marinmom:

I have put up post after post laden with evidence. None of you negative posters have presented any evidence to the contrary. None of you has any argument that holds up to mine.

*facepalm*

Start telling me about dads who are functional and not drinkers,drug abusers, molesters, cheaters, beaters, gambling, overspending pigs.Oh, and jailbirds, too. Start telling me about the scores of men that you know that do not fall into this category.

OK, I'll start with my dad. Then I'll add his three brothers, the four engineers I work for, the secretary's husband, the fathers of the three friends from high school I still talk to (though the 1 friend's parents divorced, it was because SHE couldn't control her spending, not him), and every family on my street that I know. I'll also throw in myself, though I am not a father (or married). That enough "evidence" for you?

Not to echo Truett, but where do you pick up men that your personal experience has led you to the bizarre conclusion that "most" men are addicted, abusing, cheating, etc.?

The majority of dysfunctional people you know will be men (see prison statistics.) If you don't know this, you have your head so far up your butt there is no hope for you.

Or, *gasp*, the living situation and life experiences of myself and others is different from yours. Even if I accepted the premise that most dysfunctional people are men (how is prison the sole indicator of "dysfuntional"?), that is still a far cry from claiming that "most men" are dysfunctional. That would be like claiming that since women comprise a higher percentage of prostitutes than men, that most women are prostitutes.

cutecouple--despite your continual disparagement of Mom's conclusions, you sure seem to have a dog in this hunt. Who abused you as a child?

Actually, she has a good point about just which gender does the most murdering of the other. During the big Peterson coverage a few years ago (the first wife murdering Peterson, not the second), it seemed that the news in my area (SF BAY) was deluged by reports of some man or man-child murdering his wife/girlfriend/SO =/- all the kids because said woman had threatened to or had actually left him---or maybe he was just depressed. Geez, I thought--this is really depressing! I'm a single (childless) heterosexual female approaching 40, do I even DARE to date?

I was curious, and started doing a nightly news search for men killing women (I worked graveyard and was a bit bored). I looked specifically for men that killed women they knew. I eliminated prostitute killings. Under those specific guidelines, I found at LEAST one report, usually more, in the US every night. If I expanded to North America, there were more. If I expanded to the world, it was simply too depressing to count.

I didn't spend inordinate amounts of time doing these searches--maybe 10-15 minutes. I didn't look for ALL of the possible news reports, just wanted to know if I could find at least one. Noooo problem.

Really, truly, depressing.

Janipurr- Exactly which part of my rebuttal to her argument do you take issue with? I just don't get this murder angle you guys have chosen to veer off onto. This was an article about single parents households and how they are not the ideal circumstance for children to be raised in. Obviously, if all men who were estranged from their wives/girlfriends/mistress chose to murder them and the children their would be very few single parent households.There would have been no article written, there would have been no debate. Despite your reference to nightly murder reports, murder remains an excedingly rare occurance. Most people simply do not murder other human beings, end of story. There are roughly 280 million people in this country. Slightly less than half are men, but for this example we'll just call it 50%. If every night or the year (your example) a man killed his whole family there would be 356 incidents in a year. 356 incidents/140 million men= 0.0003 % of men in any year are family murderers. That is a rounding error in anyones book. You could make it 50 family murdering men a night (i don't know the exact statistics, but i would bet my life there are fewer) and you are still only up to 0.013% of all men being family murderers in any one year. It is simply a very rare event any way you cut it. If you are scared of dating because of all the "family murdering" men out there, i can't imagine all the other things you go through life being terrified of.

It is a fact that men murdering women and children has become more common than a space shuttle launch. It is true that you can hardly look at the news lately without hearing a story about a man who either killed his wife or child(ren) or both. It is obvious to me that the amount of stress placed on a man in this overpopulated, overly idealistic society is what is causing this epidemic of murder. My posts have all actually defended men by saying that too much is expected of them. This all ties into my story of being a successful single mother. My whole point was to point out that society is structured too ridgidly. There are too many people on this planet right now to sit around and pick people apart. Single mothers did not hit the WTC with hyjacked aircraft. Single mothers did not start a war. Single mothers did not drive up fuel prices or ruin the economy. Single mothers are not your enemy. Ignorance is your enemy, not single mothers. If you know a single mother, try to put aside your disgust for her not having a man living with her. Decide that you can be an uplifting person in her life. Most single mothers want to be independent but if it's no skin off your butt, maybe help her out a little.God forbid you should do such a character building thing as be uplifting. Maybe the single mother doesn't want to sleep with your husband. Maybe she could be a valuable friend. It really does take a village, people.

I'm sorry, but Marianmom you have some serious F'in issues.

You keep claiming to be defending men in all of your posts by stating that "too much is expected of them." Yet, this is your entire defense, and you repeat it constantly and then continue to perpetuate sterotypes and disparage all men. And, because these are your experiences you feel that you're entitled to espuse them as general truths. You make baseless arguments about uncommon events, and you state the nightly news as your source.

Having an opinion does not automatically lend credibility to it. You have to base things on more than your personal experience; it's called perspective.

Davelias12, I thought I had based my whole post on personal experience. You are obviously a man. Let's hear your perspective. Are you married with children? Do you have substance abuse issues? Manic depressive? Do you beat, cheat, molest, verbally abuse your family or treat them like they are lesser than you are? Do you have anger control problems that you subject your family to? If not and you are one of that handful of perfect guys out there, tell us your secrets for success. What do you do when it all gets to be too much? Do you ever feel like maybe it was never supposed to be this way? Do you ever feel like people should be more like animals and let the female raise the offspring?Females usually are much more invested in their offspring because they carried them and went through hell to bring them into the world. Men do not. When the world was a less populated place a man could get away with beating, cheating, molesting, etc. No one did anything about it. It was looked at as normal and everyone looked away. Now we have TV and if you murder your wife, it is going to be on the national news. If you have an affair, people will find out about it. If you beat your wife and kids you will go to jail in this country. So what's an abuse husband/father to do these days? How do you cope, Mr.Davelias? Also, lets hear from your wife as to which are your vices. If you don't have a wife and kids, you really aren't qualified to put up negative posts here. You have no idea how stressful it is to live up to all the expectations that are put upon you by society, schools, jobs, etc. I really think that you don't have a wife and kids because your post just sounds like you are just some dude that has never experienced any of these things but just has an idealistic view of how they are. You probably got most of your ideals from television, because you don't tell me about any guys that you know that are trying to hold it all together and not lose it. So, lets hear from you. Oh, and what is "espuse"?

Marinmom-

There is not a doubt in my mind that even if he had spelled espouse correctely, you still wouldn't know what it means. Your situation has finally become very, very clear to me. The terrible men that you constantly talk about are the only ones you have ever been around, i no longer doubt that. There is a very good reason for it though. You are an ignorent, mouthy, woman. No semi intelligent man would ever tolerate you, at least not after you opened that big mouth and spew began to flow out of it. I think you said once that you are actually married now. I feel sorry for that poor sob. He should definetely invest in a good ball gag, its value to his happiness would be immeasurable.

You're doing it again: men have drug, violence, abuse, etc, etc. issues. It's just a lame excuse.

Do you have substance abuse issues? Manic depressive? Do you beat, cheat, molest, verbally abuse your family or treat them like they are lesser than you are? Do you have anger control problems that you subject your family to? If not and you are one of that handful of perfect guys out there, tell us your secrets for success.

Um, this is crazy. Where do you live?

Everyone has their issues, but for some reason you feel the need to extend these tendencies to the extreme of their capacity. Do you really believe the majority of men are this way? And, if you do not fall into the above category you are a "perfect guy?" It just seems like a very limited point of view that you are way too comfortable with. Why do you assume men cannot deal with their issues and will automatically resort to violence? That's just plain stupidity.

Is it ok for me to say that all women/jews/homosexuals/handica­pped people are disfunctional just because I ran into a few bad apples?

And, no I do not have kids, but several of my friends are wonderful loving fathers.

Get over yourself.

espuse = espouse. Typo.

TruettCollins, you are so brainwashed by men (religion). Religion is not about God, you idiot. It is about men controlling women. Show me one religion where women are in control. Religion (like the polygamists in Texas) is all about keeping the woman down. I am very glad to see that more and more people are seeing religion for what it really is; just a haven for the mentally ill. So many people have been slaughtered in the name of God, including the four thousand of our servicemen/women in IRAQ. You probably voted for that idiot Bush because you thought he cares about Jesus, didn't you? Go beat your bible and sell crazy somewhere else, you moron! Oh, and I never looked for a mate in a back alley or drug den, but I would take a druggie over a sactimonious phoney baloney jerk who hides behind religion. You have got to be the sickest people of all. No one can live up to all that crap and that is why we are all so unhappy. Religion is also the main reason why the world is so overpopulated. None of the big religions believe in birth control because they would lose too many members and money. You don't even know why you believe this crap. You haven't researched the origins of theology. If you did, you would know that it is all crap.

I never said that most men molest. I said that most men have a substance abuse problem. To me, a man or woman who drinks anything other than a glass of wine with dinner has a drinking problem. If I have to put up with a person's foul mood the next day or the day after because that person was drinking, then I feel that person is abusive. I shouldn't have to put up with that crap.

Janipurr is very intelligent.

Marinmom-

Janipurr quite possibly could be intelligent, but who really knows. All she really did though was try to defend one tiny point of yours- because she felt sorry for you that every single other person on hear is telling you that you are deranged. After i refuted her weak point with some basic math, she pursed it no further. Maybe you were unable to follow the math. Go back up a couple posts and see if you can work through it (really it's not that difficult).

marinmom should not be allowed near children, including her own.

"If I have to put up with a person's foul mood the next day or the day after because that person was drinking, then I feel that person is abusive. I shouldn't have to put up with that crap."

I seriously think the word "abusive" is WAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY overused nowadays.