Slate.com & Salon.com Criticize the Fatherhood Movement (Part III)
November 9th, 2009 by Glenn Sacks, MA for Fathers & Families
Two major online publications--Salon.com and Slate.com--recently did articles criticizing the men's and fathers movement.
My first two posts dealt largely with a misleading quote attributed to me in both pieces, and the two publications' commendable agreement to clarify it. In this post and others, we'll deal more with the arguments made by Kathryn Joyce of Double X/Slate.com and Judy Berman of Salon.com.
Both Joyce and Berman are feminist writers who consider themselves opponents of the fatherhood movement. Berman and Joyce summarize the fatherhood movement's views as follows:
that false [domestic abuse] allegations are rampant, that a feminist-run court system fraudulently separates innocent fathers from children, that battered women’s shelters are running a racket that funnels federal dollars to feminists, that domestic-violence laws give cover to cagey mail-order brides seeking Green Cards, and finally, that men are victims of an unrecognized epidemic of violence at the hands of abusive wives.
Let's take this point by point:
false [domestic abuse] allegations are rampant.
That's a reasonable statement--false allegations of domestic violence are a major problem, and many prominent family law experts have said so.
a feminist-run court system
It's inaccurate to call the court system "feminist run," though feminist and domestic violence groups do have a lot of influence. However, traditional chivalry is at least as powerful a factor as feminism. The average judge who separates children from the fathers they love and need is hardly a feminist, but instead a traditional man who believes, occasionally with justification, that he's protecting women and children from male perfidy.
...[the system] fraudulently separates innocent fathers from children.
Yes, that happens very often.
that battered women’s shelters are running a racket that funnels federal dollars to feminists.
This sentiment, which is often expressed in the men's and fathers movement, isn't fair to domestic violence shelter workers. Most of the people who work at battered women’s shelters mean well, and do some very important work on behalf of women and children. They aren't living the high life on government money, and generally their pay is nothing to envy.
However, their training and worldview are stilted against men, and this is a problem. And DV programs do funnel a lot of money to feminist-run organizations, and sometimes this money is misused.
For example, DV groups often lobby against any bill which helps unite children with their fathers, including shared parenting bills and bills to put reasonable limits on post-divorce move-aways.
DV groups also allow themselves to be the tools of vindictive women who employ false DV accusations and restraining orders as custody maneuvers. Those who work in the DV establishment deserve credit for their good work, but also merit criticism for some of the problems they create. Reform is needed.
that domestic-violence laws give cover to cagey mail-order brides seeking Green Cards.
I've seen plenty of men set up by foreign women they married who they thought loved them. That there are men who emotionally or even physically abuse women immigrants is also a problem.
and finally, that men are victims of an unrecognized epidemic of violence at the hands of abusive wives.
There's no "epidemic" of domestic violence going either way (man to woman nor woman to man), but domestic violence is a significant problem for both genders. Women are more likely to suffer injury in domestic violence by a 2 to 1 ratio, but research clearly shows that women instigate at least as much DV as men. Research shows that women use weapons and the element of surprise to help compensate for their lesser strength.
More recognition and services for male victims of domestic violence are needed. To learn more, see the Holstein/Sacks column A domestic violence victim (Washington Times, Baltimore Sun, 7/16/09).
Joyce disapprovingly quotes:
"It’s now reached the point,” reads a statement from RADAR, “that domestic violence laws represent the largest roll-back in Americans’ civil rights since the Jim Crow era!"
RADAR's statement is defensible. I don't know if the epidemic of false DV accusations and restraining orders is the "largest roll-back in Americans’ civil rights since the Jim Crow era," but it's certainly a major one. To learn more, see my co-authored column Restraining Orders Can Be Straitjackets On Justice (Newark Star-Ledger, 7/28/08).
Berman writes:
Joyce introduces us to Glenn Sacks...who she describes as "a former feminist and abortion-clinic defender."
That's an accurate statement--I was a feminist activist in my 20s and helped protect abortion clinics from Operation Rescue's Freedom Summer campaign against the clinics in Los Angeles in the early 1990s. I don't particularly regret my activism, but I'm ambivalent about abortion and don't believe that most pro-lifers should be vilified as anti-woman. On the other hand, I don't believe that pro-choicers should be vilified, either.
Fathers & Families takes no public position on abortion. I rarely write about abortion, but was greatly saddened last year to discover that a former student of mine at a Catholic high school I taught at many years ago had committed suicide after being expelled from the school for having an abortion. I wrote about it here.
Berman writes:
Dismissive of the Bernard Chapins of the world, he's working toward the comparatively modest goals of increasing shared custody and lightening divorced dads' child-support obligations during the recession.
I don't recall saying anything specific about Chapin, but I take it she's using Chapin as an example of the men's activists who blame feminism for all of men's woes, and to that degree this is a fair statement. Feminism did many good things but it has also caused much harm. But many other factors besides feminism have caused the family court nightmare. These include: traditional chivalry; monied interests; cheap politics; vindictive women; and the irresponsible and/or cruel fathers who really do mistreat their wives and children.
We do need an increase in shared custody--a big one. As for "lightening divorced dads' child-support obligations during the recession," many dads have lost their jobs or suffered significant drops in income. Because it is difficult for fathers to get their child support orders modified downward, many decent, loving fathers are being jailed because they can’t keep up with their child support obligations.
Ed O’Donnell, chairman of the New Jersey State Bar Association’s Family Law Executive Committee, says that it “usually requires in excess of six months before a judge will say, ‘[The job loss] is possibly a real change in circumstances’… Six months is a long time, when you’re desperate.”
To learn more, see the Holstein/Sacks column Layoffs, courts put some dads in jail (Atlanta Journal Constitution, 6/21/09).
I'm writing several posts about the issues raised in the Slate.com and Salon.com articles--to read the others, click here.
The two articles are Kathryn Joyce's "Men's Rights" Groups Have Become Frighteningly Effective (Slate.com, 11/5/09) and Judy Berman's "Men's rights" groups go mainstream--Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability (Salon.com, 11/5/09).
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November 9th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
I would like to contribute to this commentary from slate: "and finally, that men are victims of an unrecognized epidemic of violence at the hands of abusive wives."
Glenn responds: "More recognition and services for male victims of domestic violence are needed"
which is putting it mildly. DV against men is now considered a joke in the popular media and general chivalrous culture with women attacking men for saying insulting things or for the woman being upset due to disappointment. One feminist recently commented on USENET her son bought a t-shirt that said: "9 out of 10 women may slap me, but I'm looking for the 10th one". I was shocked that she would find it funny for her son to go around telling people he thinks women should be slapping him. Think about it: What kind of person tolerates regular abuse from the opposite sex and what culture has a parent who thinks it's cute?
The seething misandry and contempt women have for men in this culture is shocking but perhaps ignored because so many Americans don't travel or see anything different. Most do not have a passport. Outside of the USA, if a man is behaving obnoxiously, the women will tell him off and walk away. That's it. No need to slap the man around.
November 9th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
...female-on-male violence remains a staple of comedy. Saw some more last night on "Desperate Housewives." We do have to wonder if all these fictional attacks that men are subjected to in TV shows, movies, commercials promotes a belief, that, well, hey its OK to batter men.
November 9th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
"Fathers' rights" is considered anti-woman by Judy Berman, but perhaps it is Judy Berman who is anti some women.
What does Judy Berman think about the rights of mothers who are primary care givers?
November 9th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Yes female against male violence is not taken as seriously in America today and the problem is not how often it happens (because if as the activists like to say, "Violence is NEVER okay." then why is it that M-against-F villified and F-against-M encouraged?). How many times have we seen on tv/movie a man start talking to a woman and she responds with a drink to the face or a hit? He may be saying some nasty things but is it really justified to respond with disrespectful words with physical violence?
November 9th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
They just can't STAND that we are actually organizing and growing throughout the world. And mostly because of their hate we will CONTINUE to.
November 9th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
Danny, it's not just that the violence by women against men isn't taken seriously. There's a growing, dark undertone of menacing hatred directed towards men. "Boys are stupid. Throw rocks at them" as the T-shirt goes doesn't even bother with a pretense of humor or even justified attack. It's a seething dislike of boys and men as second class citizens who don't even deserve to be in their presence. Boys and men are on notice that if the woman is unhappy, not merely offended but merely unhappy, for any reason than she reserves the right to kick him around to feel better.
This is compounded by most women's natural urges to have relationships with strong, confident men who respect themselves. So these women both crave the sugar rush of keeping the men in their lives down and serving them but at the same time feel unfulfilled because, after all, they are winding up in relationships with weak men.
So in response to Marc, I try to look at the situation as not a war against women as a gender, even a war against hateful women, but rather men taking back what makes us manly just as anti-feminism is also about re-feminizing women in a good way and allowing them to be warm, sweet, kind, and yes, vulnerable without feeling inadequate or inferior. We have to give carrot, preferably more of it, than stick just as feminism succeeded in selling men lots of stick but with a very small, but sexy carrot (pardon the freudian imagery)
November 10th, 2009 at 10:16 am
As a mother of sons, I can say that it starts in Kindergarten and does not end. Little boys are discriminated against and it goes on and on and on. Women seem to be bringing up their little girls to use and hate men. I see it all the time, men are made to feel important and loved, that is, until a ring goes on the finger. It then becomes obvious that a paycheck is what they become. They are made fun of, ridiculed, used abused and denied the right to see their children, even if the courts demand it, because the woman is not punished if she breaks the court order. If a man does, it's off to jail.
I could tell you stories that I am sure are not unique, but are non the less,outrageous.
How convenient the DV is for women, just as convenient as the Judge sitting on the
bench giving her everything she desires, because she can say "I'm a Woman"!
It appears to me that this is the same problem we have with a white person not being allowed to say anything about a person of color, just because of color, and the case that is out there now about Muslims, because they are afraid of being identified as prejudice and worry about retaliation. However, it's ok to say whatever you wish against a white person, God and men. why is everyone afraid to stick up for what is right!
when I hear the word "DEADBEAT", I say they sure are. They are dead inside because they cannot see their children and they are beaten up by the courts(they take their dignity and bleed them of all they have) While the Judges go home to rejuvinate themselves, they fail to see that they have taken that very necessity away from most fathers, just to please the manhaters.
The children are the losers!
November 11th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Thanks Joan for your kind consideration of mens rights.
When I talk about men's rights to family and friends, the first thing I point out is that MRA members are 40% female--if we were all about "extending control of abusive men" how could this be possible.
I salute all you kind women who are stridently fighting for what men dearly want: to be loved and to be their woman's and children's hero.
I think it's ironic that when you go on to feminist websights you find that feminists treat female commenters making pro-male comments in the most horrific fashion: calling them wh0res and s1uts and stating that these pro-male women are only in the MRA camp to get access to lots of c**k.
It's amazing how all this "go girl" power and not judging women on their sexuality morphs into outright hatred when they find that the woman doesn't tow the party line.
Feminists have morphed from stating women should be able to do anything they want, to actually telling her that she *MUST* be a certain way. And the tactics are name-calling and shaming. In other words, feminists actively execute the type of coercive control on women that they theorize teh patriarchy does.
The door is rapidly closing on them, and I think deep down they know it and are deeply afraid.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Look at this story from Canada:
http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=2155193
It's about a woman who randomly wanders up to men and kicks them in the groin.
One man lost a testicle as it was forced into his abdomen and disintegrated.
A good deal of these more histrionic radical feminists are hateful supremacists. As they more and more lose their female privilege I am willing to bet that you will see a great deal more of this kind of thing.
It will be a downward spiral for these feminists: as MRA's make more advances in the name of justice, these feminists will grow more and more histrionic and their logic more and more convoluted--and be outed as nutjobs. The more that prominent radical feminist pundits are outed as nutjobs, the more people will join MRA's and the more advances will we make, etc...
An accelerating circle of downfall for these feminists (I hope).