Getting to “No” – A blueprint for a Fathers Rights Resistance movement
[Formatted, paginated, print version (pdf)]
Excerpted from the forthcoming book: The War on Fatherhood
©Mark Charalambous
August 31, 2008
Contents
I Preliminaries
1. Cultural context of the Fathers Rights movement
2. Fathers Rights as a counter-revolution
II Fighting Back
1. This is a Fathers Rights movement
2. The War on Fatherhood
3. The fundamental cause of the problem
4. Attacking the enemy is a primary function of the Fathers Rights resistance movement
5. Precious energy and resources wasted trying to ‘educate’ enemies
III Fathers Rights as a resistance movement
1. Micro-level resistance—the individual court case
2. Macro-level resistance—everywhere else!
2.1 Bringing the War to the streets: Counter-demonstrations
2.2 Bringing the War to the courts
2.3 Study Wars: Bringing the War to the university halls
IV Summary
Appendix: The Real Wheel of Abuse
The working title of this paper was “A blueprint for a Fathers Rights resistance movement.†However, as the writing proceeded and the paper grew with each editing session, at some point I realized writing a comprehensive, detailed blueprint for building a Fathers Rights movement was a book-length task. What I have written is really an overview of the issues that should be considered toward constructing an actual blueprint for a successful Fathers Rights movement.
I Preliminaries—understanding the problem
The problem—the systematic discrimination, persecution, and now criminalization of fathers by virtue of their classification as “non-custodial parents†by the courts—has been in existence for the better part of 30 years.
The problem shows no sign of abating. Largely speaking, it is an invisible problem. The first question that needs to be asked and answered is: Why has there been no progress in all this time?
Finger-pointing is a staple of the Fathers Rights community. It has always existed because it is quite natural for a failed movement to explain away its failure by assigning blame.
1. Cultural context of the Fathers Rights movement
The problem is huge and multi-faceted, on this all agree. But what has to be comprehended first is the social and cultural environment within which this problem, and our movement, exists.
Parallels with other civil rights movements for “social justice†are often given to suggest how our movement should reframe itself to succeed. But there are no other civil rights movements analogous to what I refer to as the War on Fatherhood, and here’s why.
What have been the socio-political movements that have defined our recent history? Certainly the Civil Rights movement for African-Americans immediately springs to mind. Despite the fact that slavery ended a century earlier after the Civil War, racial injustice continued. The great Civil Rights movement of the sixties sought to end all the latent discrimination against black Americans that persisted.
A decade later, the women’s movement took full flight. “Women’s lib†and “feminism†became household words.
Presently, the latest class of people demanding attention from the identity politics crowd is homosexuals. Since it is debatable whether or not this aggrieved class is produced by “accidents of birth†as is true for racial and sexual distinctions—and also because the normalization of homosexuality is very much an evolving paradigm—I remove it from this discussion, but note that same-sex marriage and gay adoption are indeed issues that have significant bearing on Fathers Rights.
It cannot be denied that until these “social justice†movements of the sixties and seventies emerged, the white male dominated society. He may not have always ruled his family, hearth and home, but he overwhelmingly dominated positions of money, power and influence virtually everyplace else.
Both of these movements for “social justice†were unidirectional, that is, movement in one direction only: empowering people of color at the expense of ethnic European whites and women at the expense of men. In such a political environment it is virtually impossible for initiatives that intentionally favor whites at the expense of non-whites or men at the expense of women to see the light of day, let alone gain any political traction. This is realpolitik, and has nothing to do with the merits of any particular issue or cause.
But these two movements are not at the same stage. Black empowerment is mature, in the sense that the pendulum has gone as far as it is going to go, and we now begin to see a paradigm shift away from the excesses of “white guilt.†It is a given that within a few years racial preferences, aka affirmative action, will be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and will hopefully disappear altogether.
The women’s empowerment movement, on the other hand, thrives. The light at the end of the tunnel is not yet visible. It is said that we now live in a “post-feminist†world. Implicit in the use of this language is an acknowledgement that this feminist revolution is irreversible. It is still anathema for a politician to even pay lip service to a legislative or public policy initiative that would result in disempowering women to the benefit of men. Exhibit A is the grilling Justice Samuel Alito endured by Sen. Dianne Feinstein during his confirmation hearings. Alito was called to task on his dissent on Planned Parenthood v. Casey[1], where he opposed the majority on the judicial panel who ruled that a woman in an intact marriage has no legal or moral obligation to even inform—let alone seek the permission of—her husband, if she wants to abort a pregnancy.
I submit there is no better example of the dire state of the emasculation of men at the hands of the feminist revolution, where it is considered repugnant to even suggest that a husband has a right to be informed if his wife is pregnant and intends to abort—i.e., to kill his own unborn child without his knowledge!
But wait, there’s more!
After granting women the exclusive right to take the life of their unborn children, it hasn’t taken long for women to gain the power to actually kill their husbands, get away with it, and keep the kids to boot.
Mary Winkler, convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to just three years in jail for the 2006 shooting death of her minister husband, Matthew Winkler, served a total of 12 days in jail and two months in a mental health facility. Earlier this month she was released and given her three kids back, though formal custody of them is still pending as the slain minister’s parents are not happy at having to turn the kids over to the woman who shot their son in the back with a shotgun. Yet the “jury found her guilty of voluntary manslaughter after she testified about suffering from years of physical and emotional abuse by her husband.â€[2]
These judicial atrocities are examples of “feminist jurisprudenceâ€: the manifestation and injection of feminism, the social theory, into the legal sphere.
If you accept that we live in a non-reversible post-feminist world, you might as well give up now and sue for terms.
The Fathers Rights movement implicitly seeks to regain power that men have lost; consequently, this means it needs to disempower women. It is pure denial and a strategic error to believe otherwise. For fathers to gain custody rights of their children and freedom from criminalization based on a woman’s allegation of “abuse,†etc., the power that women presently possess to do these things must be taken away.
Therefore, before any grand strategy for gaining “shared parenting†rights and such can take place, the reality of the cultural, social and political environment that presently does not comprehend anything contrary to the empowering of women must be acknowledged and addressed. Only then will rational strategizing and a coherent battle plan be possible. To paraphrase the classic line from Paul Newman’s film Cool Hand Luke, the Fathers Rights movement must first, “get its mind right.â€
2. Fathers Rights as a counter-revolution
The Fathers Rights movement is essentially a counter-revolutionary movement. It seeks to overturn the feminist cultural revolution that has ruled the roost for the better part of two generations and counting. Once you understand this, it becomes clear that the Fathers Rights movement does not and cannot exist in a vacuum. The feminist sociology professor who teaches college freshmen that the patriarchy and the biological nuclear family are relics of a more primitive, unenlightened world… the social worker who interviews women and children entering the hospital emergency room to see if they are victims of domestic violence… the English teacher who includes Alice Walker rather than William Shakespeare in her syllabus… the U.S. senator and presidential candidate who brags about writing VAWA… the lesbian sociology professor who has her “Marriage and the Family†students fill out cards for the Statehouse supporting gay marriage… the conservative news show host on Fox who occasionally trots out a Fathers Rights advocate to make sport of him… etc., etc., all are part of the problem—not just the judge who took your child and granted your wife an abuse protection order!
II Fighting back
Essentially we are talking about a propaganda war, a war of information—more correctly, of disinformation. Clearly, therefore, a huge part of the problem is public perception. To employ the much overused cliché: we are engaged in a very real sense in a war of hearts and minds.
It is my contention that a war for hearts and minds cannot be won by disingenuous and deceptive methods, and the efforts so far to disguise the problem into a more politically palatable form is the first of the many cardinal mistakes of the Fathers Rights movement.
Any analysis of propaganda begins and ends with language. Using the verbiage of your enemy is the metaphorical equivalent of allowing the opposing army to choose the battlefield. The language used is the battlefield of the propaganda war we are engaged in. The lexicon of our enemy includes using the socially-constructed “gender†in place of the biologically determined “sex,†“parent†instead of “mother†or “father,†“partner†rather than “husband†or “wife,†“choice†rather than “abortion,†and even “abuser†and “batterer†as synonyms for men who fight for custody of their children.
We need to create our own lexicon, and promulgate its use throughout the movement. “Fathers Rights†should be punctuated as a proper noun. It is a proper name, the name of our movement. Hence, it is capitalized, and no apostrophe.
1. This is a Fathers Rights movement
For as long as I have been involved in the movement, the predominant paradigm held that awareness of the problem can gain no traction because of an innate reverse-sexism in society. This is no doubt true, but the error comes in choosing how to react. The overwhelming “wisdom†of the intelligentsia in the movement believes that approaching the problem in a gender-neutral fashion and focusing on the children will circumvent the innate bias against recognizing men, as a class, as victims.
One would think that the abject failure of all various “parent’s†or “children’s†rights organizations and approaches over the past decades would have by now convinced everyone that this is very bad advice. But unfortunately this crippled logic persists and indeed flourishes throughout the movement.
Again: hearts and minds cannot and will not be won over by disingenuous, “clever†marketing/branding/messaging. Perhaps the best example of the failure of this approach is the Children’s Rights Council. This organization took scrupulous care in grooming its image and message as one about children—and not about fathers; that children’s well-being is best ensured by the care and companionship of both of their parents.
The CRC recruited prominent credentialed women as spokespeople and board members to promote their warm, fuzzy message. But this changed nothing. Politicians as well as the media remained unresponsive. This is because any effects of law and policy changes recommended by the CRC—even though framed exclusively from the perspective of the well-being of children—would enhance the rights of fathers at the expense of power wielded by women. And this is obvious to all—and even if not obvious to some particular politician, feminists would make damn sure they “got religion.â€
The problem of children being denied their parents is overwhelmingly one of children being denied their fathers. Everyone knows this. Women who happen to find themselves on the wrong end of a child support order—or, even more rarely, an abuse protection order—are collateral damage. They have been hit by “friendly fire.†Therefore, to correct the problem of children suffering without the care and companionship of both of their parents, the power of women to veto the involvement of the father, given to them by the state via the family court, has to be curtailed.
Again, hearts and minds cannot be won by impure and disingenuous strategies. Virtually everyone knows a sales pitch when they see one. This fundamental dishonesty in describing the problem and then expecting sympathy and support is doomed to fail. A successful Fathers Rights resistance movement requires authenticity, not a slicker marketing campaign.
Let us embrace the problem for what it is. Let us mean what we say and say what we mean. We will discover that more hearts and minds—of men and women—will open to our message when we dispense with the tactical, “clever,†marketing-driven messaging and strategies.
Here is the real problem, restated. This is how it should be presented, because this is the truth:
Women have been empowered by the state to criminalize the fathers of their children. Financial incentives via usurious child support awards encourage women to use the power that the state gives them to severely restrict the father’s relationship with his child or to simply remove him from the picture entirely. This is only the beginning of a much larger problem. As a consequence, a third of all children in our nation now grow up without their fathers. The social science is virtually unanimous in acknowledging the unique developmental benefits to children raised by a father (not that it should be necessary to obtain the seal of approval from behavioral “experts†for something that is manifestly obvious to anyone with a lick of sense). The statistics of criminal behavior, social and behavioral pathologies that correlate unerringly to father absence scream out for an overthrowing of the present feminist paradigm in domestic relations law and policy and a return to common sense. Father absence is a social cancer that has virtually unlimited repercussions throughout every facet of modern life.
2. The War on Fatherhood
English is the richest of all languages. It has far more words to describe far more shades of meaning than any other language. Fortunately, it provides a word that encompasses all aspects of this tragedy: fatherhood. The relationship between a father and his child, and all that flows from it. There is no need to speak of harm done to fathers and children separately. What is under attack is the very institution of fatherhood. The messaging that directly and unambiguously addresses the real problem is “War on Fatherhood.â€
This messaging implicitly targets the notions of “blended families,†single motherhood as well as gay marriage and gay adoption.
Entry point to the Fathers Rights resistance movement: Do you acknowledge the problem and are you willing to fight your enemy?
The Fathers Rights resistance movement has a front door. Permission to enter is granted to those willing to acknowledge the true problem and sign on to the declaration below. This assures that the movement is truly “on message,†and prevents the foolishness that has pervaded for so long from diverting energy and resources from developing a coherent resistance movement.
I believe there is a War on Fatherhood.
I am enlisting in the war effort to fight against those that are waging this war on me, my children, and the institution of fatherhood.
Signed and dated: ______________________
3. The fundamental cause of the problem
Like the blind men handling different parts of the elephant and all disagreeing about its shape, our movement is notorious for misunderstanding the fundamental cause of the War on Fatherhood. The most common misdiagnosis is the belief that it is all about money and the state’s corruption and relentless quest for power. It is undeniably true that federal and state regimes that profit from creating NCP (noncustodial parent) fathers/child support obligors have “built the perfect beast†that perpetuates the problem—but this is not the source of the problem. The domestic violence, child abuse, supervised visitation regimes that generate so much revenue and employment were not created solely out of a desire for revenue.
I think of this “perfect beast†as a skyscraper. Title IV-d, VAWA, state child support and domestic abuse regimes are the superstructure of the skyscraper, not its foundation. They are the steel trusses and girders upon which are laid the floors and offices that populate the skyscraper—where the actual workaday work is done by the busy-bee bureaucrats that grease the wheels of this “beast.â€
Attempts to fix the problem that focus just on the office workers, or try to tear the building down by attacking its superstructure alone, will not work. As long as the foundation is intact, the skyscraper can and will be repaired or rebuilt. We need to find a cure for the disease itself, rather than administering palliatives for its symptoms.
The fundamental cause of the problem has been clearly identified for years, but men in the Fathers Rights movement have stubbornly resisted acknowledging it. It is no coincidence that most if not all of the people that have publicly identified the fundamental problem are women: Phyllis Schlafly, Kathleen Parker, Christina Hoff Sommers and Erin Pizzey come immediately to mind as some of the more articulate women who speak directly to the consequences of men’s collective failure to stand up to feminism.
As was explained in the previous section, the fundamental source of the problem is a sociological and cultural movement that began in earnest about 40 years ago: women’s empowerment, aka feminism. The feminist movement seeks the empowerment of women. It does not seek equality of the sexes. Its open-ended goal is the transformation of what was hitherto a patriarchal society into a matriarchy.
This is not secret information. It is taught to practically every college student who needs to satisfy a behavioral science or general education requirement. In sociology and women’s studies classes, patriarchy is taught alongside such other socio-political pathologies as racism, colonialism and Nazism. A tremendous amount of agenda-driven, pseudo-scientific, social science research constantly streams out of universities. This “research†is regurgitated within classrooms to impressionable students of both sexes, who then take this knowledge with them into the real world upon graduation and use it to inform their work as doctors, lawyers, police officers, judges, social workers, politicians, reporters, and … teachers… completing the vicious cycle.
Treating fathers who fight for custody of their children as batterers and a presumed danger to their children is only to be expected when considering the indoctrination all the actors in these court tragedies receive as part of their education and training. If this were not so, how would it be possible that such a wholesale abrogation of rights of one half of the adult population would go unnoticed by the media? In a world with a ravenous appetite for scandal, force-fed by a media industry that respects practically no restraints on “the people’s right to know,†how is it possible that injustices of the magnitude experienced by fathers under the color of law on a daily basis go unreported?
The reason is cultural. The reason is sociological. And to cure this disease, cultural and sociological paradigms must be challenged and overthrown. It can’t be avoided.
Conspiracy is defined as “An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.†The “Real Wheel of Abuse†(Appendix), illustrates the causal relationship between feminist propaganda in academia, the media, legislation, the rape of fatherhood in the courts, the social costs of father absence and domestic violence. What we face is, quite literally, a conspiracy.
Men have allowed feminists to define the terms of debate, to metaphorically choose the terrain of the battlefield. At legislative hearings on shared parenting and abuse protection reform bills, Fathers Rights advocates plead with legislators that the present laws are being used unfairly against fathers and that as a consequence children lose their fathers. Feminists testifying in opposition warn legislators about the dangers to women from their “abusive,†batterer husbands or boyfriends, quote statistics from pseudo-scientific, agenda-driven research about the epidemic of violence against women, and occasionally trot out “survivors†as witnesses to hammer the point home: Don’t you dare support these batterers and their anti-woman legislation!
Every veteran of the custody wars knows that in the courtroom, any charges made by one side that are not rebutted are held to be true. But on the macro level, men don’t seem able to translate this knowledge into the political arena.
To date, men have been fighting for Fathers Rights by taking a defensive approach—only! Feminists have been attacking men, masculinity and the patriarchy. They tell legislators in no uncertain terms that the few men who fight for custody of their children and lose do so because they are unfit and/or batterers. They promulgate the lie that women rarely lie about domestic violence. They have somewhat successfully defined Fathers Rights advocates as “the batterer lobby.â€
And in response, men merely quote various studies showing how children benefit from a relationship with the father, plead that child support in Massachusetts is unreasonably high, and some are bold enough to argue for tweaking the abuse protection laws because they are often used by women as a tactic to gain custody of children. On this last item, it should be mentioned that the conventional wisdom in our movement holds that gaining shared parenting legislation must be the first objective, and then, afterwards, we should turn our attention to fixing the domestic violence laws. This is another cardinal error of the movement, since shared parenting legislation is held up because of the (usually back room) objections by domestic violence feminazis. When they say “Jump!†our legislators ask “How high?†We cannot get shared parenting laws passed unless the domestic violence feminazis have first been de-fanged. Fixing so-called “abuse prevention†laws should have the highest legislative priority, not the lowest.
And this backward thinking on legislation is symptomatic of another cardinal error of the movement: failure to actually attack our enemies. In legislative hearings, for example, Fathers Rights advocates never see fit to attack the very people who demonize them! They are so afraid of being labeled “misogynist†that they never even think to do what they know they have to do when fighting their own cases in the courtroom.
A sports analogy is called for. The predominant strategy of Fathers Rights to date can be compared to insisting on keeping your entire soccer team within the penalty box to maximize defense and minimize the number of goals scored against you. It is unlikely that you will succeed in keeping the ball out of your net for over 90 minutes, but it is a certainty that you will never score a goal if your team never ventures out of the penalty box and—heaven forbid!—beyond the midfield line into enemy territory.
4. Attacking the enemy is a primary function of the Fathers Rights resistance movement
The successful Fathers Rights resistance movement must have an aggressive, offensive strategy. This will include investigating the public and private lives of our opponents, digging up the dirt and flinging the mud. How many purported “battered women advocates†who are exposed as violent themselves will it take before the seeds of skepticism bear fruit in the minds of the public, and eventually, legislators?
The Fathers Rights resistance movement must dedicate a sizeable fraction of all its resources and energy to offensive actions and activities that directly attack its enemies.
The enemy is all individuals and agencies that through their beliefs and actions work to promote the War on Fatherhood.
Here is a short list of some of our local enemies:
This list is as long as you want to make it. It should include all feminist academicians who are brainwashing students in our schools, colleges and universities. First discredit, then demonize. If at all possible, criminalize. Dig up dirt. Try to destroy their reputations and their careers. If you can, cause them financial and economic hardship. In such endeavors, the enemy of your enemy is your friend. Make alliances with people who have a different, perhaps completely unrelated beef with these enemies. Share information and work together to cause them harm.
5. Precious energy and resources wasted trying to ‘educate’ enemies
One of the most frustrating things is watching new activists, particularly well educated and professional men, “discover†that the reason why the movement never makes progress is because the Fathers Rights crowd have an image problem: they present themselves and are perceived as angry men who have become unbalanced by the bad experiences of their divorce. Politicians often take these newbies aside and give them the “inside word†in private meetings. The gullible new Fathers Rights activist, champing at the bit to gain respectability, then spends inordinate amounts of time, energy and resources trying to educate these politicians, making sure that they themselves present the proper image, eschewing anger and avoiding any negative talk about women or feminism, and above all, never showing anger.
I submit that one of the reasons for failure is that there haven’t been enough angry fathers together at the same time and place.
Here in Massachusetts, two examples come to mind. The first from several years ago when a well-meaning new activist sought to educate Margaret Marshall, the chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court. Countless letters were sent, and posted to our list-server.
Most recently, an incredible amount of time, energy and resources have been spent attempting to educate Governor Deval Patrick. After all, the governor created a blog area on his web site specifically for citizen input. Tremendous amounts of energy were spent to move a shared parenting thread to the very top of this list.
Despite warnings that Deval Patrick, whether sincere or not, had already been thoroughly indoctrinated by the other side—his wife was a domestic violence zealot, he was raised without a father, he was a lifelong, liberal Democrat, etc.—and that he was already “well educated†on these issues being a thoroughly feminized college-educated resident of Massachusetts, these Fathers Rights activists had to find out for themselves. So, two years later, when pressed at a public meeting in the Berkshires, Patrick finally admitted that Fathers Rights was not going to be his “particular focusâ€:
“The sort of the running debate between us is about trying to get me to champion this issue rather than the forty legislatures you have working on it, and I keep deferring because I got some other things on my list. It’s not that I don’t care. It’s not that I am not sympathetic to the issues that you’re having with your daughter and your ex-wife and so on-it’s just not my particular focus. And I know that every time we’re together you want to make it my particular focus.â€[3]
Now, two years later, they more or less acknowledge that it was a waste of time.
The frustration on my part comes from wondering what could have been accomplished if instead of wasting all that energy trying to educate a known enemy, that same amount of energy was spent attacking Deval Patrick (after, naturally, at least one obligatory overture to him had been made). Perhaps nothing, but at least he would have been made aware that he had been targeted by a voting block.
III Fathers Rights as a resistance movement
Because of the tremendous damage done to fatherhood via child support orders, encouraging child support defiance is another staple of the movement. These usurious child “extortion†orders serve to cut fathers off at the knees, preventing them from further litigating their own cases in pursuit of their children and justice.
If it were practical, the universal withholding of child support—a child support strike— would indeed be a catastrophic WMD lobbed upon the system. However, though there will always be heroic individuals willing to stare down the state, lose their homes and jobs and livelihood and ultimately serve jail sentences, it has to be acknowledged that it is simply not realistic to expect NCP wage earners en masse to quit their jobs, learn to earn their living under the table, and essentially go underground. Very noble perhaps, but not practical for the mass of men living “lives of quiet desperation.â€
I don’t discourage this tactic. I know that I did not find it practical. Each man can wrestle with his own conscience. I say nothing further about any effort to promote an organized child support resistance movement.
1. Micro-level resistance—the individual court case
The good news is that there are many other areas where resistance is not only possible but can also be extremely effective, and furthermore contains little risk of loss of liberty or criminalization. In fact, this personal, micro-level resistance must be the very heart of the future of the Fathers Rights movement.
If a substantial fraction of men refused to cooperate with the divorce/custody machine we could draw blood and force the system to take notice. By attacking its lifeblood: money, we would be returning fire.
First off, it requires that we convince men to educate themselves so they gain the confidence to “take charge of [their] case,†as Liberty Bell Union advertises[4]. Fathers must be encouraged to demand shared physical and legal custody of their children (unless demanding sole custody is appropriate), and not permit their attorneys, if they insist on using one, from coercing them into settling for NCP status with a survivable financial arrangement. Presently, far more men than we might want to admit actually agree to become noncustodial parents. Yes, we all understand the legal pressures that are brought to bear, but in the final analysis, too many men make this compromise.
When more fathers refuse to accept the business-as-usual NCP status, this alone will have a powerful effect. The courts will become even more overburdened. The laws of physics require that an object move along the path of least “action,†i.e., the path of least resistance. Non-cooperation applies an opposing force to the status quo that demands fathers be transformed into “noncustodial parents.â€
The next step would be to convince all these fathers who don’t cave on custody and are willing to head to trial, to refuse to cooperate with the standard operating procedure: appointing a GAL, getting various psychological evaluations, bringing in more “experts,†accepting supervised visitation, hiring more attorneys, etc. A judge cannot force you to cooperate with a GAL investigation, nor to get a psychological evaluation. Of course you will be warned, even by your attorney, that such actions can only harm you in the long run.
Men must not merely tell the judge at the hearing that he will, for example, not cooperate with a GAL investigation; he must put his objections in his pleadings, stating the reason why: “guardians ad litem are fundamentally biased against fatherhood.†Imagine if three out of every four divorce pleadings contained language where the father claimed that the system fundamentally discriminates against men, perhaps making use of boilerplate language of feminist bias in the courts that can be provided by our organizations. Imagine the impact on these GALs who rely on court appointments for their income. Typically, a GAL might bill for a total of ten or so hours of visits with the parents and their collaterals. Well, guess what? That income is suddenly halved. And furthermore, a father would not need to dredge up the law citation and write a pleading as to why he should not pay for half of the GAL fee. He cannot be asked to pay for any of it if he has refused to cooperate at the outset, in writing, when the GAL is assigned to the case!
The stance of the father in a custody case, with or without a 209A order should be simply this:
“I demand shared physical and legal custody of my children. If my soon-to-be ex-wife disagrees, then I demand sole physical and legal custody, and will permit as much visitation to her as she requires, within reason. Furthermore, if the court intends to deny me the minimally acceptable shared custody of my children, I demand it produce findings of fact as to why and how I am a danger or harmful to my child. If the court intends to take custody of my child away from me, I demand it give the reasons why I am unfit and constitute a danger to my child.â€
Then, fold arms, sit back, and watch the system spin its wheels.
This is not in any way a guarantee that a given father will do better in court if he follows this advice. It is a description of how the successful Fathers Rights resistance movement must operate on the micro level. This is something that practically every divorcing father can do with no risk of criminalization. In fact, I assert that it is incumbent on every father in a high conflict divorce to act this way. The Fatherhood Coalition sought to encourage this behavior as standard practice in Massachusetts to mixed results.
2. Macro-level resistance—everywhere else!
Resistance to the perfect beast extends beyond one’s own personal case. Far too many good men have “hung separately.†Most of the activities that various organizations and individuals do now can be characterized as resistance. Every freeway sign. Every letter to the editor. Every courthouse protest. Every verbal testimony at a public hearing. This is all resistance, and of course it must continue. The publicity-stunt tactics of Fathers-4-Justice exemplify the type of protesting known as “direct action.†Clearly, Matt O’Connor’s creation has been the most successful Fathers Rights enterprise in the entire history of the movement. Combining humor with the simplest, most indefensible issue of the War: NCP fathers denied visitation with their children, propelled Fathers-4-Justice through the media’s lace curtain in England.
2.1 Bringing the War to the streets: Counter-demonstrations
Until such time as we in the US can muster a “thousand people in the street†to support Fathers Rights, it only makes sense to confine public protests to counter-demonstrations. On this there is no shortage. Out opponents in and out of government provide a constant stream of public events that are protest-worthy: judicial education junkets, child support enforcement PR events, domestic violence propaganda events and similar male-bashing love fests, and here in Massachusetts, Governor’s Council judicial approval hearings, to name just a few. Such counter-demonstrations can be successful with even a small number of participants.
Important point: These counter-demonstrations should not be necessarily peaceful and respectful. We are protesting people and institutions that deserve not respect, but disdain. With respect to peaceful versus… not peaceful, I believe that the success of our movement will eventually require civil disobedience, in which “peaceful†becomes a relative term.
2.2 Bringing the War to the courts
Certainly, legal challenges to state actors, whether via constitutional grounds, class action suits, challenges to Title IV-d federal child support statutes, RICO pleadings, or any of the other legal mechanisms that countless Fathers Rights advocates have tried, must continue.
This is the area where the Fathers Rights men who have become legal experts can shine. The Fathers Rights resistance movement must apply a constant pressure to the legal and judicial power structures. There must be a constant barrage of lawsuits hammering the gates of judicial power.
2.3 Study Wars: Bringing the War to the university halls
Also, our movement should conduct its own agenda-driven (though fair and accurate) research. Steve Basile of the Fatherhood Coalition produced two groundbreaking studies on the issuance of abuse protection orders in one Massachusetts district court[5]. The studies have been referenced numerous times in subsequent social science research. As a result of Basile’s work, the state responded with an iron fist to prevent future “mischief.†They quickly passed legislation making abuse prevention court dockets off limits to the public. Consequently, court data is going to be increasingly more difficult to obtain for future unbiased research in Massachusetts. The history of Basile’s research and the response to it are well documented on the Fatherhood Coalition web site[6].
But there is no shortage of fruitful areas for research. A high priority should be placed on the mainstream media’s bias on coverage of domestic violence. It would not be too difficult a task to take one big media entity, such as The Boston Globe, and prove their bias by comparing the difference in language used in their coverage of domestic violence stories; specifically, how the appearance of the words “domestic violence†in their stories depends on the sex of the victim.
IV Summary
In the spirit of the old saw about what to do first when trapped in a hole, the first order of business for our movement is to “stop digging.†We must first stop the bleeding by correcting the cardinal errors of the past:
With respect to the pro-active side of a resistance movement, all the macro-level activities mentioned require further elaboration and detailed planning, i.e., a true blueprint. All the activities that people share on the various Fathers Rights blogs and email lists are all wonderful examples of this part of the movement. Of course, it goes without saying, the more organized and concerted the efforts the better.
What I believe is needed first, however, is acknowledgement and action on the other, ideological aspects of the movement that I have taken great pains to define in this document. To wit, the Fathers Rights movement must first “get its mind right.â€
There is no shortage of fronts in the War on Fatherhood. To each his poison. Let a thousand flowers bloom!
# # #
[1] Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Robert P. Casey, US Court of Appeals, Third Circuit, Oct. 21, 1991
[2]“ Convicted Killer Gets Custody of Kids,†AP, Aug. 4, 2008
[3] Governor Deval Patrick responding to questions from Renny Del Gallo and Will Smith, August 5, 2007, Great Barrington Town Hall meeting. www.berkshirefatherhood.com/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=699&cntnt01returnid=69
[4] Liberty Bell Union, the pro se training program designed by and for Fathers Rights advocates. www.libertybellunion.org
[5] Steve Basile, “A Measure of Court Response to Requests for Protection,†Journal of Family Violence, 20 (3) June 2005, and “Comparison of Abuse Alleged by Same- and Opposite-Gender Litigants as Cited in Request for Abuse Prevention Orders,†Journal of Family Violence, 19 (1) February 2004
[6] www.fatherhoodcoalition.org/cpf/Gardner_209A_study_index.htm
Appendix
The real ‘Wheel of Abuse’
| More from Mark Charalambous
Stumble It!
September 4th, 2008 at 7:59 am
Roger, with respect to my comment ‘your interpretation of a blueprint for The Movement’, I mean an article like Mr. Charalambous of your own devising specifying your own ideas for the direction The Movement should take.
September 4th, 2008 at 7:56 am
Phases of the fathers’ rights movement
The Challenge Ahead for Family Rights Activism
September 4th, 2008 at 7:53 am
The Fathers Rights movement is essentially a counter-revolutionary movement. It seeks to overturn the feminist cultural revolution that has ruled the roost for the better part of two generations and counting.
- Sort of; although we cannot lose site of the fact that without the use of government force in the service of corruption – we could all just relax and go out to dinner – laughing off much of the feminist cultural revolution. After all, they have a right to live and think as they wish.
Once you understand this, it becomes clear that the Fathers Rights movement does not and cannot exist in a vacuum.
- True, but I’m not sure what to make of this statement. In a vacuum, we’d all be dead. If the feminist organizations disbanded tomorrow, we’d still have a problem with the laws however.
September 4th, 2008 at 6:41 am
Exposing Feminism: “interpretation of a blueprint for The Movement”
What do you mean?
September 4th, 2008 at 6:17 am
I for one would be interested to see Roger F Gay’s own interpretation of a blueprint for The Movement.
September 4th, 2008 at 5:58 am
That piece by Bill Woods is gobsmacking.
But I am sure that he makes the usual error when he talks about the tax rate for a family of four being about a quarter of their income nowadays.
My guess is that he has done the usual calculation for ‘tax’, but this omits the **extra** money that customers have to pay for goods and services because of all the rules and regulations that businesses have to follow.
According to some research that I saw, we all have to pay an extra 13% or so in order to cover these business costs.
This extra money goes to accountants, lawyers, diversity officers etc, not to the government – so this 13% does not count as ‘tax’.
September 4th, 2008 at 5:09 am
amfortas: I met Bill Woods long before I started writing for MND and was often cited by others in early political work – besides my own submissions of testimony, etc. Since you’ve read my current article, you know that I was a researcher (still am sometimes in my day job) who focused on child support. My first articles on the subject at MND (and elsewhere) were about my research work. I like to write, analyze, and opine so I’ve since branched out.
You’ll also find that I’m cited in The Law And Economics Of Child Support Payments and acknowledged by Stephen Baskerville in Taken into Custody. My name is also listed as a consultant on alternative guidelines published by the US Office of Child Support Enforcement and acknowledged as a contrÃbutor to Mark Rogers’ perspective, among others. I was early in on the child support thing.
September 4th, 2008 at 5:01 am
I see that Bill Woods cites your work, Roger, in his address. There’s fame to go with the edit job on MND !
I am surprised the address isn’t on the MND front page already.
My only claim to such fame is that Mike La Salle had a quote of mine on the Front Page of MND, back when it was a tiddler, for some 6 months or so.
Hey, we may not seek it but we take fame where it comes.:)
September 4th, 2008 at 4:43 am
amfortas: Re: child support in other countries, I’ll follow up with a quick comment under the CS perspective article so as not to distract from this conversation. I have studied “foreign” cs and systems.
I certainly agree there is more than one issue. I specialized in child support because my professional education and experience was a good match for it. It’s not a small trivial area and it wouldn’t be appropriate to redefine it in terms of a top-down philosophy of some kind. It is what it is.
And thanks for the spelling help.
September 4th, 2008 at 4:32 am
Segue, Roger. Can also be pronounced (properly) as in ’seeg’, but not ’segoo’ as in Neddy Seegoon.
That was a very clear explanation of the child support calculation history which is of great interest to American readers. Many of us though are in other countries, which while suffering under feminist corruption burdens of a like sort, differ in the technical details your article describes.
We can get bogged down in minor details about inclusiveness and lose sight of Mark’s major points. The Fathers Rights theatre of battle is one place to start, as I pointed out above; as good as any place and better, more pressing than some others.
Will we just wait to see who breaks out and whacks an enemy?
The issue before us is not just corruption, is not just child support calculation, is not just marriage arrangements, is not just VAWA. It is all of these. It is political will and action. It is means and ways. It is, as Mark shows, propaganda to counter the AgitProp we are assailed with daily.
We have to hit and hit hard and damn the consequences to politenesses and social/political rules of contact and style. We need to MAKE the rules.
I am heartned to read the address made to the House Ways and Means Committee by Bill Wood.
Statement of Bill Wood, Charlotte, North Carolina
http://waysandmeans.house.gov/hearings.asp?formmode=view&id=954
Bill lays down the gauntlet and outlines, in a Political forum just where the faults lie, and what to do about them.
No doubt there will be some who will quibble about things he suggests regarding PBS funding and Abstinence Teaching and so forth, but he is showing himself to be the Colonel who leads a charge straight at the enemy ranks.
He made my day; I can’t speak for Angry Harry
I might even invite him to join my Cabinet.
You are going to vote for me, aren’t you?
Vote #1 Amfortas.
(Or I might have to give my 44 so far to McCain !)
September 4th, 2008 at 3:25 am
As for the rest of you – let’s get personal. Click on the article I just linked above and imagine its title stated by me to you personally as being “Allow Me To Introduce Myself”
September 4th, 2008 at 3:14 am
Hey Harry, great segway! (I know that’s the two-wheeled vehicle, but don’t know how to spell the other one.) OK, so other than justifying my existence on the same planet with the rest of you (*) – let’s talk about the men’s verse fathers’ rights thing – a conversation I did not initiate.
Or have I misunderstood you?
I guess you have, but now that we’re on the subject: Interesting that your link takes me to an article on fathers’ rights.
RE: Government corruption: I have done much to document the government corruption – to bring specific concrete definition to it and to explain how it works. I have even fought it.
See the newest article: PICSLT: 18+ Years of Perspective on the Child Support Issue
((*) BTW: I was one of the first writers to publish at MND and have more than 100 well thought out articles here. I’ve served as special editor … blah, blah, blah …)
September 4th, 2008 at 2:28 am
In fact, you might want to see my new video! – which tries to help unite the Men’s Movement with Father Rights …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TMVvo0Po_c
LOL!
It took me aaaaaaaaaaaaaages to do because the synch between the words and the sound kept drifting.
September 4th, 2008 at 2:18 am
Roger Gay “There are fathers’ rights issues and they are concretely defined. It seems antithetical to Mark’s analysis to attempt to create some kind of philosophically pure movement – sort of cult creation, like feminism.”
So why are you so often on this “Men’s Rights” website? (No rudeness intended.)
You clearly both read and write about issues that are of concern to men who are not fathers – so why do you seemingly endorse some kind of separation between the Fathers Rights movement and the Mens Rights movement?
Or have I misunderstood you?
“I don’t see reason for the fathers’ rights movement to be a full-fledged socio-political movement. It’s just a bunch of people reacting to concretely defined political corruption.”
There is much more to all this than *political* corruption; e.g.
http://www.angryharry.com/esFatherGroupsMissTheBigPicture.htm
And if Fathers Rights groups do not understand the bigger picture, they will surely spend much of their time floundering about and hitting the wrong targets with the wrong weapons.
“Government corruption is the root cause of the problems that have given rise to the fathers’ rights movement.”
I cannot tell you how pleased I am to see you endorse the view that **corruption** (and, hence, self-servingness – without much concern for others) is the root cause of the problem.
…
Mark – Thank you most kindly for your comments above.
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:30 am
Well – organization – sure. Don’t change the subject in mid argument. The organized enemy we’re fighting are the people in Congress who discovered family law as a great place for pork-barreling. Philosophy isn’t effective against such an adversary. It doesn’t matter a twit to them whether someone says “reverse sexism” or not. They’re stealing from you and I’m sure they’d be quite pleased to see everyone they’re stealing from distracted by such arguments. My prescription: rent a copy of Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:28 am
I have to disagree, Roger. We are fighting an organised enemy, we too should be organised.
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:26 am
There are fathers’ rights issues and they are concretely defined. It seems antithetical to Mark’s analysis to attempt to create some kind of philosophically pure movement – sort of cult creation, like feminism (which also failed to be philosophically pure and unidirectional). I don’t see reason for the fathers’ rights movement to be a full-fledged socio-political movement. It’s just a bunch of people reacting to concretely defined political corruption. Every honest person – and even many dishonest persons who just don’t like getting screwed – should be onboard; no special dictionary or special sense of social awareness is necessary.
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:16 am
Certinly not a white one.
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:15 am
Which part of the elephant will you be?
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:54 am
Zorik,
Dr Damage and Mark have pretty much explained my objections to the phrase ‘reverse sexism’, but there is no shame in being unaware of this insidious attempt to distort language for political means.
I believe that raising this issue for all is entirely in the spirit of Mark’s paper, the main message of which I take to mean that it is time we defined our message, intentions and language.
Yours in fraternity.
E F
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:53 am
Amforas and Angry Harry are correct, you can not negotiate with terrorist and those that run the family courts are by any definition “terrorist”- those that want power and want to control others by the use of threat, intimidation or murderous acts. ie kinda describe them perfectly doesn’t it!
The battle need to be a three pronged attack. First educate men on the law, yes you can use their own corrupt system against them and do it effectively. By throwing the theiving bastard out, this does two things. 1) It gives hope to the hopeless, by showing a change is possible. Thereby restoring the will to fight back. 2) It weakens our adversaries, takes money, power and control away from them. One “softened up” by the losses, they are easier to fight.
The second tactic is to help these “poor wretched” soul restore their lives. By doing anything to help them get back on their feet. It’s hard to do anything while you are stuck in survival mode. The more men we restore, the more enemies the family court thugs have, and we will be capable enemies with power and resources at our disposal, not the wretched souls trying to get people to listen and to care. No one respects or fears you when you are in that shape.
Third, we must wake the entire world up. We need an intense PR campaign. Once people are woken up and realize, just how bad the problem is, they will rise to it. The people in this country are not evil, they are just lazy and complacent. You do two things, first educate them and then make it easy to support us.
Remember the litte red ribbons “raising awarness” about aids , we need something similiar. Being a noncustodial father is just like what it was to be homosexual was 40 years ago, it was there, but nobody wanted to talk about it. We have a similiar problem with fathers/noncustodial parents/men today. We must bring the issue out in the open, then put massive political, economic and legal pressure on those that violate the basic rights of men/fathers/noncustodial parents. Once the “D” word ( deadbeat) is just like the “N” word, we’ll be making progress. Once a politician will lose his “cushy little job” for voting for biased laws or voting against reform of this God awful little racket, then we will be making progress. We won’t be push back into the shadows again.
These three tactics are the only things will work, history show it. It will take years and lots of battles but anything worth anything, takes lot of effort. And restoring rights, dignity and just plain old putting the sunshine back into these guys lives is worth that effort.
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:32 am
I’m afraid I have to disagree with your premise Mark. Government corruption is the root cause of the problems that have given rise to the fathers’ rights movement. There may be other causes more apparent within the framework of the men’s movement – but fathers’ rights problems, as they are, were created by government, and the motive was, and still is, money. There may be some way to get a feeling that this singular cause could not be all there is to it – but it’s a lot of money. There’s no sense quibbling over semantics until the financial incentive is removed.
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:42 am
Exposing feminism said:
“There is NO SUCH THING as *REVERSE* SEXISM any more than there is such a thing as *REVERSE* BUDDHISM!
“This is the DISTORTION OF LANGUAGE for political means in action!
To push our movement forward, we must not use this term – instead using only the singular word SEXISM in its correct tense!”
—
I COULDN’T AGREE MORE!
I, in fact, would never use “reverse sexism.”
Where I say in the paper:
‘For as long as I have been involved in the movement, the predominant paradigm held that awareness of the problem can gain no traction because of an innate reverse-sexism in society’.
I meant to (implicitly) crticize the individual who used this exact wording who is in my mind an example of the wrong-thinking people in the movememt.
This is not clear in my paper, but I want to state for the record that I am in complete agreement with ‘Exposing Feminism” in this point regarding the use of language.
I don’t use “reverse-discrimination” or “reverse-sexism” when I write. I use “discrimination” and “sexism”, period, for the very reason that ‘Exposing Feminism’ states.
– Mark
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:06 am
I don’t know what your sample set it, but the awareness of problems related to divorce has changed considerably over the past two decades. Writers and MND and elsewhere, radio commentators etc. help explain the situation over the last 5-10 years; but the mass of interested listeners was created automatically. I rather think in this situation, “discriminiation” may be the wrong term however. Massive corruption – aimed primarily against men (fathers mostly) – created 10s of millions of men with first-hand experience. And they all have friends and family who have seen and heard about what they experience.
The term “reverse sexism” – at least related to what I’m talking about in this post – should be aimed at the effects of arbitrary government intrusion – i.e. the cause, and it should never be done with the feeling that only a few people are aware of it. That would give the false impression that very few people are actually effected by it.
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:37 am
The term “Reverse Sexism” works for feminism by quarantining sexist attitudes and actions against men from the term “sexism”. When most people think sexism, they see in their mind a woman being discriminated against. As long as men acquiesce in considering sexist attitudes and actions against men to be sexism in “reverse”, no one will ever see sexism as a man being discriminated against or as a person being discriminated against.
This is crucial: IME, outside the mens movement, people are either completely unaware of our grievances or simply bemused by the notion that there should be any need for a mens movement (men consisting entirely of politicians, billionaires and deadbeat dads… oppressors all)
Until a critical mass of people recognize that men are being stripped of basic rights (and that this is a BAD thing) we can expect only incremental victories punctuated by regular defeats.
Forcing people to recognize that the term sexism encompasses sexist attitudes and actions against men is the very first baby step towards making this happen.
September 2nd, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Exposing Feminism, I’m no expert, but my laymans impresssion is that “sexism” has unfortunately become synonomous with the real or imagined discrimination of women perpetrated by men. So the term “sexism” alone makes us look bad (in my view), whether that’s fair or not (and I’d say, usually it’s not). And “reverse sexism”, to me, turns that on it’s head and says that women are actually discriminating against men.
You said, “Can you not see how the phrase ‘reverse sexism’ is part of the linguistic canon of feminism?”
I did not know this, and I don’t understand how the term serves their purpose.
Just my two cents worth.
September 2nd, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Zorik,
Why is word ’sexism’ not suitable for the job in your opinion? Can you not see how the phrase ‘reverse sexism’ is part of the linguistic canon of feminism?
I think that Mr. Charalambous has given us an important (although slightly contententious) document here, but the fundamentals are in place – it IS high time we defined ourselves.
September 2nd, 2008 at 7:53 pm
I’m with Harry!
I aint no father … but I’m surely part of this movement. Fatherhood has nothing to do with it for me.
September 2nd, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Exposing Feminism, I agree that that correct language is important, but I don’t think it should trump our efforts to save civilization.
Is there a more effective term than “reverse sexism”?
September 2nd, 2008 at 3:15 pm
[...] is the article that you have to read: Getting to “No†– A blueprint for a Fathers Rights Resistance movement by Mark [...]
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:04 pm
‘Any analysis of propaganda begins and ends with language.’
Well said, however..
‘For as long as I have been involved in the movement, the predominant paradigm held that awareness of the problem can gain no traction because of an innate reverse-sexism in society’.
There is NO SUCH THING as *REVERSE* SEXISM any more than there is such a thing as *REVERSE* BUDDHISM!
This is the DISTORTION OF LANGUAGE for political means in action!
To push our movement forward, we must not use this term – instead using only the singular word SEXISM in its correct tense!
September 2nd, 2008 at 5:18 am
Dear Harry
I have just visited your web site. Phenomenal!
You are the best starship pilot in the galaxy, and a cunning warrior.
I thank you for taking the time to critique my paper, and will ponder all your comments further.
One last response. With respect to pointing out the self-serving motivations of politicians, and my avoidance of commenting on it on my ‘Wheel’: yes, I agree with what you say about those politicians, such as Harriet Hartman.
I think the distinction between what I mean when I speak generically of politicians and what you mean, is that I draw a distinction between openly feminazi politicians such as HH and people like Joe Biden. Joe Biden is an ignorant fool, in my mind, a “virgin.”
HH and politicians like her are coming from a different home base, namely, as you point out: male hatred.
So, I am, at least in this first incarnation of the “Wheel”, pointing to politicians like Joe Biden, or for that matter, Barack Obama, who really have no comprehension of the evils of feminism, and actually are, IMO, sincere in their pandering. The appropriate adjective to describe these politicians is “pandering.” But rest assured I completely agree with w/r to *openly* feminazi politicans.
Thank you again for your interest in my article, and please keep on doing what you’re doing. You are a true hero, and I will promote your web site when given an opportunity.
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:04 am
1.Amfortas “There is no purpose served by having a shred of pity for the Judges who steal from the public purse and dispense Injustice at whim and by feminist procedural cook-book. No ‘understanding’ of the lawyers who plunder a family’s assets.”
Agreed.
And it pleases me a great deal to see Mark also suggesting far less politeness towards those who walk all over men.
The feminist,gay and black activists did not get their huge power by being polite!
And the same sort of thing is now happening with Muslims in Europe.
European politicians are terrified of offending them. Why? Because they might create a huge fuss.
(”Riot has played a bigger part in British politics than we are ever allowed to know.” Tony Benn – a UK Labour MP for 51 years.)
Indeed, in a commentary about the growth of Father’s Rights groups from some academic panel at Harvard (for which I do not have a link) there is expressed a certain degree of genuine astonishment at how placid and, hence, ineffective have these Fathers groups been in comparison to other groups seeking ‘rights’.
In fact, the panel (’liberal’, I presume) seemed bemused – and somewhat heartened – by the general wimpishness of the Father’s movement.
2. Mark et al – Yes, it is true that young men will, probably, some day be fathers – but you do not reach into the heads of young men by talking to them about the plight of fathers. Young men are not thinking about fatherhood or children – neither are they particularly concerned about such things.
When it comes to their relationships with women, they are mostly concerned about sex, dating, ‘women’, careers (status and money) and their education grades.
Fatherhood and children are too far away. Besides which, they might not happen.
(Go to any forum where young MRAs are talking about men’s issues and see what I mean.)
In other words, if you want to attract young men to the cause, talking about fatherhood is just not going to do it.
Furthermore, you only have to look at this site to see that very active MRAs like Mike La Salle, Glenn Sacks, Marc Rudov, Carey Roberts etc etc do not limit their activism to fatherhood issues.
My point is that we need to unite in opposition to those forces that are stacked against men rather than divide ourselves into separate – less effective – groups; which is why, in my view, arguing for Mens Rights is more important than arguing for Fathers Rights.
Indeed, in my view, one of the main reasons that the feminists have done so well is because they have successfully claimed to be supportive of *all* women – even women murderers. And, as a result, they have garnered huge support from many different quarters – even from women who are completely different from each other.
And this is why, nowadays, whatever women want, they get – even if they want completely opposite things.
Furthermore, and unfortunately for us, however, governments and their officials get ***MOST*** of their power by taking away from ‘men’ – in some way or other. (And if I could write the previous sentence across the sky in letters that were a mile high, I would do so, because it is so important to understand this.)
And so feminism, for them, is a goldmine – whereas giving men ‘rights’ means the very opposite for them. In other words, the more rights that there are for ‘men’, the less power is there for government; and power is something that most politicians and government officials are loathe to give up. And this is why feminism and ‘government’ have a very cosy symbiotic relationship with each other.
And ‘government’ is NOT GOING TO GIVE UP THIS COSY DEAL unless it is FORCED to do so – basically by **MEN** giving politicians “an offer that they simply cannot refuse” – LOL!
And one of the main problems with the men’s movement, in my view, is that there are far too many ‘leading’ MRAs who believe that those ‘in power’ are ’sincere’ in what they say and do.
Thay are not.
They are self-serving.
Indeed, parties and politicians spend and receive millions of dollars in their campagining efforts. It is naive to believe that these millions of dollars and the huge amount of effort being expended by these groups is just for the ‘good of the people’. It is nothing of the sort. These people are after something that benefits themselves. Politics is just a ‘business’ for them – an extremely profitable one for those who can scramble to the top and stay there. And the same is true for many in those ancillary groups that support them.
And more MRAs need to wake up to this.
4. Finally, I have no doubt in my mind that the most effective kind of campaigning is ‘negative’ campaigning.
It is not the ONLY kind of campaigning which is effective, but it is the most effective if you want to see change.
And, right now, when it comes to ‘negative’ campaigning, men and fathers have common enemies – and having common enemies is a great way to unite people.
And so, all in all, men and fathers should unite and go after their common enemies as best as they can.
e.g. see,
http://www.angryharry.com/esFatherGroupsMissTheBigPicture.htm
Well, that’s my view!
September 1st, 2008 at 7:22 pm
PS. There are other Theatres where battle is needed. Some people will gravitate toward those areas. The same considerations apply.
HIT.
Hard.
Destroy.
Just one major, decisive battle won will send our Feminazi enemies running in disarray and more troops flocking to our cause.
September 1st, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Every man is a potential Father. That is a unifying point that needs to be stressed.
The feminazis have made a great agitprop play of ‘All men are Rapists’ with great effect, despite the infinitismal likelihood of a man becoming one.
But his fatherhood likelihood is not infinitismal. Quite the opposite.
We need to have every man understand that “YOU are Next”.
Harry is right, of course, that all men are potential recruits to the cause of overthrowing Feminism and its curses on society. But as with all matters of war, a number of quite different fighting formations need to be devised and developed to fight different targets in different environmental theatres. Marc identifies a specific theatre and raises the relevant strategic issues.
One needs to define, as Marc does well. One also needs to simplify as well. Definitions tend to be exacting and lengthy. The main vehicle, the main weapon against Fathers is the Family Court. We all know that.
It must be destroyed.
Not fiddled with to make it more paletable and just. Destroyed.
It is the Feminazi modern equivalent to the medaeval torture dungeon. One cannot and should not try to reason with it, change it, influence it. It must be totally destroyed.
Then the ideology behind it must be destroyed.
The perniciousness of the Family Court’s dismissal of Truth, Evidence, Innocence, Purjury, and its encouraging acceptance of false allegations, lies, calumnies and extortion etc, spreads throughout the rest of the Judicial sytem. It must be rooted out with flame-throwers.
As with the destruction of any infrastructure in wartime, people will die. Much of the infrastructure in this battle is Intellectual and Spiritual. It is ImMoral and Ideological. It resides in People, not bricks and mortar and physical ordnance.
There is no purpose served by having a shred of pity for the Judges who steal from the public purse and dispense Injustice at whim and by feminist procedural cook-book. No ‘understanding’ of the lawyers who plunder a family’s assets. No mitigation for the rent-seeking scum, bottom-feeders who ‘advise’ in a variety of capacities and make their filthy living from the misery their lies amd mendacities cause.
To destroy tha Family Court and all its associated trapping, the shelters, the ‘Inns of Court, the ’servants’ and clerks, means destroying THEM. The people.
Marc gives us the aims. Destroy their careers, their livelihoods, their reputations, their treasuries; They hate families – destroy their nests. Make misery and dismay the only aspects of life left for them to enjoy.
In Love, nice guys finish last. In wartime they die first.
Stop being nice.
We are not involved in a Love-In with Feminazis and their mal-Institutions. We have to declare war on them and aim, not for an eventual negotiated peace, but for their total eradication.
Aim short and the rump will grow more heads.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Mark C -
It is tragic that more men are not aware of what our legislators have passed without a public vote.
In my view, and in the view of many others, young men (particularly those of high school and college age) need to be informed about Mens Rights and Fathers Rights.
All Men need to know.
Reducing the target audience to “only” Fathers is ultimately counter productive. We need to make sure that young men are VERY well informed before they become fathers or even flirt with becoming fathers.
Thanks for your effort on this article. Well done.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Mark C, I think this is the first of your articles that I’ve read. You appear to be thoughtful, respectful, open-minded and well informed. Great work.
September 1st, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Harry,
Believe it or not, this is my foray into the MR v FR debate.
I was only peripherally aware of it before. So, it is new to me.
You make a lot of good points. Let me try to sort my thoughts out on it.
Feminists achieved power over men through two paths:
1. Owning the means of reproduction. Ownership of children. Through this, they are empowered over men economically by getting child support and empowered logistically (?) by having the power to either abort his child or bring it to turn, thus controlling his life.
2. As victims of men’s domestic violence, and sexual assault, they wield the power to criminalize a man and destroy his life.
The first of these implies the man is father. The second, not necessarily so.
So, there is not a one-to-one correspondence of victimization of men and victimization of fathers — but there is a big overlap. Indeed, as you say, there are many men who are victimized by feminism that are not fathers.
However, I would argue that the vast preponderance of significant harm inflicted is to men in their capacity as fathers, or at least, boyfriends.
W/r to reaching out to younger men who are not fathers. Well, every time they have sex they are potentially fathers, and so the FR issues are applicable to them in the sense of what could happen to them.
Also, MR v FR, with MR, the antagonists are divided into two categories: men and women. With FR, it is not that cut and dried. First of all, FR includes *fatherhood*, which includes children, and also, at least to me, it does not define the enemy as women, but feminists. So, both men and women are on both camps. Good women, like Sarah Palin and Kathleen Parker, are on the side of fatherhood, i.e., with “the fathers.” Bad men, like Joe Biden and most Democrats, are on the bad side, with the feminist-controlled Democratic party, with the “enemy feminists.”
I don’t like using arguments relying on what is politically expedient, as in, “It’s easier to sell FR, with fathers as a persecuted group, than it is to sell MR, with men as a class as the persecuted group.” But, it is nonetheless true.
I don’t know, like I said, this is the first time I’ve been challenged on this issue of MR v FR. However, despite the arguments you make, I doubt that I will be changing my mind on this, though I will continue to reflect on it.
Certainly, the point that we should not leave out all those men who are not fathers from recruiting in the War on Fatherhood. I would argue, at least for now, that all men belong on our side in the War on Fatherhood, (1) because they may someday be fathers, or (2) because the patriarchy is under attack, and they are men.
September 1st, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Essentially we are talking about a propaganda war, a war of information—more correctly, of disinformation. Clearly, therefore, a huge part of the problem is public perception. To employ the much overused cliché: we are engaged in a very real sense in a war of hearts and minds.
Correct! And we should be putting the image at the following link on freeway billboards to get the message out: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm06/figure4_2.htm
Women are the leading abusers and killers of children in US homes. And we get VAWA??!
Shows how out of touch our legislators are.
September 1st, 2008 at 7:47 am
Hello Mark
1. “Of course, I don’t disagree at all with you w/r to “men’s†rights. This piece is directed at the Fathers Rights community.”
Yes; but you are asking for a war in your piece. As such, you need as many supporters as possible. So, why exclude men who are not fathers and, indeed, fathers who are not having divorce problems?
You are excluding a vast army of men from your war at the outset – particularly young men.
I agree that Fathers Rights are extremely important, but the number of fathers who are adversely affected by feminist policies is but a fraction of the total number of men who are affected by them.
Why not bring these other men on board?
2. “I understand that having female sports reporters allowed to go into male athlete’s locker rooms but not allow male reporters to interview Maria Sharapova, and such blatant inequities demanded by feminists and approved by men, are serious problems, but they don’t rise to the level of the War on Fatherhood, in my mind.”
You seem to be trying to trivialise the many serious problems that men face. They face far worse things than the problem of changing clothes in locker rooms; false accusations, demonisation, discrimination etc etc.
Furthermore, and for example, you don’t have to be a father to find yourself suffering from draconian DV laws.
And, just like fathers, non-fathers often get killed by women.
Why – at the outset – with your ‘language’ – exclude all those non-fathers who are having similar problems to fathers?
(You, yourself, pointed out the huge importance of language.)
Your defined enemy, the feminists, don’t usually talk about Mother Rights. They talk about Women’s Rights – thus including **all** women.
This is one of the reasons why the feminists have grown so powerful.
They claim to represent ALL women – even lesbians.
You, however, want to limit your activism to fathers.
Do you think that non-fathers will be of no use to you in this war?
3. “I believe the statement I have on the PANDERING POLITICANS spoke, ie, “Politicians, seeking to protect women, pass the bills into law and fund the domestic violence industry at taxpayer expense†is a far more powerful and effective message to convey rather than ‘politicians are corrupt and don’t really care about protecting women from violence.’”
Well, that’s a bit of a straw man really, because I wasn’t suggesting that you used such words.
I would have said something like, “Politicians seeking votes from women and support from a feminist-dominated media … ”
Furthermore – in your wheel – you don’t seem to have a problem suggesting that academics, judges and women are self-serving in some way. Why protect the politicians (in your wheel) but implicitly castigate the other groups?
(Though you do actually call them ‘pandering politicians’ in the heading.)
Furthermore, in your piece you admit that, “What we face is, quite literally, a conspiracy.”
Do you think that politicians are not part of this conspiracy?
I suppose that the point I am driving at is this.
My experience tells me that one of the main reasons that people do not believe MRAs when they protest about how poorly men are being treated is because they TRUST the people who are mistreating them; e.g. judges, academics etc etc.
However, when you show them how these ‘trusted’ people benefit ***themselves*** by beating down on men, they begin to wake up.
Indeed, Prof Baskerville is so effective precisely because he demonstrates how those in so many professions (political, legal, therapy, social) benefit **themselves** by breaking down families.
He has exposed the motives behind the various groups that disempower and abuse men.
Well, the same applies to politicians.
4. “In my Wheel, pointing out what I consider an ancillary point, ie, that some politicians are corrupt, does not strengthen the Wheel, but would in effect weaken its propaganda value.”
I’m not so sure about that – given that most people do not trust politicians.
Canada …
http://tinyurl.com/6q5qyu
Australia …
http://tinyurl.com/5ar3zv
Many Countries …
http://www.gfk.hr/press_en/trust1.htm
As such, it seems to me that it would be **good** propaganda to voice an opinion about politicians that most people would already agree with.
5. You say that you believe that most politicians sincerely believe that they are protecting women by supporting various feminist policies. Well, if this is true, then, presumably, you need to show these politicians that they are NOT protecting women with their policies if you want them to change their views.
But you are not doing this. (Nor are most other MRAs)
So why should the politicians withdraw from their current policies on the basis of your complaints? After all, they are merely protecting women. And you have not really attempted to show them otherwise.
Of course, I cannot really speak about American politicians because I hardly know them, but I can assure you that those in the UK will say almost anything to increase their own standing, power, and wealth.
And my impression is that American politicians are just as self-serving.
September 1st, 2008 at 6:14 am
I think the most important aspect of this article is the need to overturn Roe v Wade.
That infamous decision is the catalyst for most of the problems faced by our society.
If people don’t care about the life of an unborn child, what makes you think they will care about yours?
I think Mr. Winkler knows the answer to that question.
Children’s, father’s and men’s rights begin with an end to abortion.
September 1st, 2008 at 4:18 am
In response to Harry’s comments:
Of course, I don’t disagree at all with you w/r to “men’s” rights. This piece is directed at the Fathers Rights community. The issue for FR is the attack on the patriarchy by feminism. I see *this* aspect of feminism as its most destructive and the most important one to address.
The attack on patriarchy is effected by destroying the atomic unit of civilization: the biological nuclear family.
The weakest link in the biological nuclear family is the father-child relationship.
This, for me, is the most significant aspect of feminism, and it is the most destructive aspect, and it is also the one that is most easily understood and most easily supported, by every good thinking man and women.
I understand that having female sports reporters allowed to go into male athlete’s locker rooms but not allow male reporters to interview Maria Sharapova, and such blatant inequities demanded by feminists and approved by men, are serious problems, but they don’t rise to the level of the War on Fatherhood, in my mind.
Again, even though this piece seems to be a critique of feminism (which of course it is), that is not the primary focus. The primary focus is trying to wake up the FR community (picture Dennis Kucinich at the DNC here
).
W/r to your comment about the Wheel, the PANDERING POLITICIANS spoke:
First off, of course I recognize that many politicians ride the DV gravy train with no real concern for the safety of women. However, I have to disagree with you in thinking that this actually describes the larger or largest component of Why politicans pander to the DV advocates.
Probably the best example is Joe Biden. Do I believe Joe Biden does *not* believe in the DV cause, and has only championed VAWA and the ‘violence against women’ issue because of political advantages?
No I do not.
I believe Joe Biden believes every bit of it.
He is what I call a “virgin.” Most men believe it all until it affects them.
Also, from a political, propaganda standpoint, I believe the statement I have on the PANDERING POLITICANS spoke, ie, “Politicians, seeking to protect women, pass the bills into law and fund the domestic violence industry at taxpayer expense” is a far more powerful and effective message to convey rather than ‘politicians are corrupt and don’t really care about protecting women from violence.’
I assume that you have googled “wheel of abuse” and seen that the feminazi have produced a plethora of different flavors of “the wheel”, each one focusing on one particular aspect of the victim-feminist canon.
In my Wheel, pointing out what I consider an ancillary point, ie, that some politicians are corrupt, does not strengthen the Wheel, but would in effect weaken its propaganda value.
August 31st, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Good article.
August 31st, 2008 at 7:14 pm
How many males are themselves professionaly and or politically intrested in the bastardisation and orphanisation of other mens children for profit ?
How many males are themselves professionally and or politically intrested in the social and legal diminishment of other men for personal gain ?
The answers to the above questions shuold furnish any movement with a strategy as to its chosen targets and its chosen beneficiaries.
August 31st, 2008 at 7:09 pm
[...] Charalambous Getting to “No” – A blueprint for a Fathers Rights Resistance movement 2008-08-31 at 8:34 am · Filed under 2008, Activism, Analysis, Child Support & Custody, [...]
August 31st, 2008 at 4:25 pm
There is a major blunder in the wheel, in my view.
“Politicians, seeking to protect women …”
1. The politicians are not seeking to protect women. They are greedily scrambling for the support of women.
It’s part of their winning strategy!
e.g. see …
http://www.HarrietHarmanSucks.Com/es_Harriet_Harmans_Game.htm
2. Most people who are told that politicians are merely seeking to ‘protect women’ by passing their various anti-male laws will think to themselves, “Quite right! We think that women deserve protection; so, stop complaining about these laws.”
I think that what is missing from the wheel is an exposure of the self-serving motivation behind all those groups therein identified.
Without exposing this self-serving motivation, people will wonder why those groups would do such terrible things. In other words, they won’t accept parts of the wheel.
August 31st, 2008 at 1:36 pm
I have uploaded two images of the “Real wheel of abuse”.
These images were the best I could produce. If someone with better software wants to re-do it, please go ahead.
I would ask that you run it by me first for approval, though.
fatherhoodcoalition.org/cpf/images/wheel.jpg
fatherhoodcoalition.org/cpf/images/wheel.gif
I’ll respond to comments in awhile.
Thanks for the positive feedback.
And let’s get *this* “Wheel” out “there.”
August 31st, 2008 at 1:23 pm
By God now your talking! I learned way back in school, the key to solving any problem is to define it. Feminism is the problem and the way to solve it is for men/ fathers to stand up and demand a return to the constitution and that government “servants” obey it.
Take away all the “special priviledges” ( no, they are not rights) that the feminazi’s ( feminist sound too benign and harmless and they ain’t) be forcefully challenged by men and anyone else who gives a damn about our society.
I have helped myself a whole lot by learning the law. I have succeeded somewhat and am still working on getting control of my life back from an “out of control” system that is totally biased against me. I have won several victories and will eventually remove the state out of my life. If other men learn what I have learned and mimic what I have done, we can push this “God awful feminazi rebellion” back. We can restore the balance and restore our rights and status as both parents and as equal citizens.
Start simple,first learn about Subject Matter Jurisdiction. That the key point, what SMJ is , is the legal authority to do what the corrupt system does, once that is removed, that slowes them down considerably.
It is not easy, the system is very corrupt, but they still have to obey the law, like it or not! Arrogant old judges can be compelled to abide by the law and use the remedies under the common law system we have to stop or atleast slow down the “unreasonable and unlawful” behavior these ” government thugs” often exhibit. Be prepared for a long fight, but don’t give up until you win and more importantly when you have won, stop! All you can reasonable expect to do is get the system out of your business and be able to force the ex to sit down and negotiate reasonably, you still have do what is right,but once the states interference is removed, it becomes a whole lot easier.
You become a parent again, you force the unfair and unreasonable BS of the government “servants” out and restore the balance that was and still is the law of the land. Easy? No it’s not, but doable and if you want your life back ,necessary!
August 31st, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Mark, How can I get that ” Real Wheel of Abuse” as a JPEG, or GIF or other image file? The article is a good one for men and fathers to read. (I use “men” in the context that some men caught in the family law/divorce nightmare do not have children but are affected nevertheless. I advocate for all of course but to get this story out I really need to insert that Real Wheel of Abuse as an image file. I can’t get it from the PDF and the media and some others in my networld absolutely will not open attachments. If its possible for someone to send me the REAL WHEEL OF ABUSE as an image please send same to me at nationaldirector@fatherscan.com
Jeremy Swanson
August 31st, 2008 at 10:36 am
Great piece Mark – and much appreciated.
But why talk about Fathers Rights rather than Mens Rights?
The number of men who are being disadvantaged by feminism etc etc – in one way or another – far exceeds the number of fathers who are being disadvantaged.
Why leave these men out of the picture?
Why leave them out of the war? – e.g. by specifically using language such as ‘Father’ rather than ‘Men’.