This is not what a Nazi looks like

This is not what a Nazi looks like 

When I was 13 I went on holiday camp to Hungary and enjoyed myself, swimming in the Ballaton lake and using hands and feet to communicate with people. The next summer I went to Spain but this time I took a small English dictionary, so I could look up words and make sure that no one finds out that I am German. Having learned about my home country’s darkest past in the previous school year I was deeply ashamed of my heritage. I had always liked travelling and meeting different people. Though I grew up in a small suburb where everyone pretty much looked the same I never had any reservation towards people who looked different. In fact I still pay so little attention towards people’s looks that for years I believed my housemate’s hair to be blonde when it is in fact brunette and I have mixed up several people at my work place but could identify them again correctly once I remembered what we had talked about. According to the current strand of progressivism a person is racist when they don’t notice someone else’s skin colour. Fortunately, I have now left all German guilt behind and no longer worry about whether not instantly recognising that my best friend was Mexican when I first met him makes me racist. But when I was in my formative years and sat through the story of the holocaust in almost every subject except sports and maths, I was convinced that somehow behind my open-minded verneer there was a racist lurking in the shadows, waiting to come out any moment … While no one objected to my German nationality in Spain or years later on my stay as an Au-Pair in London I still fell fool to the story of an exchange student from London, who claimed that a class of Germans who had travelled to the North of the UK had been pelted with stones and their teacher had said to them: “No matter how poor your English is, don’t speak German”. In my following years on exchange in the UK, I came across many sections on WW II in museums, even in museums where they seemed out of place. However, there was never any reservation towards my being German. Quite on the contrary, I met quite a few people who shared stories with me of how they visited Berlin when the wall was still up. That was fascinating and I could see their empathy towards a people that were living under occupation without ever having committed any crime. My shame and what I now call ‘German guilt’ began slowly to diminish. It made a last desperate attempt to come back to life when I saw Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” being sold at a newsagents in Karachi / Pakistan. That book is forbidden in Germany and had to me always seemed like toxic material that no one should get their hands on. Now being in a city where people were violently murdered every night and day, feeling guilty for crimes, people that I am not related to had committed when my dad was a small child, suddenly seemed ridiculous. Here, the last dictatorship was only a few years past and thus it was no real surprise that people were a lot more relaxed towards the one whose name must not be said within the country that he brought so much blood shed to. I later learned about the genocide in Cambodia, Srebrenica, Ruanda and other parts of the world and realised that being German does not make one predisposed towards racism. There is not a country on earth whose inhabitants have not committed acts of cruelty against other human beings. Violence knows no nationality, race or sex.

Hence why the current fashionable talk of men as inherently violent makes me very uneasy. I feel a new kind of guilt, for being part of the half of the population on whose behalf men are asked to atone for sins that they have never committed. Since speaking out against feminism and misandry I have had to read statements from male feminists that made me shudder. In their self-flagellation they sounded so much like 14 year old me, claiming that discrimination against men is the right way forward as men constitute an inherent danger towards women … I cringe when I read the words of these men who look at their masculinity as something toxic and harmful towards society, when it has in fact built our infrastructure and saved many a woman’s life.

I personally was so intrigued by the atrocities committed by Germans in the past that I read many books on the subject from the library. From my classmates, however, I heard more than once that they were fed up with hearing about it in almost every class. As if they hadn’t understood it’s wrongness the first ten times around. When I now see what’s in the media referred to as casual racism I sometimes wonder if it couldn’t just be people who are fed up with being the eternal nazis. That is a thought I had more than once since the xenophobic Pegida movement surfaced about a year ago. Maybe, just maybe it does not do the human psyche any good when people are constantly told that they are the worst of the worst.

I certainly think we need education about the holocaust. I certainly think we need sexual education for young boys and girls. I certainly do not think that telling people they are genetically predisposed towards racism makes them open-minded. I certainly do not think telling men they are genetically predisposed towards physically harming women and enjoying seeing them suffer makes them empathic human beings. Yes, I do not only believe that consent-workshops are a waste of people’s time. I do also believe they are harmful.

Then how can we reduce sexual assault rates? I could not say it any better than George in his interview with Lauren Southern: “One of the things people have been asking me, what would I have as an alternative to consent classes. The way in which I learned not to rape people was through my upbringing. I was fortunate to be raised by very decent and very admirable parents and I am so grateful for that and. But I realise that not everybody has that privilege. Not everybody comes from a stable household. Not everybody comes from a household where their parents were there for them. So I think to teach consent we need to have long-term fundamental education. By fundamental education I mean being taught not what consent is and what it isn’t but what beinga decent person is. Exactly, so my mother never went to me: “George. don’t go into a club and don’t put your hand up a girl’s skirt.” She said to me: “George treat other people with decency and respect.” From that the rest follows. From treating people with respect you learn not to rape people and you learn not to abuse people.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKuAVEX5ats)

This is not what a rapist looks like

To these words i have nothing to add as they adequately represent my own attitude towards life. What I could add is that my upbringing was not as stable as George’s but I still managed to not abuse people and also to protect myself against abusive people for all my adult life. So his point about self-reliance and individual responsibility instead of the currently fashionable victim attitude also strongly resonated with me. Also, during my youth I witnessed plenty of violence and thus know with certainty that violence knows neither sex, nor age, race or nationality. I will probably write about some of my observations on another post. However, after almost two years of being openly anti-feminist I know that the internet is not misogynistic as the Sarkeesians like to claim but very unkind towards people whose opinions differ from the commonly accepted narrative.

Ignorance about Men

This is written in reply to the article Three rules could make you a better man — and save your life by Stephen Marche, published today in the New York Post

Dear Stephen, you say in your piece that you have unsuccessfully tried to reach men with your writings on gender. As someone who has studied language and literature, you should be aware that communication is a two way street. If men are not interested in what you have to say on gender issues, it is very likely that what are you saying has no to relevance to them. This is where you should start listening to what men actually have to say.

But instead you are employing women to talk men into accepting whatever you think is good for them. I am honestly appalled by that. Women are not your pawns in the issues that you are experiencing with your fellow men. The last thing that a woman who worries about the men in her life needs is condescension for them. I am speechless when you mention the astronomically high male suicide rate and shortly thereafter call men ignorant and ask women to meet men with the very same attitude. Nobody has ever killed themselves out of ignorance. The will to live is the strongest instinct we have. As a trained lifeguard I advise you to not approach a drowning person when they panic but to wait until they have become unconscious or there will be two of you at the bottom of the sea. A person’s life has to be unbearable for them to overcome the strong instinct to live.

Swap the words ‘men’ and ‘women’ in your article and maybe it will become apparent to you that you would never call women ignorant and ask other men, who care about the women in their lives to put their ignorance in front of them. That would rightly be considered misogyny. I do not see such articles anywhere despite your claim of hordes of men who are treating women like garbage. The only times I ever feel devalued as a woman is when I am asked – sadly very often in the media – to call the men in my life ignorant and to look down on them. In fact, it pains me to hear the men in my life to be spoken about in this way. They are anything but ignorant. The men in my life are people who look out for me. They make an effort to make me laugh when I am feeling down. The men in my life are people I look up to. They are people I learn from. Not a day goes by on which I don’t feel inspired by them to aim higher and become a better version of myself. Men have always encouraged me to not give up when I was struggling to acquire some new skill. They have racked their brains to find ways of explaining the front crawl to me, that would get me to finally understand the movement that seemed incomprehensible to me. To be able to do so requires men to attentively observe the people they are interacting with. If men were, as you claim, ignorant and had their eyes closed to reality, we would be living in a very different world. When I hear people say that men lack empathy, I always wonder who they are talking about.

The only men that I have ever witnessed a lack of empathy in, are men who are on a crusade to save women. Not only are they ignorant to the daily struggles and achievements of their fellow men, they are also blind to how women feel about seeing their men put down like that. It pains me to read your article and others like it. And I am far from the only woman who feels this way. Historically, men have been the protectors and providers of women in a physical sense, but likewise women have always stood up to protect their men in the social sphere. And why would they not? Why would they stand by and watch their men be degraded and have their life blood sucked out of them?

There is a new generation of women standing up against this daily casual misandry in the media because women by nature want to raise their men up and see them live their full potential. Men have a lot to offer our society. We cannot continue losing them at the rate we currently do to depression and suicide. It is time we start listening to men and stop talking down to them. High time to end our ignorance when it comes to the lived experience of men.

“The Red Pill” in Manchester

or how people in the past were mainly focused on survival and bettering the lot of their family and didn’t really have time for oppressing their next of kin.

Just a very brief post on the poignancy of the screening of “The Red Pill” tonight in Manchester as I think that it is the most apt place to have the film screened. This is where the biggest and most abrupt historical change in men’s and women’s living circumstances happened. That the industrial revolution altered our lives as never before in human history is a fact that feminists and the general public like to completely disregard.

I was lucky to have spent an Erasmus year as an exchange student at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2007/8. I didn’t consider myself lucky at the time as the university was substandard in general and I and the other German exchange student were supposed to only take courses at the Languages Department, where we as advanced students of English and American Literature and Culture would be learning about the geography of the British Isles and how to analyse a text.

I wasn’t having any of that and while we were barred barred from the English Department I got us into the History Department and the wonderful lectures of the amazing Terry Wyke. One series of lectures took us to a different historical site in or outside of Manchester every Monday morning where we would get a very vivid image of the events that took place there in the 18th/19th century. One of the things I learned during that year was that English women really enjoy having cold feet. Otherwise why would they wear ballerinas in January when you have to stand outside for two hours?

In addition to that bit of cultural studies I got a real sense of what it meant that people’s life expectancy jumped and child mortality dropped within a life time. Moreover, how the migration from the countryside into the suddenly emerging cities changed the family structure.

I had surely learned about these things from books before but what you really need if you want to understand something is the theoretical knowledge, the bare facts AND the practical experience. Then you correlate one with the other and check the various connections.

Back then I didn’t enjoy my time in Manchester as it was always damp, my fellow students at MMU were very immature and the city was still as congested as Engel’s has described it. But in the years following my time there the close encounter with the Industrial Revolution really helped me on my way to understanding why the feminist view of history and male and female relations is so obviously misguided and yet why many people find it so easy to believe and so hard to question.

Now enjoy a snippet of Terry Wyke’s lecture in Castlefield Basin about the arrival of the Rochdale Canal 🙂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dol6Dt1e3Bk

Drei gute Gründe für Male Tears

Schőner Text 🙂

Social Stories

Not an MRA post but might be a good laugh 🙂

I recently attended a conference where I learned about social stories, so I thought I’d share that knowledge:

Imagine yourself scrambling up a mounhill (in the UK heaps of sand and stones that are structured like mountains but do not have the required size). After you have just come up a very steep incline you suddenly see two chaps standing next to a car on there. Camera out – because proof or it wasn’t there. And before you know it you’re asking them how they’ve come up there in the care and what they’re doing up there with the car. None of that is a problem if you’re are up there with someone aged 10 or under. Because they would also want to know these things. But if you are there with someone over the age of 10 you now have a problem because for some reason people over the age of 10 do not seem to notice cars on top of mountains and seem to have no desire of finding out how they got there. So you now need to make up a story of why you needed to talk to these guys that makes sense to a person over the age of 10. A good social story in this case is: “I was trying to get us a lift down”. It’s a social story because it keeps the social fabric intact. 🙂

And then your social story becomes almost real as you watch them actually drive down the mountain – which looks like a looooooooot of fun – and you say to your friend over the age of 10: “We should have really hitched a ride with them.”

This isn’t actually where we came up, but every social story needs some drama 🙂

What’s the point of asking RU OK? when “men don’t talk”

Fantastic article by Glen Poole on deep listening (what Warren Farrell calls active listening )

“Men DO Talk If You Know How To Listen

I’ve been working with and studying men’s projects around the world for over 15 years now and one of the key lessons I’ve learnt is that men of all backgrounds do talk when the person they are talking to knows how to listen. This suggests that rather than telling individual men to change the way they talk, we all need to change the ways we listen to men instead.

Have you ever noticed that the way we talk can change, depending on who’s listening? ”

“So when you reach out to mates today and ask R U OK? remember their ability to talk is shaped by your ability to listen. Men DO talk if you know how to listen.”

STOP MALE SUICIDE

By Glen Poole

Today is R U OK? Day, a national day of action that aims to inspire people all over Australia to look out for each other by regularly asking ‘R U OK?’

We’re big fans of R U OK? at the Stop Male Suicide project and yet a lot of people wonder “what’s the point of asking a man if he’s ok, when men don’t talk!?”

And they’ve got a point. I’m the first to admit that we have a problem with men talking about their problems. so seriously—what is the point of asking a man R U OK?

• Come and listen to R U OK? ambassadors speaking at one of our Stop Male Suicide seminars—click here for more info

I could just shrug my shoulders and let R U OK? Day pass me by without thinking about it (I’m good at avoiding and ignoring problems) but…

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“Invisible Violence”: Translation into English of the article “Die verschwiegene Gewalt”

This is a translation into English of the article “Die verschwiegene Gewalt”, published on 8 September 2016 in the Reutlinger General-Anzeiger by Markus Hehn. Because articles of this quality about men affected by domestic violence and the people who try to help them are a rarity I decided to make this article accessible to non-German speakers.

Advice: The Pfullingen (town in South Germany) psychologist Sandra Hermann supports men who have been beaten and humiliated

PFULLINGEN. The girls night is in full swing and the chick flick on tv is reaching its dramatic peak. With feverish excitement the four women are holding each other by their hands as the pretty woman is having a go at her husband. When she suddenly slaps the guy the women in the sofa scream in delight.

Image source: http://gea.de/region+reutlingen/pfullingen+eningen+lichtenstein/die+verschwiegene+gewalt.4973389.htm

And while one woman quickly rewinds the movie for another round of fun the other three dig in to the sweets on the table in front of them. The scene ends with a cheerful off-stage voice saying »Always a moment to celebrate«.

While Sandra Hermann gets the commercial’s punchline she does not think it is funny at all. Just imagine a group of men roaring with laughter when a woman is slapped on tv, she points out: „Would we still laugh if the roles were reversed?“

Fear of being seen as victims

For the psychologist from Pfullingen the video is just among instances of violence against men being portrayed as admissible. In her daily work she witnesses men suffering from physical and emotional violence, happening most of the time in their own homes.

»Many men do not even seek counselling though«, she says, »because they are worried that they will not be believed.« The stereotype of men as the dominant sex makes it harder as well to admit to themselves that they are being battered. »At all ages men receive less help which makes them think they have to go through it alone.« When a victim does come round to seeking help and consults Sandra Hermann her first concern is to explore all options while being an active listener. Whether a police report will be filed or whether he will come to therapy with his partner depends on the individual case.

Hermann points out what can be done, »what will be done will be decided by her clients though« Her clients are generally 30 years and above. There is no upper limit though, neither when it comes to age, nor the types of violence with which men see themselves confronted.

This ranges from physical violence in nursing care to emotional violence in relationships and includes insults, such as »You loser«, threats, such as »If you do that you will never see your children again« or frequently monitoring the mobile phone.

Men’s counselling network

In order to be able to help more men Hermann joined the »Men’s counselling network« in April this year. Its website lists contact points that are free of charge across the whole of Germany. Sandra Hermann is one among three in Baden-Württemberg, who are offering these entry point consultancy services on a voluntary basis.

Since the other spots are in Karlsruhe and Heidelberg, Hermann’s catchment area from Pfullingen is substantive. It’s only the absence of publicity that keeps her from being overrun.

The importance of publicity

Hermann though works on changing that. Public outreach is a major part of her efforts. »It’s a top priority«, she says. In that the 42 year old is supported by Andrea Sautter. The lawyer heads the Reutlingen branch of the »Weißer Ring«, a German non-profit that supports victims of crimes and their families – that obviously inludes men.

Sautter – together with Sandra Hermann – wants to create public awareness for the issue of violence against men. »Even the people affected often have a distorted image«, she says. Practical actions include displaying leaflets at police stations. »That is so important«, Hermann adds, »in order that people know that they are not alone and that help is available.«

It is important for the two women to emphasize that this is no backlash against the services for women. They use the example of shelters to stress this point. While the roughly 400 refugees for women across Germany are publically funded the four accommodation facilities offered by the men’s counselling network are funded exclusively through private donations. Hermann and Sautter state that there are not too many services for women but too few for men. They would wish for more support on the part of the public authorities, but there seems to be a lack of funds and political will.

That is why not much research is carried out in this area. Conversely the lack of knowledge is used to justify that there is no need for domestic violence shelters for men. Argumentatively, a vicious cycle, Herman states with disappointment. The problem: »There is no lobby and studies are costly.«

At this point Hermann recommends a look at our European neighbors. In the Swiss town of Brugg exists a men’s shelter where public funding is working. Clear-cut figures are proof of the demand: there are 60 to 70 monthly requests.

Breaking a taboo

Sandra Hermann has mixed feelings when looking at the future. The topic of male victims of violence is still taboo. She knows that it will take time before the general public will become receptive to this issue. »I am hoping for everyone affected that things will change«, says Hermann. »Because as things are right now it’s all distorted and one-sided. But when people want to live together help can never be one-sided.« (GEA)

http://www.maennerberatungsnetz.de

PLAN International – wieviele Patenschaften von Mädchen habt Ihr? – offener Brief aufgrund des Sexismusvorwurfs gegen PLAN

Great open letter (in German) to the sexist organisation Plan. They are pretending to be open to dialogue on their fb page but instead of even attempting to address the criticism to their sexist campaign – that is based on the lie that only girls suffer in developing countries – they only ever get personal and claim all criticism of their campaign is irrelvant.

Geschlechterallerlei

… und wieviele von Jungen?

Liebes “PLAN International”-Team,

mein Name ist Ludger Pütz und ich lebe in Kolumbien, wo PLAN International ebenfalls tätig ist.

Seit einigen Jahren lese ich immer wieder von Ihren weltweiten Aktionen und Ihrem Einsatz für Kinder. Sich für hilfsbedürftige Kinder in der Welt einzusetzen, finde ich eine ganz tolle Sache, die es sich zu unterstützen lohnt. Doch Ihre Werbung macht mich immer wieder stutzig darüber, ob Ihr wirklich Kindern helft – also Mädchen UND Jungen gleichermaßen – oder doch NUR bzw. hauptsächlich Mädchen.

Wenn ich mir Ihre Projektlisten anschaue, dann sieht es ganz danach aus, dass Ihr Euch auf Mädchen und junge Frauen konzentriert.

tl;dr – Falls Ihnen der Brief zu lang zum lesen sein sollte, was ich verstehen kann, bitte ich Sie, zum dunkelgrün markierten Absatz zu springen, in dem ich meine Fragen an Sie formuliere.

Durch die aktuelle Debatte, die auf Ihrer Facebookfanseite…

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Mandantory paternity testing at birth

An mra friend of mine asked on his fb whether people thought paternity testing at birth should be mandatory. Since it is estimated that historically 5 – 10% of children were not biologically related to the fathers who were raising them and since this number must have risen dramatically in the current polyamorous hook-up culture this is a valid proposal.  I had a discussion on this topic a few months back on my old fb profile. Since that is gone and I no longer trust fb to not take this profile away as well and since my answer is too long for a fb post I will lay it out in this blog post.

My answer: Definitely!

Image source: http://www.zajaclawfirm.com/Articles/Unwed-Father-s-Rights.shtml

Benefits

1) It would bring more harmony to families. There would be less tension over unresolved conflicts. Thus, less likelihood for domestic violence to occur. Less likelihood for children and adults to develop personality disorders or other serious behavioural problems. Children would grow up in stable families and become a blessing instead of a curse to those around them. They would help build strong communities and contribute to the betternment of mankind.

2) Resulting from the first and main reason it should be obvious that more harmony in families leads directly to greatly reduced government spending on police, social workers, hospitals and doctors, etc. Reduced crime benefits everyone, locals and visitors alike. Hospitals and doctors treating domestic violence cases and children/youths who have gotten involved in violence could be freed up to deal with e.g. cancer treatment.

3) Ending the current hook-up culture. If someone wants to be intimate with a different person every weekend or weekday they are free to do so. However, the research clearly shows the damaging psychological effects of establishing and immediatly breaking close bonds. Even people who haven’t experienced childhood or other trauma are getting increasingly psychologically insecure these days. And, no, I don’t want to reverse history.  There is no need to go back to Victorian times and have a chaperone accompany a young lady on her every outing. It should be possible to expect women to take responsibility for their own actions in the year 2016 😉 Just as we are expecting more of school children and professionals in their fields these days than we did 100 years ago we can expect young women to think of the consequences of their actions. Unfortunately, at the moment the consequences are a life that will be bitter when lived out – raising children on their own or in a dysfunctional relationship – but ahead of time do not look bad enough to keep women from sleeping with every Tom, Dick and Harry.

And while feminists would claim that there is still stigma attached to promiscuous women, they have already found a way of getting around that in allowing any woman who regrets what she did last night to easily get out of societal stigma and her own personal regrets by accusing the man of rape, thus making a mockery of actual victims of sexual assault and making men increasingly wary of getting involved with women in any way.

Thus, eliminating hook-up culture by implementing mandatory paternity testing at birth would at the same time bring down false rape accusations, which are running rampant at the moment, especially, at American and Candadian college campuses. As Camille Paglia said: “In the 70s we fought for freedom from ‘in loco parentis’ to be allowed to go wherever we wanted, whenever we wanted, so that we could make our own mistakes and learn from them, just like the boys. And today women want to be protected again.” Today’s young women are asking men to protect them. It seems they want an actual patriarchy. As a woman living in this society I sometimes wonder – when I look at my ‘sisters’ whether feminists aren’t right after all. Men have started to vote with their feet. It is men’s disapproval of women’s current behaviour, men’s shunning of women because their mere company has become a liability to a man’s life that is slowly leading to a sea change in matters concerning the lives of men and women. I personally don’t mind being mainly surrounded by men at men’s issues conferences – makes me feel like a fish in the water actually, since I grew up a tomboy – but I am deeply disappointed by how little responsibility my fellow women are taking for the course our society is taking.

4) Re-establishing trust or better than that: creating a new and better kind of trust between men and women. It is obvious to anyone that the situation at birth – when the woman definitely knows that she is the mother of the child but the ‘father’ has to blindly trust her is a deeply unequal one. In very rare cases the mother goes home with a child that isn’t hers and these cases of babies being mixed up in the hospital are always seen as deeply tragic. Ironically, when the father is affected in this way, no one seems to care. All this incessant talk about inequality but people seem to be blind to it when it’s men who are affected by it.

I see men talk about the costs of raising a child. Ironically, it tends to be those men who would happily spend 250,000 on raising a child that they have fathered, that they are getting to spend time with, that they are seeing grow from a girl into a woman or a boy into a man: a child that won’t suddenly be ripped from them, turned against them and only come back to ask for more money. Unsurprisingly this situation sends many men to an untimely death. Isn’t it ironic how feminists always claim they want men to be more emotional and when they are they call it misogyny and lobby to make laws against it.

A child is an investment in the future and so was a spouse once. You pooled your resources together because together they were worth more than individually. Now they are worth less after a few years when you have to separate them again. For many women they are worth more due to unjust laws but does that mean that women have all the power now and that their lives are filled with endless joy? You don’t need to read the much hyped book by the palliative care nurse Bonnie Ware ‘The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing’ to know that material posessions don’t bring happiness. Men’s high suicide rate is a clear indicator of men’s suffering from the current situation. But so is the insecurity and neediness of the vast majority of women I interact with on a daily basis. When I look into their faces I see the living dead.

Most of all a relationship with a child or an adult – romantic or friendship or familial – is an emotional investment that can only fail so often before a person becomes so wary of the accompanying pain of that failure that making that investment feels no longer worth it. That is the point at which we are at the moment. I can observe that very clearly in the experiences of a friend of mine with online dating. It’s not only not wanting to go for a meal – because who wants to spend 20 Euros, assuming the bill is split – on a person they might never see again – but the sheer unwillingness to actually get to know the other person. A chat over a drink is not getting to know someone. People get to know each other when there is sudden disharmony after the initial ‘the other person can’t do no wrong phase’ and they need to figure out what that is caused by: their attitudes/behaviour or the other person’s? something between them? something outside of them? Most people don’t get to that stage these days, whether online or offline. Big cities are increasingly referred to as single capitals and people on the look-out know that there is an overflow of supply of men and women looking for Mr or Mrs Right out there. They read books telling them there is no such person, that this whole concept is made up by Hollywood to sell cinema tickets. But they don’t learn anything from these books. I am an avid reader and I get lots of inspiration from great books. But neither I, nor anyone else is changed by reading a book in isolation. Books can never change people. Only people can change people. People that get so close under our skin that we want to do the hard work to become a better version of ourselves, making us as a result a better person to be in a relationship with (romantic, friendship or familial).

The benefits outlined above should reason enough to argue for mandatory paternity testing at birth. However, I will list the problems with the procedure that should be taken into account as well.

Problems

1) In a discussion I saw someone mention costs on the already overstretched health system. That is not an actual argument as they would be far outweighed by the spending savings outlined in benefits 2) Also, they would obviously come down a lot if this was carried out in high numbers.

2) And this is the only real problem I see: Most people think that because we refer to the natural sciences as hard sciences that the results are always accurate. That is a widespread myth. Faulty results in medical tests are much higher than most people know. Sadly, practioners and makers of the equipment prefer this information to not become widely known. One major reason, according to the author of the book ‘Risk Savvy – How to make good Decisions’, Gerd Gigerenzer, is the suing culture in North America. Another is the high income that can be generated from operating (cancer) patients, regardless of whether the operation is actually necessary.

A common pre-birth test at the moment is screening for Down Syndrome in the baby. For good or worse the number of children born with the genetic defect has gone sharply down since testing has become widespread. However, again and again women who had been told their baby was going to be born with Down Syndrome but decided against an abortion, gave birth to healthy babies.

Thus, babies with a positive test should be tested again and a counsellor should be present at all stages of the process in order to not damage perfectly healthy relationships. However, I expect the accuracy of the technology to increase sharply over time with its widespread use.

This article is not locked at this moment in time. Since I started writing I realised how many aspects there are to this issue. I have touched on quite a few but I will certainly keep coming back to this topic.

 

 

 

Der Pöbler und die Menschenrechte

Jedes Kind ist wertvoll – Eine Antwort an die Hilfsorganisation Plan International