First proper feminist thread/ thought - please be nice

[Kayano]

Hello.

I am not here often
This thread was inspired by bad TV and my mother. She is obsessed with Maury and Jeremy Kyle. I'm at her house now and she is watching Maury. It's a 'is he the father' show.

Now I get that both men and women cheat and there can be fault on both sides, but I just saw a woman in tears as she was adamant the guy was the father and he was calling her all sorts of bad names (despite cheating himself) and saying she had slept with lots of men.

The woman was clearly young and distressed at the accusations. Turned out that the guy WAS the dad but I couldn't help think the damage was done.

This led to an interesting discussion with my (does not think about women's issues) mum about how some men must genuinely think that they might not be the father, but others could and I bet often do accuse the mothers of sleeping around just to try and belittle them and play min games. It then forces the woman to 'prove' he is the dad but even if she does there has been damage done, people would wonder if she had cheated.

This was what just one guy on the show made me think. He seemed to actually know he was the dad but was taunting the woman saying things like 'hell it could even be my brothers' to which she got very upset.

Just for balance (as on the bbc) there was a woman after that who was lying about my havig cheated but it just made me wonder if men do actually do things that men as a form of ongoing emotional abuse.

Thoughts? I don't normally think about these things so I apologise if I have not considered something

Do things that mean

Welcome.... I am fairly new too. My normal name is therealtillyminto but decided a festive version would be good.... You thread brings up fairly fundamental feminist issues: 1) she gets judged more regarding sex 2) will he care for the children even if they are his?

Hello! I know your name from other threads, it's nice to see you here too.

I'm feeling so sorry for the poor woman - I find Jeremy Kyle quite a nasty person for participating in something so exploitative.

I do think there's sometimes a double standard ... certainly with teenagers I know, lads who cheat get a sort of bad boy street cred, where as the girls get judged far more harshly. My little cousin has just started at university and is coming a cropper of all this.

With pregnancy though, it sounds as if he just did not want to take responsibility. Something I think is sad is the way we're told as young women that we need a relationship, instead of being happily single. I wish there were less stigma about being single - I mean, I could be wrong but it doesn't sound as if this man will suddenly turn into a lovely supportive father, does it?

Oops, that first line makes me sound like a stalker. I'm not, promise!

LDR

I think you must know me from AIBU because I am there all the time glad I've finally made it over here.

I think so ... I think it was that thread about the woman who was doing a PhD and a job and had snapped because her husband ate the beef she'd been keeping for dinner.

Yes, I do struggle with reading in between the lines. I was like 'it's just about beef!' when quite clearly it was not

TBH it was an odd OP - I think she must've written it then afterwards thought 'oops, it's not really about that!'.

Anyway, sorry, I'm derailing your thread.

Jeremy Kyle is a horrible man who is horrible to everyone and encourages all the people on his show to be as unpleasant as possible.

That said, I think the trouble is that a man can't ever know that a child is his, whereas a woman always knows that a child is hers. I don't think it's true that any of these men (in general on these paternity test things) know that the child is theirs because it is always possible that it isn't. I think that they react the way they do because they have split up with the mother and don't want anything to do with her and so they hope that the child isn't theirs, and somehow they feel that saying it will make it so.

I know but what I was wondering was if some people play on 'well it might not be
Mine' just to undermine and discredit the woman.

Sort of like when on these (awful) shows where the woman proves they are the father but the damage is done unless they go back and also do a lie detector etc

Not all the time obv as women do cheat and I take your point about no man ever being 100% sure like a woman can be.

Being overly paranoid and suspecting cheating constantly, even when your partner is innocent and not acting suspiciously, or maliciously accusing your partner of cheating when you don't actually suspect it is definitely emotional abuse, I would imagine that the former is a lot more common, but I wouldn't put it past some people to do the second, abuse can be really nasty like that :(

XP used to joke constantly "I bet the baby comes out black" when I was pregnant with DS (we are both white). I never so much as had male friends at this time because he was so paranoid and controlling but he said it so often that I think he seriously was trying to mess with my head to make me think that he thought I might have cheated (complicated??) Likewise, I know someone who is currently in an abusive relationship and is pregnant and he keeps saying such horrible things like "If it's a girl I'll put it back, or we'll give it away." to the point that she felt the need to explain to him that she has no influence over the baby's gender. I thought she was joking when she said this - she wasn't. Of course he knows that she can't influence the baby's gender! He's just messing with her.

I think that "it might not be mine" pretty much means "I don't want it to be mine" with a side-order of "and I want to insult you and saying that a woman sleeps around is an insult".

Men do have a paranoia about their DCs not being biologically theirs, it also manifests when women get ICSI IVF due to male infertility when it would be much easier and safer to use a sperm donor.

Uncertainty of fatherhood is at the root of a lot of patriarchal institutions eg marriage and is why female adultery is treated more harshly than male.