Bye-bye Men's Rights Brethren

To John Dias, cybro, Kapt Krunch, Fidelbogen, MadShangi, Frostyboy, Anti Misandry, and all the other Father's Rights/Men's Rights/Antifeminist Activists out there:

It has been brought to my attention by a colleague that all the arguments you put forth have already been answered sufficiently (see below). Therefore, I decided it would be an utter waste of cyberspace to further engage you on those subjects here.

Since you don't seem to know it, I'll inform you that you are a group of very privileged human beings who are utterly clueless about the living conditions and lack of privileges most people in the world--who aren't you--live with, endure, and often don't survive.

When you are, from your points of view, unfairly treated, or falsely accused--sometimes by one woman in your past--this "affront" generates in far too many of you the most self-righteous, scathing, and scornful written assaults on women, especially feminists, with a particularly foolish level of deranged irrationality focused on radical feminists.

These sorts of ego-bruises--assuming the occasional personal injustice done to some of you--to which you are apparently not at all accustomed, is but one indication of the enormous amount of privilege you carry day to day. (Most women I know are treated unfairly every day of their lives.)

You give humanity a bad name. So much for the myth of white men being western civilisation's standard of sanity, honesty, and integrity.

Let the record show that, to date, my questions to antimisandrists have never been answered. I gave John Dias his requested two days to reply here, and he did not choose to do so.

I apologise to the anti-misogynist visitors here for giving those men as much attention as I have.

I'll close this post with the following quotes, correspondence, and this important link (a website from which all of what follows was found). What is blockquoted below, in addition to the other information found at the link just above, thoroughly exposes many of the distortions and lies Fathers' Rights and Men's Rights Groups are organised to promote and promulgate.

Robert Okun, a specialist in men's issues and domestic violence, pointed out that many of today’s dads, whether married, never-married or divorced, are doing their best to stay actively involved in their children’s lives. But of men in the organized father’s rights movement, who typically represent themselves as the innocent victims of gender discrimination and manipulative ex-wives, Okun writes: "Some may very well be getting a raw deal. If so, it is essential that divorce lawyers, psychotherapists, family service court officers, mediators, guardians ad litem and judges educate themselves about those circumstances and take steps to intervene when a man has been erroneously targeted as part of a strategy in a contentious custody complaint. However, in a dangerously high number of cases, many of these fathers have a documented history of abuse."

[C]oncerned citizens who've taken the time to investigate the activities of father's rights groups in greater depth -- notably Trish Wilson, a freelance writer who considers exposing the shady underside of the father's custody movement her part-time job. Ms. Wilson first became curious about the movement when she stumbled into a father's rights message board on AOL ten years ago. When she questioned the accuracy of child support statistics posted on the board, Ms. Wilson reports she was "attacked by the regulars there. The woman who had posted the original out-of-context quotes told me that I believed all women should have custody of their children because they had uteruses, which is nonsense. There were similar, ugly flames thrown at me by others. I was taken aback at how nasty they were." Since then, Ms. Wilson has conducted extensive research reviews and produced a series of articles disputing the studies and data father's rights advocates use to justify their intention to overhaul child custody and support laws.

Date: Fri, 8 May 1998 06:12:26 -0500 (CDT)
From: enclosed@mo.net
To: liz
Subject: Re: SMH

Liz,

One evening I was sitting at dinner with a man who stated "Women don't understand abstract justice." I said, "What do you mean by that?"

He said, "They can only see the world through relationships, and that is all that matters to them."

Thanks for proving his point.

Look for this man's book coming out this year, "The Case for Father Custody." [5]

Liz, a man is very interested in raising his progeny, not somebody elses.

"Organisms have evolved to expend their very lives enhancing the fitness prospects of their descendants. Parental investment is a precious resource, and selection must favor those parental psyches that do not squander it on nonrelatives." --Daly and Wilson, 1988.

Nick

LIZ'S RESPONSE:

I see you've run out of arguments and now have descended into thinly veiled insults, i.e. telling me (a lawyer), that (being a woman) I do not understand "justice," as well as resorting to sloganism, and the "authoritative fallacy," i.e. quoting others, who are to be given extra credence because their words have been published.

You go on to say: "A man is very interested in raising his progeny not somebody elses."

I have a question back. It's "why?" Why do you think so? Are you sure it's RAISING that progeny and not merely passing on genes?

My response to you is this: catering to an adult's ego is just not a priority consideration. It has nothing whatever to do with the interests of a child. If you believe a parental DNA connection is a motivating thing, well that speaks volumes.

We're talking "possession" here, as in property, as in "mine." And "molding" here as in "indoctrination into my beliefs." Not caregiving. Not a child perspective. But self-adoration and replication. If the biological connection alone was so motivating, how is it we have the numbers of nonmarital unions and bad marriages we have? what about adoptive parents? what about sperm donors? I'll agree with you that some men think this way. I just don't buy it as some naturally arising drive, and even as a result of social indoctrination, I don't buy it as a given.

But let's accept your theory for the sake of argument. If a biological father's ostensible natural interest is in raising his own progeny, that interest nevertheless still is unlikely to compare favorably with the gestating mother's interest. She's got the very same biological connection, PLUS the biological relationship in fact with the child! And how is the father's interest later on demonstrated? Who is more likely to be the primary caregiver?

"The Case For Father Custody?" Nonsense. By your own measure, natural mothers' parenting generally would come out on top on both counts: your "abstract justice" theory, as well as my real life relationship preservation.

In one breath you've pretended (that male superiority thing?) that "women don't understand abstract justice," and then implicitly called upon nature, quoting talk about about organism evolution. Evolutionarily, the male reproductive drive in species the world over is merely to pass on the genes, not to raise the children. Most organisms also have evolved such that mothers raise their young.

And what about your "abstract justice?" Life is not lived in the abstract, and some men's egos are just not the sum total of what counts.

This is really what the FR movement is about, isn't it. Children and women as men's possessions. The ideology of property rights. Patriarchy. It has nothing whatever to do with the well-being of children.

By the way. Clarence Darrow, a famous man lawyer well known for his righting of wrongs, had this to say about "abstract justice": there is no such thing, in or out of court.

liz