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While Marc focused on health issues, I focused on DV, divorce and custody. I also included bunch of refrences.>>>>>
Dear Sir;
I’m glad you’re able to get a chuckle out of the state of affairs with men in this country today, but as a member of “this group and its ilk,” I can assure you there are many thousands of people who aren’t laughing. As an author of a novel that focuses on domestic violence against a man, a publisher of an e-zine devoted to men’s rights issues, and the coordinator for the Men in Crisis Prayer circle, I am in a position to see that there is, in fact, a serious issue here.
I am not personally involved in any of these issues. I am a married woman and have been for 27 years. There is no violence occurring in my home or that of any family member. I am not an attorney, nor do I represent or work with attorneys.
Yet, I have been aware for some time that men are truly “getting the shaft,” as you put it, in matters of divorce/child custody. Almost daily I hear from men at the point of desperation due to inequities in the divorce system, and surely you must have seen news reports of the men driven to suicide. The other day I got an e-mail from a man in Pennsylvania with a child support judgment that exceeded his income. He had been fired from his job due to a wage garnishment order, and was facing jail time due to his inability to pay his child support. His request to the court to review his case was rejected out of hand. He contacted me as a last resort, in hopes I’d have some other options.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any options for him, or for the others I’ve heard from. There are men with good jobs forced to live in their cars due to impossible payment demands from courts. There are men who denied any means of meeting their child support payments due to bogus orders of protection that keep them from their businesses. These are not ‘deadbeat dads,’ these are men who are trying their best to meet their obligations but are honestly unable to do so. These legal paradoxes abound due to a court system that has no interest beyond clearing the daily calendar. Certainly, ‘the best interest of the child,’ is of little or no significance these days.
It is the children who ultimately suffer from the draconian measures of the court system. They are routinely put into the full custody of mothers who may or may not be competent to care for them. There is little or no consideration given to which parent may be the most able, or to equitable joint custody arrangements that may most benefit the children. It has become nothing more than a question of dollars and cents, with the children used as a bargaining tool. Most often they grow up without their fathers or any significant male role model. Presumably you’d be aware of recent studies on children raised in fatherless homes.
If you think divorce is funny, you ought to get a real belly laugh out of domestic violence. There is virtually no help in this country for male victims. There is one shelter in California, a self-help group in Texas, and a hotline in Maine. Online there are a handful of websites and discussion groups, but otherwise these men are on their own.
Men have been demonized over the past thirty years in the interest of women’s groups, seeking public funding in establishing women’s services. Each state spends millions of dollars every year for female-only shelters and other programs, while men continue to be abused and even killed by women. A fair consideration of valid statistics would show a nearly equal number of male and female victims of domestic violence. Yet, the skewed studies and falsehoods created by women’s groups and shelter advocates continue to be widely publicized and believed by the general public. The presumption that men are always the perpetrators of domestic violence is a dangerous myth that could well lead to an escalation in the number of violent women, and eventually an increase in the number of male deaths. Some states, such as my home state of Arizona, have already passed laws allowing women to murder men under the excuse of abuse. All these women need do is say they have been abused, and provide hearsay evidence supporting their claims.
This is not even to address the national Violence Against Women Act, which encourages localities to automatically arrest the man in any DV case no matter what the evidence may indicate.
The cause of men’s rights is a serious matter, taken equally seriously by our opponents. Women in the movement such as Erin Pizzey, who established the first DV shelter in 1971, and sociologist Susan Steinmetz, have received death threats as a result of speaking out on these matters. A recent master’s thesis on DV done by an Australian woman was written under a pseudonym due to fear of retribution. I would urge you to check the facts and reconsider your position.
Sincerely,
Trudy W. Schuett
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While it is certainly true that there is a crisis of masculinity, the solution is *not* government action to "save the males." The problem is not a lack of government "services" for men, the problem is a lack of men, as this piteous plea perfectly exemplifies. It is beyond ironic to see such an idea pushed by a so-called "National Coalition of Free Men," which seems to have bought the feminist view that a man is nothing but a not-very-bright woman with outdoor plumbing.
The female mind, genetically programmed to expect to be taken care of, naturally feels wronged when she doesn't get what she (thinks she) wants. This is why socialism is inevitable when women start voting, because they will transfer their expectation of protection and nurture from their imperfect fathers, husbands et al. to the government, which happily obliges by turning all of society into a gigantic nursery.
The State is a primitive, inefficient life-form; it cannot tolerate competition in any sphere where it is active (consider the Postal "Service"). If the State has become the Universal Caretaker, real men are a threat and must be eradicated. In a socialist, welfare-state society, there are no men in any meaningful sense, only women and children--of whatever age. Nor are there any families, since there are no fathers--only sperm donors and "partners."
A truly free man I once knew put it like this: "There is one question that must be answered: Do you want to be free, or do you want to be taken care of?" Take your pick.
Andrew
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NCFM is about freeing men from the use of masculinity as a tool to manipulate men into having no choice but to be either primary breadwinners, soldier pawns or death-job workers. And you can find this oppression in any system, whether communist or libertarian capitalist or anything in between. Part of transcending that oppression is learning to "complain without shame" as Warren Farrel puts it. That means resisting silly language like "real men," as though masculinity were something you had to earn, and instead speaking up for ourselves and demanding our rights as males no matter what political system we are in.
Even in a completely capitalist system, for instance, we still need judges. And when a chivalrous judge adds five years to your sentence because you are male, or gives you no protections from a false accusation because you are male, suddenly your position on "rights," "free" and "taken care of" are likely to shift around a bit.
The "I don't need help" attitude is, sadly, the very attitude most males take with regard to their gender UNTIL they get screwed by a system that failed to protect them because they are male. Meanwhile, their failure to speak up leads to the completely unjust treatment of men while they sit around pretending to not need protection. As Warren Farrell puts it: "The weakness of men is their facade of strength; the strength of women is their facade of weakness."
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