Barbelith Underground > Switchboard > Fathers For Justice dress up as Captain America, Batman. Then Get Arrested. [PICS]

The sniping between Haus, toksik, and ShadowSax, above, does strike me as a kind of posturing* that I’m sad has predominated on this thread. Maybe I'm absurdly optimistic, but I actually think that each of you is better than the way you're presenting yourselves here.

I’m especially concerned that apparently some women on this board who have very different experiences of the court system than its presentation here by ShadowSax feel so completely turned off by the turn this thread has taken, by the tone of what’s going on, that they aren’t contributing to the discussion. I hope they will reconsider their decisions.

In the interest of further disclosing my potential biases, I should probably let you all know that I am raising two children who were ultimately abandoned by both parents (although both parents would dispute that "abandonment" is an accurate characterization of their actions), as a result of a particularly messy divorce and subsequent custody battle.

I still have warm if very frustrated feelings for both parents, who admittedly both have some very big personal problems that made this situation more extreme than is perhaps typical. I do believe that both loved their children in their ways. When I discussed the messy situation with the kids, I did my very best to frame the parents' confusing actions as deriving from real love and genuine pain.

But their inability to trust the other at even a very basic level was what ultimately made it impossible for either of them to parent the children. And the children did suffer, feeling like a kind of "football," as one put it.

My children are now adults, and they are working out an adult relationship with their biological parents. The parents' past behavior, and their continued tendency to live in and bring up all their past wounds and hurts and perceived wrongs continues to have a negative effect on their children’s ability to reconnect with them. This, to me, is the true tragedy.

Although the case was complex, I think it is accurate to say that both parents became, ultimately, more focused on the accusations of the other partner, and, in this case, the children wound up in foster care. In their hearts, the parents each believed they loved the children better than anyone else, and both tried to keep fighting for these children. But every time we all wound up in court to sort matters out, it became clear that neither of the parents could see anything beyond their own distrust of the other, including anything truly relevant to the care of the children.

(That’s a good allegory for how this thread feels to me, actually: people seeming unable to keep the focus on elucidating the topic, on our board ideal of being the best place on the web for subcultural discussion, and instead seeking to score ego points off one another.)

And I hear a similar problem in your postings, ShadowSax, in particular: I know yours must be a hard situation, and it’s clear to me that you are experiencing genuine pain and anguish.

But in this situation, I must say, it’s not only as if you can’t see the forest for the trees, it’s as if your nose is two inches from one tree, and that’s all you can see. You can’t seem to see any other trees, let alone the shape of the forest. You can only see this tree in front of you, blocking your way, and if people try to point out other trees and give a glimpse of the whole forest, you accuse them of being blind and wrong. You then blame all people who disagree with you, and particularly blame women and the feminist movement for things that they couldn’t possibly be primarily responsible.

So let me have another go at describing the forest: Men are in control of our political system and our economy, and have been since, well forever. Men commit 90-95% of all violent crimes in the United States. Males are much more likely to send their domestic partners to the hospital or to women’s refuges as a result of violent actions than females are.

Women in relationships are likely to bring less wealth to the relationship, to be younger, to have jobs that pay less, and to be physically smaller than their male partners. They are more likely to give up work to care for children, they are more likely to be dependent on male partners for health care costs, etc. This makes them vulnerable to domestic abuse, and makes them far more likely to come out of divorce in an extremely vulnerable position, financially and often physically. Many women are stalked by angry, violent, jealous former partners who attempt to use the partner’s love of their children as a weapon of intimidation.

More importantly, the value system that is even in control of the custody system is one that was set up to protect the interests of male property holders. It is both classist and sexist at its core. (Working class men may be disadvantaged by the focus on protecting property holders, but they are, as men, advantaged by and large by the sexism of the system as a whole. In my own field, teaching, if a syllabus is handed out with a male name on the top—especially one that doesn’t suggest non-white background—the course and the syllabus will be viewed as more organized and authoritative than if the teacher has a female name. This has pervasive effects that women deal with everyday and which are mostly invisible to men who have not taken a conscious effort to reflect on the situation.)

Men seem to be valued for their economic value, and women for their nurturing value. We can say that that is an unfair situation for both genders, is accurate as far as it goes, but if you cannot see that women have far less economic, political, and social power than men in our world, then we really may have nothing more to discuss. And I emphasize this not to say that women are “victims,” that’s a reductive and loaded term. While the situation has arguably improved in some ways in the West, women are, as a whole, vulnerable to male power in ways that men are never vulnerable to women.

however, when we factor in how the localities enforce both ends of the parenting relationships, we end up with the fact that the financial interests of the mother, as supported by the father, are favored, as opposed to the nurturing interests of the father, as necessarily supported by the participation of the mother with the custody orders.

Ok. This system was set up this way, why? Contrary to your narrative above, which traces it back to the (apparently female-dominated?) Clinton administration (where the Senate never had more than 9% women in it, the Supreme court had 2/9, and the house of representatives I think also never rose about 15%..., and the ratios in local government is not much better), the system of holding men even marginally responsible does not derive from some gallant, chivalrous interest of the government for poor mothers. (Think about how the government acts: does that even make sense?) They do it because it’s in the state’s interest to have children taken care of. Because children who are abandoned by their parents become a “burden” on the state—i.e., on the taxpayers, on the property holders—in one way or another. The state is purely protecting the desire of wealthy people to avoid paying taxes.

You know, there’d be an easy way to avoid all custody payments: if we'd just commit to socially supporting all children, regardless of their family status, we would not need to squeeze parents. If we made medical care and excellent education universally available to all children, and even paid a State-stipend to all custodial parents, married or unmarried, this issue would disappear.

We don't do that, because of the legal system that propertied-males created, pretty much by themselves, to protect their paternity, property, and inheritance rights. Women have had almost no direct control of this system--except possibly in the last, say, 10 years? And even then, women remain in the vast minority of lawyers, judges, politicians at every level--federal, state, local. To ignore those facts, and create a kind of feminist cabal somehow controlling these officials from behind the scenes is, quite simply, to engage in sexist scapegoating.

So, while I would personally love to see the US adopt a more socialist approach to child support, I don’t see this happening any time soon. Instead, we have to work within a system that is set up to protect the interests of propertied males, and, in so doing has an effect of, in your opinion, hurting male NCPs disproportionately. You, like a few other divorced men I have known, deeply deeply resent that the child-support money cannot some how go directly to the children, but has to go through the CP otherwise known as the ex-wife.

This kind of resentment is somewhat understandable, but it is poisonous to parenting. In fact, it makes these men incapable of the empathy that is base-line for raising kids, and, more importantly, for having a good relationship with those children when they reach adulthood. Read that twice.

I have seen a few friends of mine--otherwise sane and rational men--go to great lengths to avoid any payment for their children. One well-educated, funny, smart friend of mine, close to having a law degree, quit school and then deliberately became unemployed and then underemployed purely to avoid making these payments to his wife. I kind of believe him when he says he loves the children, but I think that, practically, his actions actually are the opposite of loving. The children eventually realize what these men are doing and they know that, in the end, it is they who are hurt. Those relationships are very difficult to repair.

One thing I learned from raising kids when I had genuine conflict with their parents was that, in the long run, it’s really in your best interest to just suck it up. To be vulnerable, to be a kind of “loser” out of love. To just let go of the need to “win.” To work very hard to understand the pain of the other people—the children and yes, even your ex-wife. To remember that it is expensive to raise children. To explain to the children where that ex-partner is coming from, and how her actions come out of love.

I know that I don’t know your situation, and it may be that you were married to an evil human being. But I doubt it. You know what: if you really love these kids, love them more than you need to be right. Keep your pain in perspective by whatever means works for you. Accept that the system is imperfect, and resolve to focus your energy on building a foundation for a strong, lifelong, adult relationship with them. I bet you’ll all be happier in the long run.

*edited to delete the adjective "male" which I should have known better than to use, as it is unfairly reductive, and does represent a kind of thinking that I am trying to move away from. My apologies to toksik and Haus.

alas

16:56 / 06.02.06

I can raise children successfully without believing that the system in which I'm allowed to raise them is sound.

Amen to this, brother. I'd say it's what most of us are doing, and it's what feminist moms have always had to do. So we're in this boat together to that degree.

I actually have come to regret parts of my last posting, as my initial edit already suggests, and wish I had written it differently for a variety of reasons, including the fact that I do not know your situation or how you are raising your children. I had not detected a lot of empathy, respect for others, or a willingness to admit to any error, from you in this forum, but it was not precisely fair for me to extrapolate parenting skills from that. And although you seemed very very resentful of the system which seems to privilege ex-wives in your view, you never implied your wife was evil. I apologize for making those assumptions.

I also think the word "posturing" was inaccurate in my posting. It arose from my frustration at the lack of other female posters on this topic, and was imprecisely used. I have privately apologized to Haus and toksik and publicly do so to you.

On the subject of apologies, the vitriole with which you entered this discussion ( they were removed from their kids lives for having penises. if you think i'm mistaken here, you're wrong and ill-informed. sorry bout ya.) is markedly different from your tone and argumentation now, and I'm definitely glad of that. While I think other posters could have approached you differently, you kind of set yourself up for some snarkiness with that as an opener. And, we take evidence fairly seriously, particularly in fora outside the Conversation, as I think our wiki makes clear. So, your initial posturing about not coming armed with stats, and then linking to sites that make outrageous claims, like the one about heart attacks of male spouses being likely the result of poisoning by their wives, also accounts for some of the snappishness you've experienced.

To me, those lapses deserve some acknowledgment on your part. That's partly what got under people's skin, and, unless I missed something, you have never admitted with any kind of sincerity that your approach may have been in any way flawed.

I am a member in good standing, and have been for a long time, and can tell you that I have had to publicly re-think my arguments on a regular basis here. And people still seem to respect me.

I actually like a good argument--that's why I'm here--and I like diversity of opinion, as it forces me to really hone my own arguments. So, despite your earlier tone, I think it would be good to have you stay around, but it would go a long way with the community here if you'd respect us enough to admit it when your own approach has been less than respectful or well-considered.

So, you say:

At its basic level, the feminist movement sought to establish women as victims of a male-controlled society, and placed men as a favored class in legal, economic, and social systems. In seeking to right this valid wrong, womens groups have established things like support enforcement agencies. However, while we can argue that there are inherent counters, inherent push-back from male-centric groups in many areas (economic, for instance), there has been no push-back on the family court front.

I still disagree with your assessment of the feminist movement, which I don't think you have gotten from feminists themselves, but from your own experiences and in different support groups, if I'm recalling correctly, and, I think, from media misrepresentations of feminism. I am a feminist, and I do not view women as victims.

I do view women as persons who are still often lack full authority over their bodies and their lives, as a result of a political, economic, and legal system that has been and continues to be under male control and, despite the real social and economic gains that women have made. I believe it is driven by a patriarchal world view much more strongly than it is driven by anything that can be described as truly feminist. It is probably beyond the scope of this thread and my abilities to convince you of the latter point, but I'll probably keep trying.

I continue to assert that men, not feminists, literally made themselves "a favored class": women have not been full citizens for even 100 years. While you are correct that there's a difference between the feminist movement and women in politics, you seem to trivialize the fact that women themselves still are not in positions of power in this country, suggesting that the all-powerful (monolithic?) women's vote is the primary consideration. I submit that it is very important that it was not "women's groups" that created child support agencies, but mostly white, male politicians, responding as they saw fit not only to feminist arguments but primarily, in fact, to the desire of their wealthiest constituents not to pay taxes. And those wealthiest constituents tend to be male, and driven by profit-motivated goals that are inconsistent with mainstream feminism, let alone the kind of socialist feminism that I support.

It did not stop those politicians from framing their actions as those of knights in shining armor protecting damsels in distress and poor children from deadbeat dads, but that, too, is a patriarchal fantasy that I would say has served the politicians more than it has served women, although some women were no doubt grateful for the financial support. It remains true that women often come out of divorce at a serious economic disadvantage--older divorced women have very high rates of poverty.

(You say that getting more women in power would be unlikely to lead to increased social welfare spending. Well, it would of course depend on the women involved, but all the major feminist organizaitons support a much stronger social welfare safety-net, all of them are regularly accused of being socialist, if not communist in their approach. So I assert that if there were more genuine feminists in control, we would spend more on children as a state. And if you truly believe that we should, and you truly believe in equality, and you truly value nurturing of children, well, I have some bad news: you may in fact actually be a feminist too!)

Another part of my posting I would alter to some degree is another piece you called me on for not quite addressing your argument. You are right: There was a great deal of lip service (in the media during the 90s) briefly paid to the women's vote during the Clinton administration, and the "gender gap" that supposedly brought his administration into power.

I would counter that, first, and most flippantly, with all the elections before and since that time, which have essentially ignored women and have been appalingly macho--especially in this last in which Democrats fled even paying lip service to women for fear of not looking tough on terrorists, and tried to align themselves with nascar dads. And, even during Clinton's time, the lip service to women was largely that: this was the president who ended "welfare as we know it," which has been most challenging for women in poverty. The real power behind the politicians has been with moneyed interests, and that is not women in poverty.

But the same media that brought us those "amazing" stories of how women controlled Clinton's white house (which, to say the least had very ambivalent results on his effectiveness and credibility!), it also tends to portray feminists as power-hungry selfish careerists or whining victims, and that's the image that I'm getting from your postings.

An honest question: Would it be fair to say that you see men as victims of the current family court system, and that you would place women as a favored class in that system? If so, then aren't you doing exactly what you claim the feminist movement to have wrongly done, if on a larger scale? This is a real question; I'm not being belligerent: I'm genuinely interested in whether you are comfortable with that language/analysis applied to your own case.

I think this is a common problem that all rights-based groups face: you are trying to bring awareness of an injustice in the system (or systemic and interconnected injustices across a vareity of systems), and it's all to easy for people on the outside to label you as a whiner and an embracer of victim status. Does that feel fair to you when it is applied to your case?

Finally, in the above quotation, you seem to be implying that "push back" against the feminist movement is necessary, because women have been getting too much power in all areas, and the only place we haven't been shoved back is in the area of the family courts. Do you mean to do that? Because, for me, the numbers do matter, the fact that women control so little of the power apparatus of public life--wealth, political power, etc. (and women who are feminists control even less) does matter.

Now, on the topic of domestic abuse and the supposed equality of male and female perpetration of same. Here's what the National Clearinghouse on Abuse and Neglect Information says, and it seems pretty balanced to me:

Who Are the Perpetrators?

No matter how the fatal abuse occurs, one fact of great concern is that the perpetrators are, by definition, individuals responsible for the care and supervision of their victims. In 2002, one or both parents were involved in 79 percent of child abuse or neglect fatalities. Of the other 21 percent of fatalities, 16 percent were the result of maltreatment by nonparent caretakers, and 5 percent were unknown or missing. These percentages are consistent with findings from previous years.

There is no single profile of a perpetrator of fatal child abuse, although certain characteristics reappear in many studies. Frequently the perpetrator is a young adult in his or her mid-20s without a high school diploma, living at or below the poverty level, depressed, and who may have difficulty coping with stressful situations. In many instances, the perpetrator has experienced violence first-hand. Most fatalities from physical abuse are caused by fathers and other male caretakers. Mothers are most often held responsible for deaths resulting from child neglect. However, in some cases this may be because women are most often responsible (or assumed to be responsible) for children's care (U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect, 1995).

Additionally, men do abuse their partners at seriously higher rates than women do. Here are the CDC statistics on the question of Intimate Partner Violence:

While not an exhaustive list, here are some statistics on the occurrence of IPV. In many cases, the severity of the IPV behaviors is unknown.
*Nearly 5.3 million incidents of IPV occur each year among U.S. women ages 18 and older, and 3.2 million occur among men. Most assaults are relatively minor and consist of pushing, grabbing, shoving, slapping, and hitting (Tjaden and Thoennes 2000a).
*In the United States every year, about 1.5 million women and more than 800,000 men are raped or physically assaulted by an intimate partner. This translates into about 47 *IPV assaults per 1,000 women and 32 assaults per 1,000 men (Tjaden and Thoennes 2000a).
*IPV results in nearly 2 million injuries and 1,300 deaths nationwide every year (CDC 2003).
*Estimates indicate more than 1 million women and 371,000 men are stalked by intimate partners each year (Tjaden and Thoennes 2000a).
*IPV accounted for 20% of nonfatal violence against women in 2001 and 3% against men (Rennison 2003).
*From 1976 to 2002, about 11% of homicide victims were killed by an intimate partner (Fox and Zawitz 2004).
*In 2002, 76% of IPV homicide victims were female; 24% were male (Fox and Zawitz 2004).
*The number of intimate partner homicides decreased 14% overall for men and women in the span of about 20 years, with a 67% decrease for men (from 1,357 to 388) vs. 25% for women (from 1,600 to 1,202; Fox and Zawitz 2004).
*One study found that 44% of women murdered by their intimate partner had visited an emergency department within 2 years of the homicide. Of these women, 93% had at least one injury visit (Crandall et al. 2004).
*Previous literature suggests that women who have separated from their abusive partners often remain at risk of violence (Campbell et al. 2003; Fleury, Sullivan and Bybee 2000).
*Firearms were the major weapon type used in intimate partner homicides from 1981 to 1998 (Paulozzi et al. 2001).
*A national study found that 29% of women and 22% of men had experienced physical, sexual, or psychological IPV during their lifetime (Coker et al. 2002).
*Between 4% and 8% of pregnant women are abused at least once during the pregnancy (Gazmararian et al. 2000).

The weight of these kinds of statistics, and many others, leads me to say that while gender norms hurt both genders, women are still disadvantaged in all critical areas. While you have pointed out real problems that men face in this one area, I would feel much more likely to sympathize if they weren't accompanied, here and elsewhere, with so much that seems so unsympathetic to and uninterested in the genuine interests of the women's movement.

We actually also seem to agree that father's rights organizations could and should be natural allies of the women's movement, as you have implied, but I remain unconvinced that the Father Rights movement bears no responsibility for its decision to distance itself from and even to work very hard to counter feminist arguments. It is largely a backlash movement, as it stands, but I would hope it wouldn't have to be.