Installment 16. If Men Have All the Power How Come Women Make the Rules?
Share this compelling intro to the Men's Movement with your skeptical friends.
Domestic Violence Bigotry: the Maternalist Backlash
There is a lot of joy in helping kids grow up happy and strong. It’s one of the very best kinds of gold a person can have in his life. Right now that gold is owned and controlled by women. And as hard as we resisted women getting equality in the monetary marketplace we’re seeing women fight even more fiercely to keep us subordinate and second-class in the arena of parental love and joy. Their gold, after all, is much more beautiful and powerful than ours ever was. And they know it.
Just as men tried to keep women out of jobs by playing on sexist stereotypes of women as ditzes and bimbos, women are trying to keep us out of parenting by playing on sexist stereotypes of us as batterers and abusers.
“Elaine Epstein, former president of the Massachusetts Women’s Bar Association… [wrote a newsletter article about] ‘the frenzy surrounding domestic violence… The facts have become irrelevant,’ she wrote… ‘Everyone knows that restraining orders and orders to vacate are granted to virtually all who apply, lest anyone be blamed for an unfortunate result… In many [divorce] cases, allegations of abuse are now used for tactical advantage.’”
— Cathy Young, writing in Salon, October 25, 1999
Why do pheminists propagate their domestic violence lie? For the same reason racists propagate the Depraved Negro stereotype. To keep us “in our place.” For pheminists, our place is away from “their” children. The more we express our desire to be full and equal parents to our children, the more pheminists feel the need to tell their lies, to suggest none too subtly that we are not to be trusted with gentle little children.
The irony is that intelligent people see racists for what they are. Pheminists, on the other hand, are still thought to be progressive.
For the book Women of the Klan by Kathleen M. Blee [University of California Press, paperback edition 1992], the publisher’s description says, “Ignorant. Brutal. Male. One of these stereotypes of the Ku Klux Klan offers a misleading picture. In Women of the Klan, sociologist Kathleen Blee unveils an accurate portrait of a racist movement that appealed to ordinary people throughout the country. In so doing, she dismantles the popular notion that politically involved women are always inspired by pacifism, equality, and justice.”
In her review of this book in the Los Angeles Times (September 1, 1991), Barbara Ehrenreich wrote, “I must now live with the fact that the Klan contained ‘all the better people’… even Quakers, political reformers and (this is the truly discomforting part) feminists… Women of the Klan stands before us as carefully garnered, irrefutable evidence that women are capable of asserting their gender rights in the most noisome settings.”
ACTION ALERT ON “FATHERS’ RIGHTS” (The Backlash Manifesto)
National Organization for Women, 1996WHEREAS organizations advocating “fathers’ rights,” whose members consist of non-custodial parents, their attorneys and their allies, are a growing force in our country; and
WHEREAS the objectives of these groups are to increase restrictions and limits on custodial parents’ rights and to decrease child support obligations of non-custodial parents by using the abuse of power in order to control in the same fashion as do batterers; and
WHEREAS these groups are fulfilling their objectives by forming political alliances with conservative Republican legislators and others and by working for the adoption of legislation such as pre-sumption of joint custody, penalties for “false reporting” of domes-tic and child abuse and mediation instead of court hearings; and
WHEREAS the success of these groups will be harmful to all women but especially harmful to battered and abused women and children; and
WHEREAS efforts of well-financed “fathers’ rights” groups are expanding, sharing research and tactics state by state; and
WHEREAS many judges and attorneys are still biased against women and fathers are awarded custody 70% of the time
when they seek it per the Association of Child Support Enforcement;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the National Organization for Women (NOW) begin a national alert to inform members about these “fathers’ rights” groups and their objectives through articles in the National Now Times (NNT); and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that, as a part of this alert, NOW establish a clearinghouse for related information by sharing with NOW state and local Chapters the available means to challenge such groups, including the current research on custody and support, sample legislation, expert witnesses, and work done by NOW and other groups in states where “fathers’ rights” groups have been active;
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that NOW encourage state and local Chapters to conduct and coordinate divorce/custody court watch projects to facilitate removal of biased judges; and
BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that NOW report to the 1997 National Conference on the status and result of this national alert whereupon its continuation or expansion will be considered.
This Action Alert reveals paranoia among women terrified by the thought of men sharing equally in parenting. If judges are so biased against women, why would NOW want to keep divorces in court rather than shift them to mediation?
There was a time when feminists insisted on gender-neutral language about parenting. They said quite rightly that always being depicted as the primary caretakers of children made it difficult for them to be seen as anything else. But now, according to the Ottawa Citizen, June 7, 2001, women’s groups in Canada are outraged that official documents describing a conference on divorce and family issues are gender-neutral. “This is an astounding omission given that women have overwhelmingly been, and continue to be, the primary caregivers of children,” said one of the leaders. Predictably, she then raised the specter of “male violence” to reinforce the wall around women’s domain. “Women’s organizations believe the outcome of this consultation will jeopardize the rights and safety of women and children,” she said.
In an article published in the National Post on June 14, 2001, heroic Canadian journalist Donna Laframboise analyzed the 56-page document these women issued. She found that the word “father” appears 54 times, but not once in a favorable context. Twenty-four times the word is neutral; the other thirty times refer to abusive fathers, sex-offender fathers, fathers who want to “control the mother,” fathers who abandon or kidnap their children, and fathers who want to spend more time with their children only so they will then have to pay less child support. Some form of the word “abusive” appears 155 times, “violent” or “violence” appear 183 times, “assault” or “assaulted” are used 26 times. The authors refer to men’s alleged desire to dominate and control women and children 24 times.
At its most fundamental, the men’s movement is a civil rights struggle. It won’t be easy.