What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many? – Angela Carter
In yesterday’s column I pointed out that it’s impossible to draw lines which sharply delineate prostitution from other, totally legal feminine behaviors, and as I pointed out in one of my very earliest columns, “…the woman who is honest about what she wants and what she will give for it is legally persecuted and branded with the name of ‘whore’, while she who is dishonest and cloaks her prostitution by hiding it in a venerable institution is not only rewarded both socially and financially, but is actually allowed to use the machinery of ‘justice’ to collect her fee.” The laws requiring men to financially support children they sired were enacted in a day when most women had no income of their own, and at that time those laws were just and fair. But in modern times, ready access to birth control and abortion means no woman needs to have a baby she cannot support, and the misnamed “no fault” divorce laws allow her to walk out on a man for no concrete reason, block his access to his children by a number of easily-implemented stratagems, and still demand he support her children…even if she is more capable of supporting them alone than most normal men would be. Here’s an example from the August 10th Huffington Post:
Model Linda Evangelista, who once touted she doesn’t get up for less than $10,000 a day, recently asked a New York court to award her $46,000 a month in child support. Is Evangelista’s child support request as unreasonable as the headlines would like us to believe? Not necessarily. According to a Bloomberg Businessweek publication, the child’s father Francois Henri-Pinault’s total compensation as CEO of PPR-SA, a luxury brand corporation, for fiscal year 2010 was roughly $5.2 million…The annual total of the child support requested is less than 11% of Pinault’s annual income from PPR-SA. Not an outrageous amount. While the demise of the “Supermodel” may have put a damper on Evangelista’s earnings, she is reported to be worth $8 million, far from an income level where her child is in danger of becoming a public charge. However…New York law states that in…cases where parental income exceeds $130,000…an award of child support should be based on the child’s actual needs and the amount required for the child to live an appropriate lifestyle…The New York Post reports the majority of the $46,000 a month in child support would cover a 24-hour nanny and personal drivers for the child. In this case, a 24-hour nanny for a child whose mother has a career like Evangelista’s may be viewed as reasonable by a court. And while the request of personal drivers for a child may appear excessive and unreasonable to most, a judge may think they are necessary for the child’s lifestyle…Will the Family Court order Pinault to pay $46,000 a month in child support to Evangelista? Probably not. Is Evangelista’s child support claim as outrageous as it seems? Not at all.
I beg to differ. The author of this article is apparently a lawhead, one of those psychological aberrations who believes that laws can change reality. It doesn’t matter whether the law defines her claim as outrageous or not; the idea that the “actual needs” of any infant who was not the heir to a throne (and maybe not even then) could possibly come to over $1500/day is beyond absurdity; I daresay most American children cost less to support than that per month. The words “actual needs” are pretty clear, though obviously courts have chosen to interpret them in some strange fashion which makes sense only to lawyers and spoiled “supermodels”.
One Year Ago Today
“Aversions” is a discussion of some of the things I, personally, dislike in sex, for the purpose of demonstrating that even a woman as sexually open-minded as I am still has her own idiosyncrasies.