentences for lesser crimes, except women. We didn’t get it as a benefit for sentencing on either lesser or more serious crimes.

Ummmm…so can someone remind me again what overall benefit women get from supporting the group of elite feminists, who graduate law school, into Judgeships or even seats on the Supreme Court?

Read it and think:

http://law.bepress.com/alea/14th/art4/

Racial and Gender Disparities in Prison Sentencing: The Effect of District-Level Judicial Demographics
Max M. Schanzenbach.


Abstract

Studies of federal prison sentences consistently find unexplained racial and gender disparities in the length of sentence and in the probability of receiving jail time and departures from the Sentencing Guidelines. These disparities disfavor blacks, Hispanics and men. A problem with interpreting these studies is that the source of these disparities remains unidentified. The gravest concern is that sentencing disparities are the result of prejudice, but other explanations have not been ruled out. For example, wealth and quality of legal counsel are poorly controlled for and are undoubtedly correlated with race. This paper uses the political, racial, and gender composition of the district court bench to estimate the effect of judicial demographics on sentencing and on observed racial and gender disparities. The findings regarding gender in the case of serious offenses are quite striking: the greater the proportion of female judges in a district, the lower the gender disparity for that district. I interpret this as evidence of a paternalist bias among male judges that favor women. (I, on the other hand, interpret it as women, even at the elite levels, consistently remaining a bunch of Uncle Tom bootlickers frantically attempting to bend over backwards to please men. Even if it means having to stab their sisters in the back on a fairly consistent basis. But this is obviously a question of differing interpretation, of course). The racial composition of the bench has mixed effects that are open to different interpretations. The race and gender results suggest, however, that a Judge’s background affects his or her sentencing decisions. Finally, there is little evidence that the political composition of the district affects sentencing disparities.

****************************************************************************

Well I’m tickled pink that black and hispanics groups can look forward to more fairness in the legal system in the future. Since as the number of Judges, representing their interests, increase in direct proportion to their increasing political power, these groups will reap the obvious benefits. However, I’m more then a little concerned that the group of gender-neutralized feminists that women have representing our interest in the legal system reflects just the opposite trend.

As I’ve frequently said, although men keep screaming about bias against fathers in the family courts, the reality is just the opposite. Anyone looking at the statistics over the last decade or so can clearly see that men are favored in the family courts (which are now infested with gender neutralized feminists and their supporters at every level from Evaluators to Judges). These gender-neutralized feminists have caused millions of fine, fit, loving mothers to lose custody of their children. Objectively looking at the census statistics we can see that the overall rate of fathers obtaining custody of children has steadily increased as more and more of these gender-neutralized feminists continue pouring into the system.

The study above, although focused on federal court system, nevertheless highlights exactly what I’ve been talking about…

AND if other women continue ignoring this situation, it will only worsen as these gender-neutralized monsters will never be satisfied until the numbers of mothers losing their children has reached the 50 percentile or even HIGHER. Frankly I don’t think there is any number of mothers losing their children that will sate them…

Since most women will become mothers, but far fewer women become lawyers, I think we need to take action against this group of gender neutralized social engineers BEFORE they do any more damage to us.

Sunday, September 10, 2006

More Attempts to Distort and/or Steal the Statistics of African-Americans

You know it’s interesting the tendency lately from feminists as well as mens rights advocates to compare themselves to black people…these sad, sick, silly and insane attempts to ‘steal’ the statistics of these poor people is nothing but an attempt to get more attention for feminist’s or MRA’s own pet causes (mostly themselves).

It reminds me of a few months ago when MRAs were running all over the internet with the phoney crisis of boys doing poorly in school. It turns out that the real crisis was one for black and hispanic boys ONLY and MRAs were trying to manipulate the statistics and make them applicable to all boys. It appeared to be another of their ongoing attempts to paint themselves as victims of discrimination and to get public policies changes made in schools based upon misleading the public.

Sigh…

Yet they continue trying to claim they are not the flip side of gender neutralized feminism with the use of phoney statistics.

Another similarity I’ve noticed with the two groups is the way they BOTH continue denigrating nursing mothers. There is this sick obsession with comparing a mother nursing her child with a man peeing somewhere in public.

Hello idiots, a mother nursing her child in public is not in any way, shape or form the same as a man deciding to expose himself and urinate in the bushes. He NEEDS to use the mens’ bathroom, yet a nursing mother should NOT be forced into the restroom to feed her kid.

Following the link below to see what I’m talking about.

Sigh…


http://www.reclusiveleftist.com/?p=370

Reclusive Leftist
feminism, politics, and random pedantry with your host, Dr. Violet Socks

September 2nd, 2006

The difference between sexism and racism

One is acceptable; the other isn’t.

Imagine if the host of a popular TV show on dog training had made the following remarks:

“Black people are the only species that is wired different from the rest. They always apply affection before discipline. White people apply discipline then affection, so we’re more psychological than emotional. All animals follow dominant leaders; they don’t follow lovable leaders.”

He would probably be fired, don’t you think? But professional dog-trainer/fucktard Cesar Millan made precisely these remarks about women — substitute “woman” for “black people” in the paragraph above, re-conjugate the verbs as necessary, and voilá: the Cesar Millan Theory of Gender. Somehow I don’t think he’s going to lose his job. He’s just a crazy colorful Latino, right?

And before any of you rush to inform me that the random remarks of some dog handler don’t amount to a hill of beans in this godforsaken world, dig it: I know. Well aware. I’m not going to start a petition to have Cesar Millan censored, fired, or placed in a choke collar and firmly brought to heel. Actually, the damage he’s doing to dogs is of far more concern to me than his asinine views on gender. I just think little drive-by examples of sexism are interesting precisely because they illustrate so well what we take for granted. In this case, that it’s still basically okay to announce in public that women are an inferior “species” who are more emotional than men.

30. will says:

Violet:

The difficulty is one of self-identification and of identifying your self-interest.

But I want to go back to your starting point:

He identified women as being more inclined to start with affection.

You identified that as a weak trait, not him.

Are you suggesting that men and women are the same?

Are there any gender differences?

If so, is it acceptable to point them out?

Hasn’t this very blog identified actions that are inherently male?

September 4th, 2006 at 2:36 pm EST

31. Violet says:

You identified that as a weak trait, not him.

1. I’m basing my reading on the NYTimes article on Millan’s remarks. He apparently thinks women are weak, emotional, whatever.

The only sexual differences I think we can be absolutely sure of are the obvious biological ones: women give birth and suckle, men can pee standing up. Other than that, everything is potentially cultural. Nature versus nurture, and so far everything we’ve traditionally considered nature has turned out to be nurture. Even greater aggressiveness in males, which it’s tempting to think of as innate given its almost ubiquitous manifestation, may not be: controlled testing hasn’t supported a difference between males and females in this regard, and there are in fact some cultures where men are considered intrinsically more gentle than women. Whenever I refer to men’s general behavior, the assumption is always that we’re talking about socially conditioned norms, not intrinsic traits.

September 4th, 2006 at 2:46 pm EST

*************************************************

“Actually, the damage he’s doing to dogs is of far more concern to me than his asinine views on gender.”

BTW, Cesar Millan has probably SAVED more dogs from being put to sleep by modifying their behavior then any other human being alive. As people will give a dog away to a shelter (where they'll generally have three days for adoption before being killed) for barking too much, fighting with other dogs, biting people in their house, etc.,

"Even greater aggressiveness in males, which it’s tempting to think of as innate given its almost ubiquitous manifestation, may not be: controlled testing hasn’t supported a difference between males and females in this regard, and there are in fact some cultures where men are considered intrinsically more gentle than women."

If such a culture ever existed I've never heard of it...in the human OR the animal world. The male is the larger, stronger and more aggressive in every species, as well as our own. AND please nobody email me about some spider, fish or other off the edge of the bell-shaped curve creature they read about in National Geographic where the female is bigger then the male. As I don't care about these odd creatures. I'm talking about the vast middle of the curve where most living beings reside, not some freak example that gender neutralized feminists or MRAs tout everytime they are trying to make a misleading point.

Anyway, this is more of the gender neutralized bullcrap that has led to many women getting killed in Iraq, for instance. When by law, they were not supposed to be there in the first place.

Back in the 90s, Les Aspin barred all women from the front lines and ALL Special Forces units after research was done that demonstrated how even the best women with Special Forces training could not beat in combat the average man with no special training. The most women could do was hold their own for some limited period of time, while not suffering any life-threatening injury...these were women, as I said above, given Special Forces training. YET they still were no match for the average man in combat. They were not even able to beat the below-average man which is generally the men that the armed forces is trying to screen out...

Those who want to know more about this should read the online article "What Kind of Nation Sends Women into Combat" by syndicated columnist R. Cort Kirkwood who served on the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces. April 16, 2003. Or better yet find a link to the Presidential Commission's own report and then post a link to it here so I can read it...

Anyway gender-neutralized feminists are the reason many women are still in Iraq today. As Congress wanted to bring those women home but the Pentagon along with Kim Gandy of NOW convinced Congress to ignore their own law. The Pentagon was facing a shortage of men enlisting since the Iraq War had started; so even though they were the main proponents of the front line ban of women instituted by Les Aspin, they short-sightedly changed their minds due to this temporary enlistment shortage of men they were facing.

The blood of those women, who were not equipped to handle combat, is directly on the hands of the Pentagon and especially on the hands of feminists who forced those women to remain in Iraq to move forward on their gender-neutral agenda.

Thus as I've been saying for a while now, gender-neutralized feminists have forfeited the right to claim they speak for women and should have no more attention paid to their claims of advocacy then any other group.

All in all, the angry comments directed to Dr. Violet Socks by those enraged at her false analogy were totally justified. As not only was she attempting to minimize the real historic suffering of black people in this country by this trite comparison of hers, but feminists like her have contributed to the real-world suffering right now of this very same group. As sadly I believe many of the service women forced to remain in Iraq (due to the attempts at social engineering by gender-neutralized feminists) are African-Americans as well...

Thus she must accept responsibility for her error of judgment, apologize and work to get back into the good graces of the various individuals and groups of people she publicly tried to denigrate through her thoughtless posting.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Let's hope the European Union Doesn't Ignore the Impact of Gender Neutral Custody on Mother's Choices

As always missing the forest for the trees.

I don’t know if they do it deliberately or they are just really stupid but total focus on the economic while ignoring the social kind of negates the intent of the latest directive out of the European Union which “asked that all new European policies be evaluated for their effect on demography”. It will be a total and complete wash if they don't examine how these custody wars incited by men and gender neutralized feminists have negatively impacted motherhood.

Since if anyone wants to know what is really impacting women’s child-bearing decisions, all they have to do is look at the impact of gender neutral custody on our societies and the vast number of custody wars, abductions, fighting over visitation, child support, etc., which it has incited in every country across the western hemisphere today.

Even countries that imitate our legal system and other democratic institutions such as Japan are pulling this same crap now. I understand women are subject to these custody wars now over there as well. I mean I read with absolute disgust the Japanese Prime Minister’s story of his divorce, when he was visiting President Bush last month.

PS: a horror.

Of how he got custody of his two sons from his first wife and NEVER LET HER SEE THEM AGAIN…they were like 4 and 7 years old at the time…his ex-wife was pregnant with their 3rd child and he tried to get custody of that infant as well as soon as he was born, but the courts said no. So what did he do. He spitefully decided he would NEVER SEE THAT BABY or to let their mother or him see his brothers.

The boy is now 16 years old and NEVER SAW HIS FATHER as his older brothers now in their 20s NEVER SAW THEIR MOTHER AGAIN after the divorce.

They weren’t allow to…

AND this, btw, is our strongest ally in the Pacific, a totally useless unprincipled monster like this.

Anyway, Japan wonders why women don’t wish to have children over there?

It’s pretty obvious that few women are going to take the leap of faith today that their own mothers took in deciding to have any kids at all. Unless they are either alone as a single mother, relatively protected from having some jackoff harassing her and her kids for the next 20 odd years (and even single motherhood is not 100% guaranteed protection as the Bridget Marks fiasco and even the Jerica Rhodes situation showed us, since the courts are perfectly fine with just about anybody getting custody of a mother's children) OR in a rock-solid relationship with no chance of divorce.

AND guess what: those rock-solid relationships with no chance of divorce don’t exist anymore…

So any women would be pretty much a damn fool to take a chance on this today.

I mean I look at women like Paul McCartney’s wife or David Letterman’s girlfriend and have to think: are they crazy having kids with those men???? As who knows WHERE those relationships will be in a few years time and then what????

Actually looking for a man with a lot of resources to marry and have a family with USED to be something women did…today it’s really just the opposite. As marrying and having kids with an elite man is a total waste of time from the perspective of most women IF they intend to have kids with these men.

If not, then it doesn’t matter, of course…do what you want.

Anyway, in spite of the propaganda out there regarding how gender neutral we all are, guess what: women make the decision to have or not have kids…women are the final arbitrators of that choice.

Men are bit players in that regard as much as they hate to accept this fact; that the world doesn’t revolve around them in every situation.

AND women ain’t going to be having any kids, if they see they can be lost to them in a few years time…What don’t people understand about that????

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/04/world/europe/04prague.html

The New York Times

Europe

European Union’s Plunging Birthrates Spread Eastward

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: September 4, 2006


PRAGUE — Pushing their newborns in strollers along Na Prikope, Prague’s main shopping street, Jelena Heitmankova and her two friends get emotional as they describe their desire for more children. But, although they’re only nearing 30, they know their broods will probably end with the one child each has now.

“Having children here is expensive, and there is no structure: no services, no baby-sitting,” said Ms. Heitmankova, who is on maternity leave. “It would be nice if there were still nurseries, like when I was a child,” she said, referring to free Communist-era child care.

After a long decline, birthrates in European countries have reached a historic low, as potential parents increasingly opt for few or no children. European women, better educated and integrated into the labor market than ever before, say there is no time for motherhood and that children are too expensive anyway.

The result is a continent of lopsided societies where the number of elderly increasingly exceeds the number of young — a demographic pattern that is straining pension plans and depleting the work force in many countries.

The European Union’s executive arm, alarmed by the trend, estimates that, if birthrates remain this low, the bloc will have a shortfall of 20 million workers by 2030.

Immigration from non-European countries, already a highly contentious issue in much of the European Union, would not fill the gap even if Europe’s relatively homogenous countries were willing to embrace millions of foreign newcomers, experts say.

A recent RAND Corporation report on low birthrates warned of serious long-term repercussions, concluding: “These developments could pose significant barriers to achieving the European Union goals of full employment, economic growth and social cohesion.”

Throughout Europe, women have delayed having children, or opted out entirely. But the free fall in births is most recent and precipitous here in Eastern Europe, where Communist-era state incentives that made it economical to have children — from free apartments to subsidized child care — have been phased out while costs have skyrocketed.

New, vibrant market economies provide young people with tantalizing alternatives. Lukas and Lenka Dolansky, both journalists, would like a sibling for their 3-month-old son, Krystof, but they are not sure that would be practical. “We want to go abroad, study, have a career,” Mr. Dolansky said. “Our parents didn’t have those opportunities.”

The result is birthrates that are the lowest in the world — and the lowest sustained rates in history. European Union statistics put the rate at 1.2 children per woman in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Latvia and Poland, far below the rate of 2.1 needed to maintain population.

Western European countries are also suffering: Greece, Italy and Spain have had rates of 1.3 and under for a decade.

But Eastern Europe is faced with a double whammy: plummeting birthrates combined with emigration to Western Europe for work, made easier by membership in the European Union.

As countries begin to feel the demographic crunch, Europe’s birth dearth is becoming a political issue. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany pushed through a package of family-boosting incentives for working women in June, and President Vladimir Putin warned in May that Russia’s population decline was critical. Almost all governments are increasing baby bonuses.

More Issues Concerning Surrogate Mothers--Disturbing

The article below doesn’t really surprise me.

Basically it shows that the women who are being hired as surrogate mothers are pretty much from the most unstable and unfit population in every society, the most damaged group from the bottom rungs in each, all probably suffering from undiagnosed personality and other more serious disorders. Which, by the way, research has shown more and more of these traits to be hereditary such as depression, schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, even more everyday personality traits such as shyness and aggression are being shown to have genetic components as well.

So not only are the persons hiring these women to bear children for them taking advantage of a vulnerable damaged population, but they are helping bring children into this world at risk of inheriting the same mental and personality disorders as their mothers: children who would not otherwise exist except for the money being paid to these surrogate mothers to have them. I mean look at most of these surrogate mothers' backgrounds (and I don’t just mean this woman as most of the rest have a similar unstable history from Mary Beth Whitehead, first US surrogate mother, right through to the woman featured in the story below) and contrast it to the candidate pool of their counterparts from the male side of the equation: anonymous sperm donors, for instance.

As anyone, who has studied this issue for any length of time, knows most male sperm donors are college students, some of the most privileged persons in western civilization (and that means in the world really). Who after graduation will go on to become the highest earners in our society: the cream of the crop, so to speak. Donating sperm is used by them as a means to make a little extra income while going to school; at most a 45 minute exercise with little investment for the student and no marked impact on his future emotional or mental state. Contrast this picture with the one painted below of a surrogate mother, and again, as I said not an unusual story at all, and you can see the vast differences between the two populations.

Probably a lot of the women who become surrogate mothers would never even have gone on to have their own children if not lured into being a surrogate mother by the promise of an unrealistically high income for the education and training they have. Or at the very least, would have had far fewer children then they have now; as only the most damaged woman is going to continue having one pregnancy after another, only to hand over her infant at the end of each one.

Actually a good number of these surrogates would have probably been weeded out of the ordinary candidate pool as wives and mothers long ago, maybe having one child and then disappearing from it’s life, since few men would marry and have families with the more obviously damaged amongst them. So their line would have eventually died out just as in nature a damaged mother will either abandon or even eat her own young, thus effectively killing off her own defective gene line. This surrogacy business however continues the damage for generations as again, you are severely damaged as a woman, if you continue having one baby after another and giving it away. There is something wrong with you. A woman who does this is mentally and emotionally unstable, no matter how many gender neutral proponents would like to compare these women to men who are anonymous sperm donors.

It’s not the same thing.

Women simply invest, contribute, and risk more in bringing children into this world. Those few mentally unstable women who can so easily turn and casually walk away from that investment are quite simply damaged goods. No matter how many people benefiting from the instability of these women try to tell us different.

AND they are probably passing along many of their disordered traits to their children.

Thus this practice should be stopped.

As not only is it damaging the woman themselves who are an unstable and mentally ill population, but the children are liable to be suffering from many of the disorders of the mothers as well. Not to mention that I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in surrogate mothers to have multiple children (such as twins or even triplets) since the payment is higher for this, then for just having one child. So now even physical risks can be added to the mental problems for these children as twins and triplets are more apt to have physical disorders.

Let’s face it a perverse incentive exists for these women in the common lump-sum payments of from $10,000 or $15,000 dollars per infant paid to someone with no marketable skills or education, plus all their expenses covered while pregnant (frequently paid for by either the family hiring them or even the taxpayers) as once pregnant no matter how you accomplished that (from either doing the entire football team to having an angel sneak into your bedroom window one night to inpregnate you) any which way you accomplish the deed, it entitles you to extra taxpayer funded benefits in most western countries.

So can someone tell me any good reason why the taxpayers should be funding this sort of incentive to spawn more vulnerable children from an already damaged population????

What purpose or higher good is served by this?

Absolutely none.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=402180&in_page_id=1879

Daily Mail
24 hours a day


I've given away seven babies, but I'd like to keep the next one

By HELEN WEATHERS,
Daily Mail Last updated at 00:28am on 25th August 2006

Of all her pregnancies, this - her seventh - is proving to be by far the most challenging for Jill Hawkins.

Plagued by crippling headaches, dizziness and nausea, she can barely drag herself out of bed some days and feels constantly tired.

So debilitating are her symptoms that the 42-year-old legal secretary has been signed off work by her GP from virtually the moment she fell pregnant in March and, 25 weeks into her pregnancy (emphasis mine: Probably living off publicly funded benefits for the duration of her pregnancy) she can't wait for the baby - a girl - to be born in December.

Of course, it will all be worth it when her baby finally arrives - only Jill won't be taking her home. Just like the other six babies she has borne, this one will go home with a childless couple who paid Jill £12,000 in expenses to be their surrogate (emphasis mine: Are they also paying her living expenses now I wonder or have they managed to shuffle this cost onto the taxpayers of their home country as well).

If her past experiences are anything to go by, Jill knows what is in store once her job is done (emphasis mine: $12,000, possibly tax free).

She will return to her two-bedroom flat in Brighton, where she lives alone with three rescue cats, and cry her eyes out, telling herself that she is simply feeling hormonal and it's not the baby she weeps for.

"This is definitely the last one," says Jill. "This pregnancy has been much harder than all the others. In the past the pregnancies have fitted around my life, but this one has completely dominated it. I'm also getting older now, so, no, there won't be any more surrogate babies."

Jill, however, has said this before. She said it after baby number four, baby number five and baby number six - born two years ago - but always explained away her change of mind by saying she was 'addicted' to being pregnant (emphasis mine: Or more likely addicted to the nine months paid leave of absences with benefits and $12,000 cash payment at the end of them. As I can’t imagine this woman is much of a star employee either).

This time, she insists, she really means it. She has apparently conquered her addiction.

"I feel very differently about this pregnancy. Before, I had such low self-esteem the only time I felt needed, special or loved was when I was carrying a baby inside me," says Jill, who admits she has never had a serious relationship and has been celibate since she became a surrogate 14 years ago (emphasis mine: no surprise there, few men would have married or planned a family with a woman with so many apparent personality and other mental disorders).

"These couples were so grateful for what I was doing for them, and knowing that I could transform their lives by giving them a baby gave me real purpose, confidence and self-esteem. It was the one thing I knew I was good at.

"But I don't feel like that any more. For the first time in my life I feel happy with who I am. I feel complete and don't need to do this to feel good about myself.

"With my other pregnancies I always became good friends with the couple I became a surrogate for. We'd go out for meals or to the theatre because it made me feel worthwhile and part of the family, but this time there is none of that.

"I very much like the couple whose baby I am carrying and they come to all the scans and ante-natal appointments, but there is no socialising.

"I feel more detached. My friends and family kept telling me to stop after the last two pregnancies, that I'd done enough. But I wanted to experience pregnancy one last time and help one final couple - and, if I am honest, I needed the money." (emphasis mine: Okay, at least she’s being honest.)

So what has happened to change Jill Hawkins's mind? So much so that - after years of firm insistence that she has never wanted children of her own - she is now talking about the possibility of falling in love, getting married and having a baby. Her own baby.

There is, as yet, no suitable candidate on the horizon - she is five months pregnant after all - but for the first time she feels good enough about herself to believe it could happen, even if it never actually does.

This dramatic shift in attitude came after a cataclysmic series of events. After the birth of her sixth surrogate baby, Alexandra, in August 2004, Jill plunged into the depths of depression - something she has suffered from, on and off, all her adult life (emphasis mine, many researchers are beginning to see genetic roots in depression).

Her weight - which she has battled to control since she was a teenager - ballooned to 19st 7lb and during a lonely Christmas at home alone she gradually became increasingly suicidal (emphasis mine: same as above, genetic roots in suicidal behavior as well).

Her beloved rescue cat Sindy, who she'd doted on for 16 years, died from cancer, and a surprise holiday to Gran Canaria she'd booked for her younger sister Susan, 39, and herself to cheer herself up had to be cancelled because her sibling couldn't make it.

Bereft over the loss of Sindy, disgusted at her obesity, lonely, and wrongly convinced in her depressed state that no one - not even her sister - liked her, let alone loved her, she decided that no one would even notice if she was gone and the world was better off without her.

She took an overdose of anti-depressants, but one hour later phoned for an ambulance when she suddenly became frightened, realising she didn't really want to die and that her actions were a cry for help.

Her family and friends' utter devastation at her actions and their reassurances of love made her realise just how wrong she had been, and it proved to be a critical turning point.

After she was treated in hospital (discovering that the overdose of anti-depressants wouldn't have killed her anyway) she underwent counselling and then, in April 2005, paid £7,500 to have a gastric bypass operation in a last-ditch effort to lose weight.

Jill, who has since lost 7st, insists that her depression was not caused by the emotional strain of giving away so many babies, but rather by underlying issues which have always been there - but one wonders if she is being entirely honest with herself. (emphasis mine: Yep. She is)…

For the two appear to be inextricably linked.

"The catalyst for me was that suicide attempt. I think I had to reach rock bottom before I really started to confront the issues which I'd tried to ignore for 25 years," says Jill, who decided to become a surrogate after reading a magazine article when she was 27.

"If anything I think the surrogacy actually kept me alive by giving me something to feel good about. But at the same time, perhaps if I hadn't become a surrogate I might have confronted my problems sooner.

"In a way, it's like running away from yourself. You can put your life on hold and leave your problems behind for nine months.

"I have been a yo-yo dieter for years and I loathed myself for being fat. I loved being pregnant because you are allowed to be fat when you are carrying a baby. My main motivation for becoming a surrogate was to help childless couples, (emphasis mine: Now she’s running away from the honesty observed above) but if I am honest I was doing it for selfish reasons, too."

And, bizarrely, I'd lose weight when I was pregnant as I would eat very carefully and exercise because I was responsible for someone else's baby. I never thought of it as mine. After each baby was born, after the inevitable tears and sense of loss, I would feel great about myself and what I'd done to help this couple and try and stay healthy by going to the gym.

"After the fourth baby was born I went right down to 11 stone and I felt fabulous, but the weight would always creep back on. I wasn't stuffing myself on chips or takeaways.

"I was just eating too much and eating between meals. I just couldn't stop and was so desperate I took appetite suppressants - which I never did when I was pregnant - but after a while they stopped working.

"When I went to see a counsellor after my suicide attempt, I said to her: 'There is nothing that you can say to make any difference until I lose weight.'

"That for me was the root of my self-loathing and until I did something about that the rest would be pointless.

"After the bypass operation the weight just dropped off and it is the best money I have ever spent. It has completely changed the way I feel about myself and how I relate to other people. I am still on antidepressants, but the self-loathing has gone.

"I didn't really need to go ahead with this seventh surrogate pregnancy and in some ways I didn't want to, but having lost so much weight I might need a nip and tuck in the future to tighten up my saggy tummy and lift my breasts, so I needed the money. (emphasis mine: back to the honesty).

"After this baby is born I am hoping to join an internet dating agency to meet new friends. I'm not saying I'll necessarily meet the love of my life, but if it happened before I was 45 then I wouldn't rule out having a baby of my own. I feel ready for that now." (emphasis mine: like what normal man is even going to think of her as a serious candidate as a wife and mother when he hears her history).

There is no doubt that Jill Hawkins is a complicated, curious woman. A warm, gentle and genuinely compassionate person, she gives the impression that she would make rather a good mum - only, as she admits herself, she prefers her cats.

The eldest of three children born to businessman Brian Hawkins, 65, and Brenda, 61 - now retired and living in Spain - she always thought her childhood was happy, but now after counselling she is trying to understand the root causes of her low self esteem and comfort eating.

Her mother, whom she still adores, was - she says - a rather domineering woman and Jill was impressionable. Because she loved her mother so much, her opinions became Jill's opinions and the only area where she felt she had any control was food.

Intensely shy as a child and suffering from partial deafness caused by a viral infection, she found it difficult to make friends and - desperate to be liked - turned to food for comfort when she felt rejected. The bigger she grew, the more she hated herself and the more she ate.

"Men never asked me out. I was 15 stone by the time I was 15 and my weight put them off. I never felt good enough for a relationship, and never even wanted children of my own, but I felt this intense yearning to become pregnant," she says.

At 26 she approached COTS (Childlessness Overcome Through Surrogacy), set up by Britain's first surrogate mother, Kim Cotton. At first they were reluctant to take her on, because they preferred women who'd completed their families, but when she convinced them she would not want to keep the baby they put her in touch with her first couple.

So began an odyssey, motivated not by money but an emptiness food could not fill. All the children she has given birth to are biologically hers - Jill self-inseminates with the husband's sperm, rather than being a 'host' surrogate where a fertilised embryo is implanted using IVF. (emphasis mine: meaningless distinction which the people profiteering from this sort of enterprise like to make. She would have been the childrens’ mother no matter, as bonding and other interaction take place between the mother carrying the child, no matter how the fetus was produced.)

Today, she regularly sees all her surrogate children Lucy, 14, Bertie, 12,

Jamie, eight, David, five, Sam, four, and Alexandra, two - whose pictures adorn her bedroom wall - and remains good friends with their parents.

She is fond of them all, but there is no maternal yearning. "They are all great kids, but when I see them I don't think 'That's my daughter' or 'That's my son'. (emphasis mine: like I said damaged goods as even adoptive mothers who never see their children generally have feelings of grief and sadness whenever confronted with the reality of their decision.)

"I think of them as my friends' children. Their real mothers are the women who are bringing them up, loving them, nurturing them and shaping their lives and personalities.

"All the boys look like their fathers but people say Lucy looks like me, though I can't see it. I only ever see the children on an invitation basis, and I feel very privileged that the parents want to keep seeing me as a friend, for who I am, rather than out of any sense of obligation.

"Over the years I have become better at dealing with handing these children over because initially you do feel very empty and upset. Your body has spent nine months nurturing this baby and suddenly it's not there anymore, so emotionally it can be quite traumatic.

"The first time, with Lucy, was the worst because I'd never had a child before. I experienced feelings I'd never had before, overwhelming emotions of wanting to protect this little baby. I didn't know if I would want to change my mind or how I might feel once Lucy was born, whether I would bond with her.

"I never thought of her as my own and I never wanted to keep her, but it was very hard to deal with once she was gone. I went to my parents, who've always been very supportive, and just cried for days.

"My way of dealing with it now is to spend half an hour of private time with the baby before I hand it over to mum. That way I will always have a memory that is mine alone, which I can relive if I need to."

She adds: "I like being pregnant, my body was built for pregnancy and I have the fertility of a rabbit, so it seemed to me a shame not to use that to help people who couldn't have children naturally."

Jill's remarkable story can't help but raise some disquieting questions about the morality of surrogacy; questions those involved appear reluctant to confront. In their desperate quest to become parents, do the childless couples who seek out women like Jill ever know just how emotionally needy or damaged they might be, or question their true motives? And if they do know, do they care enough to think twice about proceeding? (emphasis mine: Probably not. Anymore then people using a puppy mill will question whether they should purchase that cute puppy. So it’s up to the rest of us to stop them. Obviously).

Jill's latest couple are married professionals aged 50 and 45. (emphasis mine: old enough to know better). The woman suffered a miscarriage before discovering she had breast cancer.

Chemotherapy left her infertile. They are overjoyed at Jill's pregnancy.

But has Jill told them everything they might feel they have a right to know?

"I have told them about my depression and the suicide attempt. They know I am taking anti-depressants, which are safe to take during pregnancy, and they don't appear to be concerned about it," says Jill, before making a startling admission.

"I haven't told them about the gastric bypass operation, but they can see I have lost a lot of weight. (emphasis mine: I've noticed a lot of ads for surrogate mothers recently highlighting height and weight requirement as again, yes, these physical traits are genetic in origin as well. So obviously people don't want to pay $12,000 for a kid who is going to grow up to be fat. This could have disqualified Jill if the parents purchasing her child actually realized how overweight she had a tendency to be.)

"I don't know why. Perhaps I was worried that it might put them off, but doctors have assured me that the pregnancy will not be affected although I have to take extra vitamins and nutrients for the rest of my life."

The chances are this baby, along with all the others, will be a beautiful, healthy child who will bring joy to its parents and whose picture will join those on Jill's bedroom wall. But will it really be the last?

"You know, I am really looking forward to the rest of my life. I am going to start doing things for me now because I don't feel bad about myself," says Jill. "I want to do more travelling and meet new friends. After this pregnancy I want to get down to my target weight of 11 stone. I really do feel very happy."

If that happiness proves to be short-lived, will there be surrogate baby number eight? (emphasis mine: Yikes…)

Monday, September 04, 2006

Once Again Women Allowing Themselves to be Used for Men's Economic Gain

Carol Sarler has this exactly correct. There is nothing inherently wicked about modern stepmothers unless you consider someone taking advantage of an 'unearned privilege' to be wicked. The title is redundant as the author points out, as in most cases there is a living mother alive and well and perfectly capable of being a mother to her own kids.

It the 50% divorce rate and high child support which is encouraging everybody and his grandmother to fight for custody now (so poor sonny doesn't have to pay too much child support to his ex-wife) that has given this modern day step-dragon her new set of teeth.

Actually many of these so-called stepmothers function as nothing but enablers for men trying to get custody, so they don't have to pay child support. They offer their services to function as 'pseudo-mothers' in ways both large and small, in an insidious attempt to negate the children's actual mothers' invaluable and unique contribution to her own children. Frequently they manage to impact custody hearings and the like, similar to what Ellen Barkin did for Ron Perlman when he was fighting Pamela Duff for custody of her five year old.

The whole thing was quite disgraceful and Ellen Barkin should have known better particularly since she has children of her own. It's one of the reasons I hope she doesn't get a PENNY from Ron Perlman in her divorce settlement NOT ONE RED CENT. She doesn't deserve it. I will be rooting for whatever attorneys Perlman hired to ensure Barkin doesn't get a dime.

Well we'll have to wait and see if karmatic justice plays a well-deserved role in that situation.

Anyway, I notice the article didn't mention stepfathers and neither did I for obvious reasons. As this problem is not often seen in men. MOST stepfathers appear to know their place and NOT overstep their bounds. Actually the usual compliment I hear adults paying to their own stepfathers is generally along the lines of: "he never interfered or bothered me in anyway, he never hit me"...In essense he left them alone.

Stepmothers, on the other hand, are usually painted as never being able to keep their mouths shut or their nose out of the kids (whose fathers' they married) business. Generally to the detriment of the children as well as their mothers. These so-called stepmothers even comprise a large percentage of the father's rights movement and are responsible for many of the postings on their websites (as well as many of the court cases instigated by their attempts to limit the new husband's cash flow to another women's household by switching custody).

But back to the unearned privilege aspect of this, why should these women have the right to personal information on someone else's kid just because they married a father? For instance, I wouldn't want someone who wasn't my actual mother having access to my medical records. What right does a total stranger have to know my personal medical history?

It should be none of their business.

Additionally, why should a total stranger be allowed to sit in on my school conferences with my teachers and know I'm failing two subjects or am on the honor roll every semester?

If I wish to tell her that I'll do so myself.

You married someone with children and suddenly that makes you their mother?

Please.

Let's face it this whole stepmothering business today has morphed well beyond even what it was in the days of Grimm's fairy tales where at least the kid's mother was dead before a stepmother started moving in to ensure her own kidlets their piece of the economic action.

As that's the bottom line here.

Men, for the most part, still make more income then women. They are still the major providers of economic resources to the family and as long as they have another women's children living outside of the household with their mothers that kid is draining resources from the 'new' family that the stepmother is trying to create.

This is the source of stepmothers' suddenly coming into fashion again.

It's another attempt by men to abuse the maternal instincts of women, who are trying to get as many resources as they can to use for their own kids. It's using the strengths of women and turning it into a weakness, the good into evil. As women harm ourselves collectively when we allow our obsession with our own offspring's well-being to cause us to hurt other women and their children.

As what Ellen Barkin did to Pamela Duff and her daughter.

She allowed herself to be used to hurt another woman and her child.

Women who do this hurt all of the rest of us as well as themselves when they allow women's natural maternal inclination to be used as a weapon against other mothers and their children. We should not allow ourselves to be used as unpaid maids, babysitters, or pseudo mothers to children of men just seeking those services in order to get custody of a child from it's mother for their own financial benefit.

Women need to just start saying no.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2331384,00.html

Wicked?

No only redundant


By Carol Sarler

IF WE MUST be treated to more detail of the parting of the McCartneys — and I very much fear that we must — I should like to plead for no further mention of Sir Paul’s adult offspring wherein Heather is described as their stepmother. She is not “their” anything, save perhaps their inheritance-depleting nemesis, and the use of the possessive pronoun simply proves how anachronistic the title of step-parent has become.

Once, it had purpose. When a young mother died and her widower remarried, the stepmother really did inherit the mothering of his children; she became a substitute for the mother and, for good or for bad, she would retain that role at least until Prince Charming happened by with a good fit in glass slippers

Today, very rarely does any of that apply. Certainly not following a remarriage in late middle age when the children are too grown to need mothering, or when, courtesy of an epidemic of divorce, a remarriage means that the children of the groom have a perfectly good mother at home, thank you very much, and don’t need another one.

Indeed, the use of a title implies an entitlement that might itself prove inflammatory. When Jennifer’s father recently remarried, he turned up at a school parents’ evening with his new wife, sat beside Jennifer’s mother and then introduced Mk II to the teacher as “Jennifer’s stepmother”.

“I don’t mind her showing an interest,” says Jennifer’s mother, still spitting tacks, “but she’s getting no actual say in anything; Jennifer already has two parents to do that. So what’s the point in giving her a fancy label that suggests otherwise?”

Quite so. Furthermore, far from the permanence of the step-parent of the divorce-free past, the current newcomer can promise no such thing. Her presence is entirely contingent upon the survival of a marriage whose collapse would almost certainly herald her complete disappearance.

Nobody understands this better than the children. Any fondness is adjunctive to another relationship of which they own no part. It is wholly improper, therefore, to ask them to pretend possession by saying “my” stepmother. It would be fairer to everyone, at least at first, to scrap the term altogether in favour of “my father’s wife”. Until, if all involved are very fortunate, that mutates, in time, to “my friend".