My reply on "Men's Rights??"

I understand your point now, Jav. Isn't it a sad day when American men think we are the ones who need an Equal Rights Amendment? And I'm afraid these fellows filing this lawsuit must truly believe that. *boggle* Maybe you're right that women need us to file this lawsuit. But surely men don't, do we?

Men can bear great burdens. We have broad shoulders, as the saying goes. And so we ought to bear them. If the load falls disproportionately on our shoulders, so be it. Suck it up, grit your teeth, rise above it. All those things we tell our sons when they want to run crying to us like they always ran crying to their mothers. In short, be a man.

The lawsuit spokesman on the radio yesterday said their advocacy group helps divorced fathers who have been denied custody of and given little visitation rights to their children. And y'know, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if such hardships on men aren't perhaps a good thing.

It's not because men need hardship to toughen us up; indeed we do. But if the only reason a man has any contact with the woman he married and who bore his children is because of his children, he's a renegade. (I'm speaking broadly here, so bear with me.) He needs to get his butt back home!

My wife divorced me because I was an a**hole. That realization hit me hard, and when I finally tried to fix that problem, it was too little too late. I never have and never will remarry, because the woman I married is the only woman to whom I ought to be married. She knows this. And I have gone as far as she and my concern for her wishes will allow me in trying to patch things up between us. If we had children though, her wish for me to "just stay the blankity-blank away" would not have affected me. No, instead I'd have been on my knees begging for forgiveness and reconciliation of our family.

When losing our wives is easier than losing our children, we've got problems. But if we have to lose our children before we'll open our eyes and see what a**holes we are, then by all means, take our children!

There's wisdom in the saying, it takes two to break a marriage. If I had been a man, I'd have fought the divorce tooth and nail, pleading with the judge to delay it, buying time for me to get my act together and convince my wife that I could and would change. That's every man's duty. But I reneged. And there was no society of men around me to say, "What the blankity-blank are you doing, son?! Get back home to your wife!"

All these guys who go around starting families and then walking out on them, they need to have their paychecks taken from them and given to their kids. And if their wives divorced them for being a**holes, these husbands need a swift kick in the pants to send them back pleading for reconciliation. Humility is not undignified, not unmanly. We'll sacrifice our lives for our wives and children, won't we? How much less is it, then, to sacrifice only our pride to save our families?

Sure, I've generalized to make this point, and not all families are broken by nor can be saved by the husband alone. But when the shoe fits, we need to tell one another to get wearing it.

I'm with you, Jav, when you say, "I would hope such a law would NEVER come to pass." In those cases where the wife is implacable, where nothing the husband does will cause her to reconsider, the law needs to be changed to override her obstinance. But the reason the law currently leans in her favor is because we men have abused our power. If we clean up our act, only then will we be justified in changing the law. This is why I stand firmly opposed to this lawsuit - particularly because when I had my chance, I played the renegade too.