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

  
  

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ShadowSax
13:46 / 20.01.06
holy crap! o the name calling.

settle down. you're right. i'm out. you win. you're so great.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
13:48 / 20.01.06
...must...not...mention...Dave...Sim...
 
 
sleazenation
13:49 / 20.01.06
So, to reiterate Petey Shatfoe's point You don't feel like substantiating or defending any of the supposedly strongly-held opinions and FACTS you posted earlier.
 
 
ShadowSax
13:51 / 20.01.06
no. i dont feel like getting into it with a crew like this. i dont have the time, the patience, or the typing fingers on this day to wrap myself up into an argument such as this. i guess i just dont like arguing about things as much as you do.

or, if it makes you feel better, there are no facts. whichever.
 
 
sleazenation
13:56 / 20.01.06
i dont have the time, the patience, or the typing fingers on this day to wrap myself up into an argument such as this.

However, you do apparently have the typing fingers to continue going on about how you don't have time to substantiate or defend your views...
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
13:58 / 20.01.06
If there are no facts, ShadowSax, there are certainly statistics. Like the statistics about unreported domestic abuse which I referred to, giving my source, while at the same time I asked you to substantiate your claims about invented allegations of abuse. Or like the ones Jack Fear cited to repudiate your view that the male-female wage gap is a myth.

Again, I must ask, if you're interested in facts, could you explain what you meant by "mom will illegally keep dad from kids", which you have said is a fact. I have asked you to explain this more than once now.

Many people have attempted to engage with you, before their patience expired (and yet this thread has still not seen any name calling against you).

Can I ask what you expected to happen when you posted in this thread?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:04 / 20.01.06
In the absence of any factual support for your claims, despite your clear willingness to keep typing at length about yourself and your iconoclastic views... yes, I think we probably do have to assume that the standard of evidence that is considered acceptable to members of the fathers' rights movement when talking to each other does not actually hold up when confronted with a less ideologically aligned audience, and that you have been made aware of this in this thread, and are now hoping that if you squirt enough ink out of your fundament that nobody will be able to see this. C'est la vie.

The streak of misogyny in the likes of F4J is discussed above - the head of Families Need Fathers has spoken about how difficult it is at times to stop people who are often very angry with _a_ woman tranfering that anger to _all_ women, and thence making the organisation look like lunatics in the media. There's an element of self-dramatising self-absorption which, personally, I also find pretty alienating - as evinced by the idea, which Matthew o'Connor disowned but Shadowsax endorsed - that not getting the level of access you want is justification for abducting and traumatising a five-year-old boy, as if that would somehow demonstrate what a good parent you are. Eeesh, frankly.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
14:27 / 20.01.06
ha ah. i'm so not a misogynist. but not the point.

ha ah yes you are. You've generalised an entire women's rights movement and actively denied that women are sometimes treated less fairly than men. That's sexism. You're unwilling to admit to yourself or anyone else that in some circumstances women are treated better and in others men are treated better. That's sexism.

The misogyny was here: it's also a fact that mom will illegally keep dad from kids, and because of the way the laws are set up, dad can do little. The use of the word fact shows more than simple bias against women.
 
 
ShadowSax
14:38 / 20.01.06
ok, focus down for a second.

you say i'm a misogynist. you're wrong and your claim are wrong, but lets just say i am.

so what? just answer that ONE question.
 
 
sleazenation
14:42 / 20.01.06
Why don't we wait for you to back up one of your assertions, as you have been invited to on numerous occasions, first?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:43 / 20.01.06
So you suffer from an excessive and irrational dislike of women. So, further, your pronouncements about women are likely to be excessive and irrational. A good signifier of this may be a tendency to make statements about the law, feminism annd, indeed, women, that are based on prejudice rather than fact, leading subsequently to an inability to deal with fact-based queries to those beliefs, being as they are both central to your sense of self as hero in a world full of evil, malicious, deceitful women and also based on rather shaky factual and logical foundations.

Hope this helps.
 
 
ShadowSax
14:48 / 20.01.06
each of my challenged assertions are besides the point. the only assertion that matters is this (try to focus down to the crux of the issue): dads arent treated fairly in family court. the situation is desperate. contrary to things i've read about what i wrote, i never endorsed any kidnapping. but i can see the desperate logic behind it. this thread started by hammering in a humorous way at fathers trying to raise awareness on a very real issue. i responded in kind and blah blah blah. each of you has lambasted me for nothing but having an opinion, and it's frankly a little disturbing. you seem more interested in fighting the anectodal facts i mention. but those are not the point. why is it that moms have more rights in family court? i have answers to that question. no one else seems to, except to point to antics that are done after the fact, which make for a flawed argument.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
14:49 / 20.01.06
so what?

So I don't accept your irrational assumptions about me because I'm female and have different genitalia to you.
 
 
ShadowSax
14:50 / 20.01.06
honestly, with this "you hate women" stuff, you need to stop. or, please stop. you're passing judgments based on nothing but remarks here. i may have made generalizations in the interest of time and feeling glib, but not towards any one person, which you seem to be enjoying here. are we being civil here or not? tolerate other opinions or not?
 
 
Tryphena Absent
14:52 / 20.01.06
why is it that moms have more rights in family court?

Just a suggestion but it may have something to do with losing nine months of normal bodily function.
 
 
ShadowSax
14:52 / 20.01.06
nina, i never made assumptions about you.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
14:54 / 20.01.06
ShadowSax, you are an idiot.
 
 
ShadowSax
14:55 / 20.01.06
nina, ok, so now we're getting somewhere. so you're argument is that moms SHOULD be treated as more of a parent because they went thru carrying a child and (presumably you also mean) labor?

thats a VERY sexist argument, by the way. but aside from that, i'm glad that you made your actual opinion on the issue known. so on your side, you feel that women SHOULD be given primary custody off the bat because they carry the child.

just so i know. so from that point of view, the fathers rights movement has no justification whatsoever, because unfairness in these cases is justified?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:02 / 20.01.06
I'm sure that if they are as coherent, well-argued and well-substantiated as your claims that women have complete parity of pay (and that anyone who says different is a femnist liar), that the court system has ben corrupted by feminists and their insistence that all heterosexual sex is rape, and that all mothers seek to use the courts to deny fathers access (because women are evil women are evil women are evil).


So, thought experiment. If all the "proof" you have offered to support your worldview so far has been anecdotal and (let's be realistic here) incorrect, what reason do we have for believing that your unproven opinion on the way family courts work, based as it is on your shaky grasp of facts and your apparently pathological dislike of a) mothers, b) feminists and c) women, is any more reliable? Could you actually produce a case, with attestations from people who are not mentalists, to support your claims? Right now, I'm betting on no.

And on kidnapping:

how can they justify taking blair's son? the UK and US govts routinely kidnap dads' kids every day, for no justifiable reason. at least these extreme members or so called members had a "reason" - retribution. what is the govt's excuse?

Draws moral equivalency between not being given as much access as you want and abducting the Blairs' five-year-old son. As I say, this sort of lack of empathy for a child's feelings suggests precisely why a court might have found the people who were discussing it (if indeed they were) as less than ideal recipients of the level of unsupervised access they might have wanted.

Court decisions often leave at least one and sometimes both sides unhappy. This is the nature of the law, and why trying to sort things out in a way that leaves both parties at least content is a very good idea. I don't see a feminist, a federal or a Jewish conspiracy is necessary to validate that model. If you want to dial it back and try to argue cogently for a natural presumption of 50-50 access in all cases without exceptional elements, you could give that a go.
 
 
ShadowSax
15:04 / 20.01.06
ah, i've just been called an idiot by someone who is apparently a "moderator."

done. catcha later.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
15:05 / 20.01.06
Q.Why are peeple disagreeing with you, Shadowsax?

A.Because you have not backed up what you call facts but are in fact assertions with any external evidence.

A.Because, in that case, you may well have had a horrendous time trying to get access to your kids, a situation that must have been been horrible, and with which I sympathise, but what you are doing is extrapolating from personal experience to a general rule without providing any proof

A.And what you are additionally doing is displaying a willingness to characterise the situation in terms of
'a few bad apples' among fathers contrasted with the sweeping generalisations about 'moms' and 'feminists' that many have complained about.

A.Two different sets of rules, giving more leeway/latitude to men than women. That's mysogyny, pal.

A.Which is firstly, offensive and is being called as such, and secondly as both I and Haus have mentioned upthread, does not engender confidence in your opinions about this matter.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:12 / 20.01.06
Incidentally:

you're passing judgments based on nothing but remarks here.

Dude, think. All we have here is what you are saying. That's like saying in another environment you're passing judgement on me based on nothng me than the totality of things that I say and do in your experience of me. Therre may be a whole non-girl-fearing side of you, but we're not seeing it, so it's a bit harsh to complain that we're not imaging it well enough.
 
 
grant
15:39 / 20.01.06
Actually, Shadowsax, I'm a moderator and I don't think you're an idiot.

I do think that you're not expressing yourself terribly well and possibly not thinking quite long enough before responding to points.

But I also agree that there's a real gender inequity in the way family custody arrangements are set up (speaking as a stepfather/beneficiary of these arrangements - Wednesday nights and alternate weekends & holidays isn't anything like equal time), and that part of the reason they are the way they are has to do with the way feminist struggles* have been institutionalized. I think the real root of the problem has to do with a/institutionalizing of anything and b/ essential readings of gender, which is something that only (some forms of) feminism can really help us interrogate.

I mean, I can start talking about how Fathers 4 Justice are presenting themselves as hypermasculinized icons because those icons always seem to carry a peculiarly feminizing/feminized subtext (supermen in tights!), but that in itself is a feminist reading. I think it is, anyway.

*might be more useful to use the term "Women's Rights Movement" rather than "feminism" here, since the one is a social movement, and the other is a large category of ideology.
 
 
ShadowSax
15:44 / 20.01.06
i dont care if people disagree with me. i'm used to that altho i cant say why. what bothers me is the attack the messenger tact, the name calling and the nitpicking.

grant, i appreciate your response. i'm really done with this thread. i agree with your post completely and each point you make. i write off the cuff, always will. but off the cuff i'll never engage in name calling etc. so i may not have thought my posts out as much as others might have, but pasting stats doesnt necessarily count as thought, and namecalling doesnt either. i also havent edited my posts after the fact as some here have.

at any rate, thanks, grant.

and on.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
16:00 / 20.01.06
Actually, your comments on feminists, and indeed on mothers, have called every feminist and every mother who reads this thread names, Shadowsax. Your moral high ground is pretty shaky there, and to insult people's positions and their beliefs and then cry foul because somebody was wude in response is pretty weak. I would rather Nina had been more coherent and fulsome in her critique, but you had been pretty rude about her identity group (feminists) - much ruder, I'd say, than suggesting that they were idiots would be.

More generally - grant, I'm interested in why you think the allocation of time is unequal. I'm assuming that your situation is an all-else-equal one - that is, there is no reason of logistics, affection or familiarity to suggest that the child's best interests are served by a disproportionate amount of time being spent with its mother. If this is the case, what principles having been institutionalsied have led to this allocation of access? Is it simply that the Womens' Rights movement argued that acess to children, all else being equal, should be divided in a particular proportion, that proportion being x/y?
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
16:24 / 20.01.06
Does anyone know if there have been academic studies done into what the rates of access are, I mean we clearly 'know' that the evil feminazis control the courts but for those of us who are quaint enough to believe in facts and figures, are there any studies to help us out?

Alternatively I'm wondering how much this system owes to conservatism (it's 'the womans job' to raise children, it's 'the mans job' to go to work, ergo if they split up the woman gets the kids).
 
 
Jack Fear
17:23 / 20.01.06
I'm wondering how much this system owes to conservatism (it's 'the womans job' to raise children, it's 'the mans job' to go to work, ergo if they split up the woman gets the kids)

DING DING DING
 
 
Dead Megatron
17:45 / 20.01.06
There isn't a Single Army of Feminists/a Grant International Feminist Movement.

Sometimes I whish there was. Things would get done much faster in many instances

So, is this what they call "Trolling", eh?

Speaking as an adult male with no kids, I think no parent should be considered a better choice to keep the children a priori based on gender. I mean, that's why we need judges: to evaluate each case separatedly
 
 
Dead Megatron
18:11 / 20.01.06
btw, I know "misogyny" refers to people who dislike women, and 'misanthropy" refers to people who dislike humankind in general. But, is there a word for people who dislike men? "Misandrony", perhaps? Just curious...
 
 
Jack Fear
18:14 / 20.01.06
Close—it's misandry.
 
 
Dead Megatron
18:18 / 20.01.06
thanks
 
 
grant
20:53 / 20.01.06
If this is the case, what principles having been institutionalsied have led to this allocation of access? Is it simply that the Womens' Rights movement argued that acess to children, all else being equal, should be divided in a particular proportion, that proportion being x/y?

Well, basically I agree with what Our Lady and Jack Fear pointed out -- women tend to be read as nurturers, always, and nurturing tends to be read as the primary need of children.

I think the valuation of this in an official way was probably impacted by what would have been called "consciousness-raising" about the importance of "woman's work," which was an idea emphasized early on in the Women's Rights movement, and probably most recently a big issue/prominent position more than a couple decades ago -- I'd guess the early 1960s, if I had to put a date on it. I'm relatively sure the legislation around it was part of the early 1970s/Nixon era stuff that saw the ERA voted down and Affirmative Action made a standard part of hiring practices.

Lemme see... the Uniform Child Custody Enforcement Act goes back to 1968, apparently... although this Brief History of Prevailing Child Support Doctrine places it square in the 1980s (and defines prevailing doctrine in terms of "the feminization of poverty," which I'm not 100% sure I understand).

Finally, this New York State history of custody law goes back to English Common Law and precedents up to the 1800s, which all assumed that the father had a natural right to the child. That was slowly overturned through the 1800s until by 1925 (!) the primary factor in determining custody was (and apparently remains) what's deemed best for the child. In theory, men and women are equal in the eyes of the law (the article states). I have a strong feeling that in practice, that's not so -- and wikipedia backs me up on this.

Only 15% of custodial parents are fathers, in the U.S.

I'm not sure I can digest all this enough to try to guess at specific whys this happens, but it's pretty clearly got something to do with perceptions of gender.
 
 
Evil Scientist
21:36 / 20.01.06
So, is this what they call "Trolling", eh?

I don't think so. More a matter of posting without thinking.

Upthread, Nina suggested that the reason mother's seem to be favoured currently in custody cases might have something to do with the fact that the female carries and gives birth to the child. Which I find to be an interesting suggestion. Perhaps an assumption is being made that the female has a stronger connection to the child than the male because they were part of the emotionally and physically intense process that brought the child into the world?
 
 
Tryphena Absent
23:27 / 20.01.06
i've just been called an idiot by someone who is apparently a "moderator."

Not in this forum.

Grant doesn't think you've been idiotic but I do because this is an intensely serious subject and you've chosen to generalise rather than take into account the more targetted points that have been brought up by others.

We're all guilty of this occasionally, me too, yet your language has been derogatory and as Haus points out I am a feminist, I identify as a feminist and you have basically insulted me. It might surprise to learn that I agree with you to an extent. However I think that you've failed to take into account the time factor. Seeing children during the week after school and work is not the same as seeing them at the weekend. You could solve this by sharing custody during the week but this is generally perceived as disruptive, it means that kids are carted back and forth between two homes and two lives. Often parents move to different areas and that potentially means two different schools. So the options are deprive one parent of real leisure time with a child or create potential pressure by giving children two homes, two living environments. This is why the every other weekend custody arrangement is so common. What's the solution?

Ideally the arguments in favour of a more balanced system are not incorrect but to effect that arrangement is complicated as I've tried to demonstrate above and it relies on a reasonable relationship between people who are divorced.

The recent introduction of paternity leave in the UK perhaps goes some way to addressing the gender difference because fathers are being recognised as vital to the development of babies for the first time. That's an important step and I would be surprised if it didn't have a knock on effect with regards to custody law in the future.

The idea of woman driven custody relates to the fact that women give up a certain social status through their ability to have children. Pay, maternity leave, the invasion of the body, it's a choice and yet no choice at all if you want to continue your genetic code. Socially women are rewarded for their sacrifices by laws like this, it's a recognition that they have to give up more than men. They generally experience more disruption when a baby is conceived and born. This can be seen as problematic, in a way it's a societal pay off but fundamentally I don't see how you can get over the hump that a woman has carried a child inside her body and a man hasn't (obviously I'm focusing on children and their biological parents here).
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
23:46 / 20.01.06
In theory, men and women are equal in the eyes of the law (the article states). I have a strong feeling that in practice, that's not so -- and wikipedia backs me up on this.

Only 15% of custodial parents are fathers, in the U.S.

That's an excluded middle, I think - men and women could be equal in the eyes of the law and only 15% of custodial parents could be fathers perfectly logically, as long as one assumes that in 85% of case the appointment of the mother as custodial parent is in the best interests of the child. If that's not true, of course, there must be some bias on the part of the judges.
 
  

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