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mensrightsblogs: Taking Credit http://bit.ly/9Fd9ma

[This post was submitted by meistergedanken]

This post may present a slightly new wrinkle for this site, as most of the populace of the MRA/PUA realm seem to either take the approach of wanting to free or disassociate themselves completely from women, or want to sufficiently alter their behavior so they can use them and lose them at will. But some of us are still in the thick of it, attempting to retool a marriage that seems assaulted from innumerable external forces and inbred expectations, and are trying to make the best of a difficult situation….

Obsidian’s March 6 post briefly alluded to the issue I am going to address (“…Female Double Standard #2: Women Are Snobs Much More Than Are Men, AND, Don’t Really Believe In Merit Either”), and so I decided I needed to strike while the iron is hot.

In our current Mancession environment, there is a lot of talk about credit, and its supposed scarcity. But I would like to examine a different kind of credit, and how its abuse has rankled me, and I suspect, many more men in committed relationships.

I am specifically speaking of credit in the intellectual sense, referring to an acknowledgement of those who contributed to a work, whether through ideas or in a more direct sense.

I’ll start with the axiom that women “put on airs”, and that they do this based on the most tenuous justifications. Why do women buy into and breathlessly promulgate the “two become one” vision of marriage? Because it permits them to absorb all the accomplishments, social status and rank that the man has worked so hard to accumulate. With a stroke of the pen on the marriage certificate it is instant and legal entitlement. “What’s yours is mine, and what’s mine is yours”. Of course, when the woman doesn’t bring any meaningful assets into the relationship (and no, the cats don’t count), and indeed brings considerable debt in the form of student loans, that sort of sentiment is easy to adopt as a credo.

The phenomenon is best described as “achievement without accomplishment”, just like the corrosive basis of our current public school system, where grade inflation and social promotion are rampant.

The anecdotal evidence for this is everywhere. At work I have heard the receptionists talk about how the rudest callers to the front desk aren’t angry clients, but the wives of the owners of the company. Their bosses would never speak to them the way their wives do – after all, they are employees in a professional environment, where a collegial atmosphere is valued and personal relationships are cultivated to enhance efficiency. A good boss knows that there is an office karma, and rude, demeaning behavior comes back to haunt you at some point. Respectful interactions with your employees earn you loyalty and encourage them to go the extra mile when it is called for. So where do these wives get off pulling this attitude? Because they assume they have the same authority as their executive husbands – the two are “one”, you see, and so the receptionists better hop to it and follow their orders! Furthermore, like most women, they don’t like to acknowledge the pitiless edicts of Cause and Effect, and in this case the consequences of their actions can be avoided (or at least deferred) because they can just hang up the phone and never go into the office. Let their husbands deal with the resulting resentment…

A colleague of mine related to me a story about how he decided he had to relocate a tree so his driveway could be enlarged, and that his wife stood there watching him on and off for three hours while he was laboring at this, making sure he put it in the spot they agreed upon. And the next week he stood there, his back still in pain from the ordeal, aghast, as he overheard his wife say to her sister, “you wouldn’t believe how hard we had to work to move this tree!” “What is this ‘we’ you speak of?” he asked wryly.

Now I’m no Norm Abrams, and my handyman skills are modest, but in the first year my wife and I moved into the house I planted five trees, replaced eight light fixtures, painted four rooms, refinished the stairs, installed two cabinets, built several shelving units, and put in a flagstone walkway. And then there was the stuff I couldn’t do, that I hired people [men] for: replacing the roof shingles and basement windows, installing new exterior doors and locksets, sealing the driveway, tiling the fireplace, cutting down three trees, installing gutters on the garage, and repairing a rotted windowsill. Did the Wife contribute any money to these endeavors? No. Did she ever pick up a tool and pitch in? No. Which is fine, I know what I signed up in that regard when we married so I am willing to shoulder that burden. But when you then hear your wife say to visiting friends or neighbors, “yes, we’ve put in a lot of hard work on this place,” or “yeah, we spent a bundle to remodel this kitchen,” the incredulity always strikes me afresh. What is this “we” you speak of, woman? Whose work? Whose money?

If a man is to have a satisfying relationship, he needs recognition when it is due him. And if a man is to have a satisfying life, he needs to be able to take pride in something: his work, the fruits of his labors and/or ingenuity. Pride is grounded in personal achievement – anything else is delusion. One flows from the other. It is an emotional form of Cause and Effect. Anything that sullies the purity of that, or that compromises that simple equation should be neutralized. How to do that is another matter entirely.

When you can’t actually DO anything, the most efficient way to seem impressive is to appropriate the work of others. Culturally, poseurs do that (accompanying track: “Jumping Someone Else’s Train”, by the Cure). In literature, this forms the underlying theme of Atlas Shrugged. In industry, it’s like India mass producing generic drugs that American firms spent decades formulating, or China bootlegging DVD’s of movies that cost $100 million to make. It is piracy, though not of an intellectual property sort, but of a value-added sort.

Yet somehow, of course, pointing this out is seen as petty.

Men over hele dyrelinjen er der jubel at spore, og hos Dyrenes Beskyttelse kan de for eksempel ikke ‘få armene ned over det nye parti’, lyder det i presseafdelingen. Og kan Fokus bare få halvdelen af orgnisationens medlemmer med sig, har de 40.000 stemmer. [Ekstrabladet] Dyrenes Beskyttelse som politisk parti, og hvorfor ikke? Kvindernes Beskyttelse har 7 partier [...]

mensrightsblogs: Individuals and Structures http://bit.ly/avB6uC

mensrightsblogs: Basic Fraud http://bit.ly/avfXVY

mensrightsblogs: Download Suicide Petition http://bit.ly/aUgyTi

mensrightsblogs: Want to see what a false rape claim can do to a man? http://bit.ly/aMOJEb

mensrightsblogs: Santa Clara County Hospital Still Withholding Exculpatory Evidence in Sexual Assault Allegations http://bit.ly/bgUDBI

No sooner have we finished with Santa Clara Deputy District Attorney Ben Field's suspension from the practice of law due to prosecutorial misconduct, but this comes across our desk (San Jose Mercury News, 3/11/10).

Last year I reported on a Santa Clara Hospital that the county's prosecutors used to analyze evidence in cases of alleged sexual abuse.  Back then some 3,000 videotapes of examinations of alleged sexual assault victims came to light.  It seems that the woman who conducted the examinations recorded them as well.  She didn't tell prosecutors about the tapes, and when they found out about them, they, er, neglected to inform defense attorneys.  One man's conviction was overturned and apparently "dozens" of others may be.

Now,

Attorneys have uncovered a second, critical trove of evidence that has been withheld for years by medical investigators in hundreds of Santa Clara County sex-assault cases, prompting a wholesale review of procedures at the county's public hospital.

The emergence Tuesday of previously unknown forms documenting interactions between medical personnel and suspected victims comes after prosecutors discovered more than 3,000 videotaped medical exams of children last year that were also improperly withheld from the accused.

So once again possibly exculpatory evidence has been withheld from defendants in alleged sex crime cases.  And just like in the Ben Field case, we hear echoes of the Duke Lacrosse case.  Here's how it works:

Prosecutors are required by law to turn over exculpatory evidence in their possession to defendants and their attorneys.  But the key words there are "in their possession."  In the Duke case, tissue samples had been collected and DA Mike Nifong sent that material, not to a state-run laboratory, but to a private one.  That way, the tests could be conducted and if they indicated guilt, the lab reports could be given to the DA who would then turn them over to the defense.  But if they indicated innocence, the results stayed in private hands.  Therefore, the DA's office would not have exculpatory evidence "in its possession," and therefore it wouldn't be required to turn it over to the defense.  It maintained "plausible deniability."

The same thing looks to have been happening in Santa Clara County, which is why,

Two years ago, an appellate court ruled that the hospital examiners were part of the "prosecution team," making the District Attorney's Office responsible for ensuring that evidence is turned over to defendants.

By adjudicating the hospital officials to be, in effect, an arm of the DA's office, the court was trying to prevent prosecutors from doing what Mike Nifong had done - hiding evidence from the defense in a purportedly neutral place. 

What's now come to light are intake forms in which people alleging sexual victimization tell hospital personnel what happened.  Obviously, in some cases, their statements then could tend to prove the innocence of a person subsequently charged.

Interestingly, hospital personnel who are part of the Sexual Assault Response Team continue to stonewall not only defense lawyers but prosecutors as well.  Last year, when the scandal about the withheld videotapes came to light, prosecutors swore that there was no other missing evidence beyond the tapes.  That was because hospital personnel had told them that.  Now that turns out once again to have been false.  One defense attorney, Michael Kresser,

praised prosecutors for acting quickly, but expressed concern about their lack of knowledge about Sexual Assault Response Team procedures, including the existence of the forms.

In other words, this time it's not prosecutors who are subverting justice and putting innocent defendants behind bars, it's nurses and other hospital personnel.  And it seems only to be a problem in allegations of sex crimes.

Here's my guess: someone at the hospital (and it may be several "someones") is a "believe the woman" adherent.  That is, there's someone who's swallowed whole the notion that women or children who complain of sexual abuse can't lie.  Therefore, since all allegations must be true, withholding exulpatory evidence is acceptable because it jails a man who's guilty even if there's evidence tending to show he's not.  I'd put money on it; there's one of those (or more) at Valley Medical Center in Santa Clara County, California.

Help for Los Angeles/Ventura County Dads
Peter M. Walzer, Certified Family Law Specialist
www.California-Divorce.com

"Efter 95 år er tiden kommet for folk der har lidt så længe at opnå oprejsning", siger liberal lovgiver. Tyrkiet har angiveligt i protest mod beslutningen hjemkaldt sin ambassadør.

Sverige´s parlament har knebent vedraget en resolution, der anerkender masse mordet i Tyrkiet i 1915 på armeniere som folkemord.

Det svenske nyheds bureau TT siger, at Tyrkiet i protest over den overraskende beslutning hjemkaldte sin ambassadør fra Sverige, der blev vedtaget med stemmerne 131 mod 130 i den 349 pladsers forsamling. 88 lovgivere var fraværende under afstemningen.

"Efter 95 år er tiden kommet for folk der har lidt så længe at opnå oprejsning", siger Gulan Avci, en lovgiver fra Folkpartiet Liberalerna, der brød med partiets linie, og stemte for at anerkende det armenske folkemord.

Avci er kurdisk immigrant fra Tyrkiet.

Historikere estimerer, at op mod 1.5 millioner armenere blev dræbt af de ottomanske tyrkere omkring Første Verdenskrig. Tyrkiet benægter, at mordene udgjorde et folkemord, sigende at tallene er oppustede, og at de dræbte var ofre for borgerkrig og uro.

Den regerende centrum-højre koalition modsatte sig tiltaget, men det blev vedtaget, fordi en håndfuld centrum-højre lovgivere stillede sig på side med den venstredrejede opposition, der havde fremlagt resolutionen.

I USA vedtog en komite i sidste uge i Kongressen en tilsvarende resolution med stemmerne 32 mod 22, der ville sende tiltaget til Repræsentanternes Hus, hvis ledelsen valgte at bringe det frem. Minutter efter vedtagelsen trak Tyrkiet sin ambassadør hjem.

Den svenske udenrigsminister Carl Bildt siger, at han beklager parlamentets beslutning, sigende at det desværre ikke vil have en positiv virkning på den løbende normaliserings proces mellem Tyrkiet og Armenien.

Den tyrkiske ambassadør i Sverige Zergun Koroturk fortalte TT, at hun modtog instruktioner om omgående efter afstemningen at vende tilbage til Tyrkiet.

"Det er logisk", blev hun citeret for at have sagt.

mensrightsblogs: "That's such a huge number, especially for a 16-year-old girl." http://bit.ly/d9tPBv

mensrightsblogs: Spanish researchers assert that men should feel more random guilt-- just like women do http://bit.ly/9MEe5l

mensrightsblogs: Male/female high school dropout ratios show huge gap http://bit.ly/dA70WK

mensrightsblogs: Canada: Ex-MP calls for shared parenting http://bit.ly/azQoEw

mensrightsblogs: Eating Grass http://bit.ly/aafWoG

Given the current state of affairs, it is very easy to be cynical about the prospects for any political change. If you take a long term view, cynicism is usually justified. People forget past lessons, they usually don’t know a good thing when they have it, and they wreck things by trying to fix what worked pretty well. However, for some reason we seem to keep on moving forward even in the darkest of times: technology progresses, we adapt, and buried truths are brought to light.

The odds against men are formidable. Governments across the Anglosphere have crafted increasingly complex legal constructs designed to extract the maximum amount of resources from men to turn them over to women and the state, and have built the most extensive peacetime prison network the world has ever seen to enforce them. Our consumer-driven economy has helped push this trend along, as women are more reliable spenders and more susceptible to advertising. Finally, thick-skulled men with an atavistic sense of chivalry have aided and abetted this process every step of the way.

When taking into consideration that some enlightened men’s best efforts over the last generation to warn us and point out the obvious have been totally ignored and ineffectual, one can’t be blamed for giving up hope. Men, it seems, are determined to allow themselves to lapse into a permanent state of subjection due to passivity and and a refusal to act in their self-interest.

When I lived in China, I was bemused by Chinese assertions that they, the Chinese people, could take anything, and could even survive by eating grass. I wondered why that was something to be proud of. “What’s the point of taking all that abuse, and shouldn’t you have been less tolerant?” I’d ask them. Stubbornly proud of this trait, they would give me a smug look as though the answer was so obvious that there was no need for explanation.

To an American, it might be understandable that the Chinese were proud of their ability to survive great deprivation, but that was only part of it: they also declared that not only could they survive terrible conditions, they would actually allow things to get that bad before they would do anything about it. To me, it seemed absurd that people could be so proud of being humble and passive, almost as though it were a completely illogical contradiction. From an American perspective, there is something shameful about not “doing something” immediately to fix some problem.

However, in retrospect, this trait is far from useless. Perhaps, as a relatively new people (I count the British people as fairly new as well), we have little historical perspective from which we can understand why, and its counterintuitive nature must be learned from experience rather than deduction, but there are plenty of examples for the familiar.

What is really going on is that the humiliation, suffering and oppression endured by the meek gives them a messianic zeal and a moral imperative that cannot be gained in any other way. After decades of warlordism, war with the Japanese, and finally civil war, the starving peasants marching with their savior Mao Tse-tung were an irresistible force that Chiang Kai Shek’s corrupt, urban nationalists couldn’t hope to defeat. Their determination, ferocity, and – mostly importantly – conviction, gave them an overwhelming edge.

Christianity incorporates the same principle. In fact, it is the image of the Via Dolorosa and the cross that gave it the kind of moral determination that comes from enduring the unendurable. The Jewish Shoah had the same effect, galvanizing the Jews and leading to the establishment of Israel. The crushing poverty of late Bourbon France created the radicalism that led to the French Revolution. The list goes on.

I hope Western men never have to face the kind of travails endured by mid-20th century Chinese, European Jews, and 18th century French peasants, but more of us are being crushed under a severe economic burden than at any time since the Great Depression, and today the law and political atmosphere is more hostile than it was in those grim days. Millions of men will face pretty severe hardship, if not starvation. Many of them are inexorably being pushed to the margins and out of a legitimate, above-board position in society. These men – many of whom are fathers – have all the rights of illegal aliens, and none of the political support. The law is ruthless toward them, and given the prevailing trend, will only get worse. All that they can hope for is that states don’t have enough money to imprison them.

From our Western, Anglo perspective this just looks hopeless. Men are being taken to the cleaners, legislated into quasi-criminality, stripped of their children — and they aren’t doing anything about it. It would be easy at this point to simply write them off, just like the world wrote off the Chinese in the 1930s as hopeless and powerless against the arrogant, modern, imperialist Japanese, but it would also be too hasty.

In every man and boy cheated, dispossessed and abused by venal politicians and their churlish, feminine masters, a new strength and certainty will take root. Men will stop blaming themselves, and, as they realize that they have no say or choice, they will no longer be plagued by indecision, which is a luxury reserved for those with options.

It is not such a bad thing that so many men are now under the boot, and beginning to recognize their pathetic, hopeless position. Let more of them plumb the depths of despair and hit bottom with a thud. When they finally stand up, they will be much tougher customers than before.

It was once said that “the meek shall inherit the earth.” This was not merely eschatological prophesy; it is the way the world works.

mensrightsblogs: Just Ain't Gettin' It http://bit.ly/95m5hf

mensrightsblogs: Santa Clara County DDA Suspended Amid Duke Lacrosse Echoes http://bit.ly/8Xu7bD

To anyone familiar with the false allegations of rape levelled at three members of the Duke Lacrosse team in 2006, the following should be well-plowed ground.  One of the signal features of the Duke imbroglio was the fact that the prosecutor, Michael Nifong, ended up both losing the case and having the defendants declared not merely "not guilty," but "innocent."  That's an accomplishment few state's attorneys can claim.  But Nifong didn't rest on those laurels; he got himself disbarred as well.

One of the principal ways he managed that was by withholding evidence of the defendants' innocence from them and their lawyers.  Prosecutors are generally required to turn over to defense attorneys all exculpatory evidence, and Mike Nifong failed to do that repeatedly.

Now it's Santa Clara, California Deputy District Attorney Ben Field's turn.  Read about it here (California Bar Journal, March, 2010).  He's had his license to practice law suspended for four years for doing the same thing.  In fact, the state bar originally charged him with 25 counts of professional wrongdoing in four separate cases.  He was convicted by a judge of several of those counts and now an appelate court has upheld his suspension.  Apparently the most important charge against Field came in a sexual assault case against two men.  They were convicted, but filed a motion for habeas corpus.  As the state's bar journal describes it, Field

intentionally withheld a witness’ statement that was favorable to the defense in a 2003 habeas corpus proceeding involving a sexual assault. The judge found that he committed a discovery violation. 

In that matter, the review panel found that Field’s misconduct escalated over time and constituted “a calculated scheme to hide evidence favorable to the defense.”

Two men who were convicted of sexual assault had filed petitions for writ of habeas corpus and provided a declaration by a witness who claimed the 15-year-old victim had made false accusations because she missed curfew.

Field’s investigator found and interviewed the witness but did not notify the defense. In addition, he instructed his investigator to prepare a misleading declaration and filed it with the court, filed a statement with the court implying he did not know the witness’ whereabouts, and then waited five months before disclosing the interview, only after opposing counsel learned of the interview and had filed a motion alleging prosecutorial misconduct.

(I'll only note in passing that even the State Bar of California doesn't seem to understand that a person - in this case a 15-year-old girl - who falsely accuses another person of a crime, is not a "victim."  In fact, it is the men she accused who are her victims.  We might excuse a journalist who makes that mistake, but you'd think attorneys would know better.)

But what's described certainly echoes the Duke case and Mike Nifong's outrageous behavior.  Here as there, a false allegation of sexual assault was made to cover the accuser's own behavior.  Here as there, the prosecutor engaged in patently unethical, illegal and deceptive practices in order to get a conviction of men he had good reason to know to be innocent.  He then resisted, again by unethical and illegal means, the last realistic means they had of getting out of prison and clearing their names.  Sound familiar?

Well, it may be about to become more familiar still.  This article says that, for the first time, the State Bar is taking a hard look at allegations of prosecutorial misconduct (San Jose Mercury News, 10/17/08).  The Bar is starting to use its grievance procedures to scrutinize prosecutors' conduct, to which I can only say, "it's about time." 

For many years now, we've had a "jail 'em and throw away the key" attitude toward criminal defendants in this country.  Every imaginable act seems to be a crime these days, and the prevailing sentiment has given prosecutors a virtual carte blanche.  They seem to routinely overcharge defendants and go for the maximum sentence whether it's warranted or not.  There was a time when prosecutors had the sense to know which defendants were truly bad actors who needed to be in prison and those who weren't.  Now there seems to be no such concept among Assistant DAs.  So it's no surprise that the U.S. has more people behind bars than any country in the world and has many different organizations like the Innocence Project devoted to proving the innocence of people states have put away.

Certainly prosecutors like Mike Nifong and Ben Field aren't the only ones to blame for our out of control system of criminal justice, but, as the judges who upheld Field's suspension said,

“Although our system of administering justice is adversarial in nature and prosecutors must be zealous advocates in prosecuting their cases, it cannot be at the cost of justice,” wrote Judge Catherine Purcell, who was joined in the decision by Judges JoAnn Remke and Judith Epstein.

“Field lost sight of this goal,” Purcell continued, “ … and in doing so, he disregarded the foundation from which any prosecutor’s authority flows — ‘The first, best and most effective shield against injustice for an individual accused … must be found … in the integrity of the prosecutor.’”

Frail as that reed may be, it's an important one.  With luck, state bar associations across the country will take heed and start to hold prosecutors to their legal and ethical obligations.

Thanks to Scott for the heads-up.