Wednesday, June 07, 2006

N is for New Rules

In a prior post, I suggested that men’s situation had degraded to a point where something must be done...

- that men must adopt a new way of living in order to make life worthwhile for them.

Traditional values, like hard work, careful saving, marriage, home ownership, entrepreneurship, and the like have been turned into weapons to enslave and ruin us. The government seems to care little about what happens to us, and in fact derives significant financial and political gain from attacking us and burdening us further. The old ways are not working. What to do?

DISCLAIMER: I am not responsible for what happens if you take the following advice. I think that you will have perfectly lovely lives if you do what it says here, but you may not. I myself will not be following this advice, having found one of what I believe is those few responsible women for my second long term relationship, and not wanting to abandon my hopes for career, and my care for my children. However, the below is strongly incentivized by our government, and therefore MUST be the ‘right thing’ to do.

OK, on to the ‘new rules’ for men:

I propose a bit of Role Reversal: Men need to stop being the responsible party. Get in touch with your female side (ok, out of deference to the many responsible women out there, I will say ‘the stereotypical female side’) – and take care of yourself, and don’t worry about tomorrow…

1. Get out of the Rat Race: Men tend to work hard at dangerous jobs with longer hours, so that they can be financially successful. But that earning capacity will just be turned against you when you face the almost inevitable divorce. And the high-stress jobs lead to our early demise. Don’t do it. Find a low-wage, low effort, non-dangerous job. Don’t worry that this means that you can’t afford the best things, because these things only exist under the current system to be taken from you. You say you can’t do it? Too many debts and responsibilities? Declare bankruptcy. Restructure. Get yourself into a simple, low-cost lifestyle. When your divorce comes, or your child-support order arrives, you won’t be able to bankrupt yourself out of those debts any more. Do it now.

2. Stop being the Big Kahuna: You don’t need to pay for expensive dates, houses, cars and so-on. Some who are pro-male say that we should continue to insist on paying for our dates because in this way we can find out who is so feminist as to refuse to let us pay and filter them out. The problem with relationships and divorce is not the radical feminists though. MOST marriages end in divorce. MOST are filed for by women and MOST end up with the man paying. What I am trying to say is that you can’t filter out the temptation. If you are financially successful, the temptation to cash out will always be there, and sooner or later, you as a partner are going to be much less valuable and more annoying to your spouse than half your net worth, plus your house, plus the future labor that you will contribute through alimony and support as an abject slave. No, let your dates pay their own way, and don’t worry about acquiring things. Acquire experiences instead.

3. Be a Spender, Not a Saver: Save only enough to get you through a short unemployment period, a brief downturn in the business, put food on the table for the next month or so. You will be able to live better if you spend all your money on yourself – think clothes, clubs, and sporting events. Fly somewhere every couple months. Take weekends at the shore. Use it as you go. Let someone else worry about retirement and the like. If you have it, it can (and likely will) be taken. So who needs wealth that is only going to pad someone else’s nest? Enjoy. ...There's a reason grasshoppers don't drag food back to their nest. They know that they are going to be snuffed out in a few months anyway. It's the same with you. No one cares about your health, or your well being, and it is only a matter of time before you kick. Why lay up stores for some woman to enjoy after you are worm-food?

4. Don’t own stuff: Don’t have assets. If someone dies and leaves you a chunk, or insists on giving you something, have them set it up in a trust that gives you use of it, but not ownership or control (and maybe your friends/kids/whomever gets use after you kick). Trusts don't need owners, you know. Remember, everything that is yours can be taken away from you. Everything that is not yours, you can enjoy without fear of loss.

5. Be careful in dating: Your dates mostly don’t need to know where you live, or work, or your last name, or your home phone number. You should have a throw-away cell phone for your dating only, or be willing to change numbers frequently. Go to their place for those quiet evenings, or go out. You can say your place is a wreck, or you are embarrassed by it, and that you like their place better anyway. If they push for more info about you, say that you prefer to keep things casual until you know each other better, or even say that you were sued for palimony by someone who hardly knew you once, and you want to be safe until such time as things get more serious. Change the topic to more about her. “Can’t we just enjoy our time together?” “Focusing on what I do sounds so materialistic.” “I’m just a poor sausage deliveryman/hose installer/pipefitter/cable layer – heh heh.”

6. Remember that dating is something you do for you: Don’t go for dates that you will not enjoy. Don’t spend for her unless you really want to go and in particular have *her* there, and she can’t afford it. If she wants to be with you, she will find the bucks. Spending for a date is *not* a payment for sex you expect to have. You should be happily honest that you date more than one person at a time, and should not feel guilty about this. How else to find the right person? Why would you commit exclusively to someone who is not ‘the one’? Why would you put so much pressure on each date to be successful, and leave yourself high and dry when a dating relationship sours?

7. Marry Up: You should earn less than she does. If she earns less than you do, and you really like her, you arrange it to earn less. If you aren’t willing to make that sacrifice, or she isn’t willing to accept you poorer, then probably she wasn’t the one. If you finally decide to get married, don’t worry about prenups. You aren’t earning anything, you have no assets, and prenups mostly don’t work anyway. In marriage, let her bring home the bacon. It’s a worthy calling in life to earn money, to work hard. Men have been doing that and getting punished for it for years. Let her do it. It is also a very worthy calling to shop. Enjoy the latter, let her do the former.

8. Only have Kids with a Real Keeper: Don’t have kids in a relationship you aren’t sure about, where the love isn’t overflowing. If your wife quits to stay home with the kids, you have to quit too. Live off welfare or whatever until she goes back to work. If this causes a divorce, it will have been worth it, because it shows what mattered to her in the first place; not you, but your wallet. Also, it will be much harder for a judge to order alimony against a man who became unemployed by choice at about the same time his wife became unemployed by choice.

If you follow these rules, it just shouldn’t be worth anyone’s while to sue you for anything, let alone alimony or child support, and instead of being someone else’s patsy, you will have had a fun, relaxing, and stress-free ride through life, instead of a continual struggle to pay your “mussus massa’s” support. People will probably think of you as a loser, or a deadbeat, but you will be laughing as they die early of heart attacks and drag their sorry posteriors through divorce court.

My best to you in your struggles,

-M

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Tuesday, June 06, 2006

W is for What to Do?

Men live in a horrific world, in many ways. If we even associate exclusively with a woman, she can hit us with palimony, if a crime is committed, we are the first suspects, more likely to be convicted, and get longer, harsher sentences.

We work longer hours, at more dangerous, and less pleasant jobs, and suffer more job-related casualties, for less benefits, and for less pay, once the hazards, hours, benefits, and other factors are weighed in.

Unlike women, our special education needs are not considered, our culture and ways of thought are ignored (no men’s studies programs at colleges) and we are slighted in the media and in entertainment as lowbrows and deadbeats.

Our medical needs attract less money, and, no surprise, we die early.

If we reproduce, willingly or not, and even if we do not reproduce, we are held responsible for the support of children, and their deadbeat mothers (who don’t want fathers around, just checkbooks)...

...While these same mothers had at their disposal a variety of abortion, adoption and other methods to avoid any responsibility for their kids.

Yet still, men are basically good eggs, look for true love wherever they may find it, and trust their partners. Paul McCartney is a prime example. He hooked up with Heather Mills, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, with a shady history. Many said that she was just after his money. Yet Paul declined a prenuptial agreement, and now, a scant four years later, Heather is filing for divorce. Analysts think she will get ¼ of his over one and a half billion dollar fortune. THE PAYOFF IS ALMOST TWO MILLION DOLLARS FOR EVERY WEEK SHE WAS MARRIED TO HIM. And this is of course not including support for the child that she had with him, or alimony. Men in England and Ireland are horrified. Of course, it would likely be worse here in the States, where she would likely get half his assets. (hat tip MensActivism.Org)

Divorcing your spouse used to be a bad thing, a terrible thing to do. Especially where children were involved. Yet today, it is a very profitable venture if your male spouse is financially well-heeled. Our government has effectively created a situation where divorce is very, very, very rewarding. They are rewarding something that is a crime against children and men. Ethically, no one should benefit from harming others, and yet this is what our current laws do – they reward women for taking advantage of men.

So what to do? I think that men need new set of rules, a new way of working with the system, because the old way is not working anymore, and because I am becoming more and more confident that ‘the pendulum’ is not going to swing back our way any time soon, no matter how much noise we make and how we vote. There is too much money to be taken from us, and too many rights have been given away already.

I will be writing a post outlining my new set of rules shortly, but for now, I will give you this teaser:

“Simple Role Reversal.”

My best to you in your struggles
M

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