"State of the Union" by Carl Moore

Help, Resources for Dads The National Fathers' Resource Center is a division of Fathers For Equal Rights, Inc. (FER), located in Dallas, Texas, with offices in both Dallas and Ft. Worth. In existence for over three decades, it has services and resources for dads nationwide and is one of the largest and most active fathers' rights organizations in the U.S. www.fathers4kids.org

"We see this all the time where the ex-wife lives with a crazy, harmful boyfriend who can't see his own kids because the court has prohibited him because he may have been convicted of drugs or abuse. Yet he can live with another father's kid," says Glenn Sacks, the executive director of Fathers & Families.

"I've seen many fathers try to bring this to the courts' attention and the courts don't want to hear it."

Author Jill Brooke (pictured) often writes insightful articles about families and divorce. Brooke's newest is Can a Stepmother Like Sandra Bullock Be a Better Parent than a Biological Mom Who's a Porn Star? (Huffington Post, 11/6/09).

Obviously the famous actress vs. porn star battle is unusual. Yet there are many stepmothers and second wives who step in and parent their husband's kids because their mom can't or won't do it. These women are often caught in the middle of nasty custody battles, are maligned as interlopers for loving their stepchildren, and have little legal standing.

Brooke writes:

Rarely when fathers seek full custody of a child are the facts so stacked against the mother as in the case between "Monster Garage" star Jesse James and his ex-wife, porn star Janine Lindemulder. The couple are battling in court for custody of 5-year-old daughter Sunny. Not only is Lindemulder a porn star, which is a career that one can argue has negative moral and lifestyle implications on a child's upbringing, but she is married to a felon and has an alleged drug problem. James on the other hand is married to Sandra Bullock, who has been called "America's sweetheart."

I guess it won't surprise you that few fathers get full custody. The ones who even attempt it usually have an arsenal of evidence. According to the Association of Matrimonial Lawyers, the majority of cases are now joint custody.

Bullock and James have had sole custody of 5-year-old Sunny for the past six months since Lindemulder was in jail -- yes, jail -- for tax evasion.

Now Lindemulder has gone from the courts to the court of public opinion by appearing on ABC's Good Morning America and throwing what I'm calling the divorce equivalent of the "shot heard around the world" in accusing Sandra Bullock of being an interloping stepmother who is trying to "take away my daughter." Give me a break. This shot will backfire and be a rallying cry for stepmothers to finally be freed from the tyranny of the stereotype that they can't be loving, wise, and sincerely devoted parents in a child's life.

"What would give her the right to take away my daughter?" Lindemulder asked, even though she admitted Bullock is a good stepmother to Sunny. "This is my daughter. I'm the best mother I can be."

Hmmm, the best mother she can be is not enough. Especially when she is married to Jeremy Aikman, who as E! reported, has several previous state and federal convictions involving alcohol, guns and the manufacturing of narcotics.

While I counsel many women who are anguished when their kids see their ex's new wife -- who may have broken up the marriage -- little media attention is given to the agony of the father who is often helpless when his kids are with another man.

"We see this all the time where the ex-wife lives with a crazy, harmful boyfriend who can't see his own kids because the court has prohibited him because he may have been convicted of drugs or abuse, and yet he can live with another father's kid," says Glenn Sacks, the executive director of Fathers & Families. "I've seen many fathers try to bring this to the courts' attention and the courts don't want to hear it."

Furthermore, Sacks reveals how many concerned stepmothers -- who love their stepchildren -- also call the organization inquiring about their rights to be more involved with their stepchildren. "Some stepmothers," he says, "have been more of a mother than the biological mother but have no standing legally in the system."

Read Brooke's full article here.

Help for Los Angeles/Ventura County Dads Peter M. Walzer, Certified Family Law Specialist www.California-Divorce.com

In Part III, Part IV, Part V, and this post, 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.

Joyce writes:

there are a rising number of custody decisions awarded to abusive fathers, as judges see wives eager to protect their children as less cooperative regarding custody. More than half the time, studies have found, wives’ accusations of domestic violence are met with counter-accusations from husbands of “Parental Alienation Syndrome”—a medically unrecognized diagnosis that suggests mothers have poisoned their children into making false accusations against their fathers.

I doubt "half the time" is correct, since most fathers don't have the resources to hire lawyers and go to court when false accusations are leveled against them. And how does Joyce decide that the men are "abusive" when no court has adjudicated them as such?

Joyce writes:

In one recent case, Genia Shockome, a Russian immigrant, was fighting for custody of her two children with her ex-husband, whom she charged had beaten her so severely that she suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and who had told her she “had no right to leave” since he’d brought her to the United States. The judge in the case sided with her husband’s counter-claims of Parental Alienation Syndrome and awarded him full custody

Actually, Judge Amodeo bent over backwards to be fair to Shockome, who lost her children to her ex-husband only after repeatedly violating court orders. Moreover, there was no evidence that the ex-husband was an "abuser," and the Court specifically repudiated this accusation. Shockome's absolute refusal to co-parent with her ex-husband led the courts--eventually, after giving her many chances--to transfer custody of the kids from Genia to her ex-husband.

Unlike Joyce and Berman, I've actually read the court documents in that case. To read the documents in the case, click here. To read my analysis of that case, click here.

Joyce writes:

"[The Shockome judge] sentenced Shockome to 30 days in jail while she was seven months pregnant."

To read the transcript of the May 5, 2005 court hearing where Genia was found in contempt of court, click here. Feminists portrayed Judge Amodeo as a bully for jailing Genia for contempt in May of 2005; however, the transcript of the hearing shows that Genia interrupted Amodeo on over 50 separate occasions. Amodeo only held her in contempt after countless warnings. Shockome appealed Amodeo's holding of contempt but a four judge panel of the New York Supreme Court unanimously upheld Amodeo's decision.

Joyce writes:

When her attorney, Barry Goldstein...criticized the judge in an online article, the judge retaliated with a complaint, and Goldstein was given a five-year suspension. Goldstein says the sanction represents a chilling pressure on attorneys, who may now fear penalties for criticizing a court’s gender bias that will interfere with their duties to their clients and that could result in women deciding not to leave abusers out of fear they won’t get a fair trial.

Feminist attorney Barry Goldstein, Esq. of New York was Shockome's primary attorney. The New York Appellate Division for the Second Judicial Department called numerous statements Goldstein made concerning the Shockome case "dishonest, false, or misleading." The Court also criticized Goldstein for misuse of funds in another case he handled. In the Shockome case, the Court criticized what it called the "pervasive nature of [Goldstein's] deceptive conduct"--conduct which it said included "false accusations" about the case and "noncompliance with multiple court orders." The Court wrote:

On behalf of his client [Genia Shockome], he prepared and filed with this Court a petition for writ of habeas corpus and a petition in a proceeding pursuant to CPLR article 78. These materials contained sworn statements which were dishonest, false, or misleading.

One of Goldstein's statements that the New York Court cited in disciplining him is his public contention that in the Shockome case "Without an evidentiary hearing or any written explanation, Judge Amodeo took the children from the mother who has raised them and sent them to the abuser." This is false--Judge Amodeo actually bent over backwards to be fair to Shockome, who lost her children to her ex-husband only after repeatedly violating court orders. Moreover, there was no evidence that the ex-husband was an "abuser," and the Court specifically repudiated this accusation.

To learn more, see Georgetown Law Center Ethics Counsel Michael S. Frisch's write-up here.  To read the Court's decision itself, click here. My write-up of the Goldstein suspension is here.

Joyce writes:

If cases such as Genia Shockome’s are the fodder of mainstream fathers’ rights advocates like Glenn Sacks—who ridiculed her claims and loss of custody as an incredible “cause célèbre” for feminist family-law reformers—what Sacks calls the movement’s “lunatic fringe” is more vitriolic yet.

What I actually did was something neither Joyce nor Berman did--I read through the documents of the case and found out what happened. Given the fraud Shockome tried to perpetrate, my analysis of it was, if anything, excessively polite. A sample:

The entire premise of the Genia Shockome story hinges on the notion that Tim battered Genia prior to 2000 and, in repeatedly violating court orders to allow her children access to their father, she was acting to protect them. However, Genia's allegations of domestic violence and child sexual abuse have never been substantiated in any court proceeding, nor supported by any witnesses. Writing with admirable restraint, Judge Amodeo, whose decisions in the case have been repeatedly upheld by higher courts, noted:

"In [Genia's] August 2000 complaint in the divorce action, no mention is made of the domestic violence which Genia later asserted. She claimed that she was unaware that she was the victim of domestic violence; however, such a lack of awareness would not have made her unable to recount historical facts, especially if the severity and frequency of the abuse she alleged were true. Why didn't she mention the abuse earlier in the case?"

There were three independent custody evaluations in the case, none of which found anything negative of substance against Tim Shockome. The first one called him a good parent, and the other two went as far as to recommend he get custody because of his parenting and because of Genia's relentless attempts to drive him out of his children's lives.

The most recent of these evaluators, Dr. Meg Sussman, has a feminist background and worked for Pace University's Battered Women's Justice Center. Sussman, who specializes in domestic violence and child abuse cases, recommended that Genia have only supervised visitation until she could accept the children's father's role in their lives.

In two in camera (in chambers) interviews conducted with the Shockome children on May 27, 2003 and January 22, 2004, neither child recalled any physical altercations between their parents, despite Genia's claims that her children had witnessed Tim's alleged violence against her. Moreover, neither child expressed any fear of Tim.

Genia's only support for her contention that she had previously been battered came from the FFLM domestic violence advocates who testified in her trial. Yet none of these "experts" had ever spoken with Tim Shockome, and had no evidence of Tim's abuse except for Genia's assertions...

Newsweek pictured Genia holding up a large drawing apparently drawn by her children, and explained:

"Parents like Genia keep fighting. ‘It's so hard, having my children lost,' she says, her voice breaking. ‘This was my life--my children.'"

What Newsweek ignores, though it's right there in the court records, is that it is Genia who refuses to visit her own children, despite ample opportunities to do so. When asked during the trial why she had not visited her children, Genia claimed that she could not afford to pay the supervised visitation program's fees. These programs were originally available to her free of charge, and later cost all of $25. At the same time, Genia had just purchased a new television set for her home.

In the type of exchange typical of Genia's behavior throughout the case, Genia then claimed that she hadn't paid for the television set--it was her boyfriend who bought it. However, the boyfriend, Aja Butler, later testified that he had no knowledge of how the TV set was purchased.

Genia refused to visit her children for two long periods prior to the May, 2004 decision, including the period which included her daughter's birthday in November of 2003 and also Christmas of 2003. At one point, Genia refused to visit her own children for a stretch of nine weeks. The law guardian--another neutral party--said that Genia had explained that she didn't visit her kids as part of her "strategy" in the case. Genia Shockome claims her children are "her life," but apparently they weren't even as important as a new TV set or a custody "strategy"...

Genia and her supporters, including Goldstein, contend that Genia has been the victim of "gender bias" and a judge with a grudge. This explanation fails to account for the fact that Amodeo's decision was based on the opinions of many neutral experts, both male and female, some of them with feminist backgrounds.

The ample legal help Genia has been provided by domestic violence organizations allowed her to appeal the case, and apparently all of the justices on the New York Supreme Court's Appellate Division are also biased against Genia, because they unanimously rejected her appeal in June. The court wrote:

"We discern no basis, on this record, to interfere with the Family Court's findings, inter alia, that the mother lacked credibility…or that the opinions of her [domestic violence] experts were of little value, since none of them had ever spoken with the father…The Family Court concluded, among other things, that the mother's animosity toward the father and her attempts to undermine the children's relationships with him were harmful to the children and rendered her the less fit parent…Exercising our independent review, we find that the Family Court's determination is supported by a sound and substantial basis in the record."

In fact, though Genia's bankruptcy case had nothing whatsoever to do with her family law matter, she even managed to annoy the bankruptcy judge, Cecelia G. Morris. Morris--no surprise--noted numerous contradictions in Shockome's statements, and decried Genia's "refusal to accept any order or ruling that is in conflict with her demands."

Genia Shockome's supporters expected Judge Amodeo--who was presented with no evidence of any violence against Genia beyond her own statements--to simply take her word for it, and allow her to destroy the bonds between the Shockome children and their father...Genia accuses Tim of all of the following: being a pedophile who got sexually aroused by changing his daughter's dirty diapers; sexually abusing his children; masturbating in front of his children; taking his children to a sexual store; having a ferocious sexual appetite for women; having a ferocious homosexual appetite for men; being an abusive father who "beat the kids very often, 2-3 times a day" when Genia and Tim lived together; being a wife-beater; secretly beating his former wife who had a secret miscarriage; beating Genia so she almost had a miscarriage; intimidating five of Genia's witnesses; insurance fraud, identity theft; immigration fraud; defrauding the federal government of $60,000; stealing; embezzlement; extortion; bankruptcy fraud; almost driving over Genia's neighbor's little son; and of violating a protection order over one million times...what judge in his right mind would take this woman's word for anything?

My full co-authored piece on the issue is Shockome Syndrome. I've made the documents in the Shockome case available on my website since 2006--they are:

To read the Court Order from May 10, 2004 where the judge gives sole custody to Timothy Shockome and grants Genia visitation rights, click here.

To read the decision handed down on June 13, 2006 by the New York State Appellate Division, Second Department upholding the May 10, 2004 Court Order, click here.

Genia’s motion for leave to reargue an appeal from an order of the Family Court, Dutchess County rendered May 10, 2004, is denied by the New York State Appellate Division, Second Department on August 18, 2006. To read the court document, click here.

To read the Bankruptcy Court decision rendered by Judge Cecelia G. Morris on May 11, 2006 denying Genia’s request for a stay pending appeal, click here.

To read the transcript of the May 5, 2005 court hearing where Genia was found in contempt of court and sentenced to jail time after interrupting Judge Amodeo over 50 times, click here.

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). Joyce writes

Are You Facing a Parental Abduction? Parental Alienation? If you're faced with a Parental Abduction, Parental Alienation, or interstate child custody or child support problems, custody consultant Judianne Cochran can help. Cochran is a specialist with 30 years experience helping reunite parents and children. To learn more, click here, or email her at jbcochran44@msn.com.

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 Part III, Part IV, 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. Joyce writes:

MRA groups base their battered men arguments largely on the research of a small group of social scientists who claim that domestic violence between couples is equally divided, just unequally reported. Most notable are the studies conducted by sociologist Murray Straus of the University of New Hampshire, who has written extensively on female violence...Straus’ research is starting to move public opinion. A Los Angeles conference this July dedicated to discussing male victims of domestic violence, “From Ideology to Inclusion 2009: New Directions in Domestic Violence Research and Intervention,” received positive mainstream press for its “inclusive” efforts.

The conference wasn't simply "inclusive"--it represented a lot of the best research and current researchers in the field of domestic violence. Joyce doesn't mention that Straus was one of the pioneers in the field of domestic violence research, and that he was once hailed by the feminist movement for his efforts on behalf of battered women.

Joyce writes:

Jack Straton, a Portland State University professor and member of Oregon’s Attorney General's Sexual Assault Task Force, argues that Straus critically fails to distinguish between the intent and effect of violence, equating “a woman pushing a man in self-defense to a man pushing a woman down the stairs,” or a single act of female violence with years of male abuse...

These are false and have been leveled for years. Straus distinguishes between serious and minor violence, between self-defense and unprovoked attack, between an aberrant act of domestic violence and a continued pattern of it. And in Straus's work, even by women's own self-reports, female violence against men is a significant problem.

Joyce writes:

All in all, advocates say that cherry-picked studies from researchers like Straus, touted by the MRAs, amount to what Edward Gondolf, director of research for the Mid-Atlantic Addiction Research and Training Institute, calls “bad science.” Statistics suggesting gender parity in abuse are taken out of necessary context, they say, ignoring distinctions between the equally divided “common couple violence” and the sort of escalated, continuing violence known as battery—which is 85 percent male-perpetrated—as well as the disparate injuries inflicted by men and women.

They're hardly cherry-picked--one could not find any randomized survey of domestic violence that did not find that women initiate DV at a significant rate. The only way to arrive at a  figure like 85-15 (or the "3 or 4%" figure also used in the Joyce and Berman pieces) is to cite crime statistics or calls to domestic violence service providers. Men don't call the police for a variety of reasons, including that they fear they will be arrested for their female partners' violence. They don't call DV service providers in part because they feel they won't be helped.

Both of these issuers are borne out by research. In The violence we ignore (Baltimore Sun, 7/16/09), Dr. Holstein and I wrote:

Denise Hines of Clark University found that when an abused man calls the police, the police were more likely to arrest him than to arrest his abusive female partner. This is partly the result of  primary aggressor laws. Primary aggressor laws encourage police to discount who initiated and committed the violence but instead look at other factors (such as size and strength) that make them more likely to arrest men.

When the men in Ms. Hines' study tried calling domestic violence hot lines, 64 percent were told that they only helped women, and more than half were referred to programs for male DV perpetrators.

Commendably, Emily Toothman, a spokesperson for the National Domestic Violence Hotline, a major, mainstream domestic violence organization, recently called abused men a "relatively unidentified population" and told a reporter:

"Many male victims/survivors do not report or discuss the abuse against them. In light of this, these numbers should not be used as an extensive study of male domestic violence victims in our country."

Two dozen states have primary aggressor type laws. Under the predominant aggressor doctrine, when police officers respond to a domestic disturbance call, they are instructed not to focus on who attacked whom and who inflicted the injuries, but instead consider different factors which will almost always weigh against men. These factors include: comparable size; comparable strength; the person allegedly least likely to be afraid; who has access to or control of family resources (i.e., who makes more money); and others. Given these factors, it is very difficult for officers to arrest female offenders. To learn more, see my co-authored column Maine’s Adoption of Predominant Aggressor Doctrine in DV Arrests Will Ensnare Innocent Men (Lewiston Sun Journal, 8/5/07).

Joyce writes:

MRA critics say the organizational recapitulation of abusive tactics should be no surprise, considering the wealth of movement leaders with records or accusations of violence, abuse, harassment, or failure to pay child support.

Really? Who? Please provide the names of the "wealth of movement leaders" who have been found by a court to be violent.

Joyce writes:

Some advocates call MRA groups “the abuser’s lobby,” because of members like Jason Hutch, the Buckingham Palace fathers’ rights “Batman,” who has been estranged from three mothers of his children and was taken to court for threatening one of his ex-wives.

Another Joyce misspelt name--that's "Hatch," not "Hutch." According to Hatch, there were no "threats," but instead a long-running and emotional dispute over his access to his children, which he claimed his ex-wife refused to allow. I don't know which one of them was telling the truth--ask Joyce, I'm sure she'll tell you all about it.

Joyce writes:

Within the ranks of the men’s rights movement, vigilante “resisters” are regularly nominated and lionized for acts of violence perceived to be in opposition to a feminist status quo

A handful of internet lunatics say something stupid--this is hardly the "ranks" of the men's/fathers' movement.

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).

Help for Michigan Dads Michigan family law attorney Mindy L. Hitchcock has experience fighting for noncustodial parents against Michigan's abusive FOC. Her holistic approach to divorce gets results for her clients while avoiding the scorched earth approach to law that leaves families emotionally and financially devastated. Lady4Justice.com

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 Part III, 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 writes:

...MRAs' [Men's Rights Activists'] accusations, inspired by deeply flawed studies, [are] that men and women are equally likely to commit domestic abuse

It depends how you define abuse. The studies are clear--women are at least as likely as men to strike the first blow, often more likely. But women do suffer injuries at twice the rate of men. Both of these--the incidence of initiation and the incidence of inflicting injury--merit consideration.

Berman writes:

While some men certainly are victims of female domestic violence, advocates say the number is closer to 3 percent to 4 percent.

This is odd, because while most of the mainstream DV establishment still minimizes women's violence, they usually acknowledge an 85-15 rate. Nobody could defend a 3 or 4% figure, and I'm surprised to see them float it.

Berman writes:

Critics like Australian sociologist Michael Flood say that men’s rights movements reflect the tactics of domestic abusers themselves, minimizing existing violence, calling it mutual, and discrediting victims.

Flood is a feminist true believer who has served as a point man for feminist efforts to minimize fathers' role in their children's lives after divorce or separation. We believe that the domestic violence system needs to be reformed. The fact that Flood feels it's necessary to describe our political arguments as somehow parallel to the despicable actions of wife-beaters makes one think that Flood must feel he doesn't have very strong arguments to use.

As for mutual violence, studies show that mutual violence is more common than either men attacking women or women attacking men. Ignoring female-initiated or mutual domestic violence not only harms men, it harms women. DV researcher Deborah Capaldi, Ph.D., a social scientist at the Oregon Social Learning Center, examined the different relationship violence scenarios -- violence by him only, violence by her only, violence by both with him initiating, and violence by both with her initiating. Of these, the most likely to result in future injury to women is when she initiates violence against him and he responds. Dr. Capaldi notes that in a study of women who were in a battered women's shelter, "67% of the women reported severe violence toward their partner in the past year."

According to Dr. Capaldi, "Overall, young couples with unidirectional violence report fewer acts and forms of violence than bidirectional couples." To learn more, see my column Researcher Says Women's Initiation of Domestic Violence Predicts Risk to Women (Huffington Post, 7/6/09).

Joyce writes:

These men’s rights activists, or MRAs, have long been written off by domestic-violence advocates as a bombastic and fringe group of angry white men, and for good reason.

A common feminist tactic to discredit divorced fathers is to somehow wrap their grievances around being white–aka the privileged white male. Yet all of these problems affect black and Latino fathers too, often worse, since they on average have fewer resources to defend themselves against the forces that stand between them and their children.

Joyce writes:

Bernard Chapin, a popular men’s rights blogger, told me over e-mail that he will refer to me as “Feminist E,” since he never uses real names for feminists

If that's true, that's wrong of Chapin. If it's true.

Joyce writes:

In the United Kingdom, a father’s rights group scaled Buckingham Palace in superhero costumes.

And?

Joyce quotes feminist Ben Atherton-Zeman, author of Voices of Men, as saying of the fathers' movement "A lot of the leaders are still convicted batterers."

Really? Who?

Joyce writes:

One of the respectable new faces of the movement is Glenn Sacks, a fathers' rights columnist and radio host with 50,000 e-mail followers, and a pragmatist in a world of angry dreamers.

I've been doing this since April 2001, 8 1/2 years--I'm not sure if that means I'm "new." Regardless, Joyce plays on the anti-dad stereotype of the divorced dad as "angry." I've never been divorced nor had any family law problems of any sort, but I think many divorced dads have damn good reason to be angry. I certainly would be if I were unwillingly separated from my children. Ms. Joyce, wouldn't you be, too?

Joyce writes:

Sacks disavows what he calls “the not-insubstantial lunatic fringe of the fathers’ rights movement.”

Yes--the fathers' movement does have a lunatic fringe, and it's not insubstantial. The feminist movement also has a lunatic fringe, and it's not insubstantial. The next time I hear a feminist leader condemn this fringe might be the first.

Joyce writes:

He recently merged his successful media group with the shared-parenting organization Fathers and Families in a bid to build a mainstream fathers' rights organ on par with the National Organization of Women. Many of Sacks’ arguments—for a court assumption of shared parenting in the case of divorce, or against child-support rigidity in the midst of recession—can sound reasonable.

Fair enough. Joyce writes:

"divorce attorneys hawking men’s rights expertise on MRA sites, promising to “teach her a lesson,” serve as what Dawson sees as a powerful draw for men in the midst of painful divorces.

Please tell me one divorce attorney on a major men's or fathers' issues site who promises to "teach her a lesson."

Joyce writes:

RADAR board member Ron Grignal, the former president of Fathers for Virginia and a former state delegate candidate, organizes the group’s Washington lobbying activities.

Actually, it's spelled "Grignol," not "Grignal." BTW, Ron is a nice guy with two adorable, happy daughters whose life he plays a major role in.

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).

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).

FALSELY ACCUSED IN TEXAS? Domestic Violence. Child Sexual Assault. Child Protective Services Defense. Contact the Law Office of Stuckle & Ferguson www.PaulStuckle.com / falseaccusations@stuckle-ferguson.com

Kathryn Joyce's DoubleX/ Slate.com article appeared to attribute the views of another activist to me, and Salon.com's Judy Berman picked up on it and publicized the misattribution. I wrote to both Slate.com and Salon.com asking for a correction and, to their credit, they both agreed.

In Kathryn Joyce's "Men's Rights" Groups Have Become Frighteningly Effective (DoubleX/ Slate.com, 11/5/09), she wrote :

Sodini’s diary was republished widely, including on the website of a popular men’s rights blogger, “Angry Harry,” who added his assessment of the case. “MRAs should also take note of the fact that there are probably many millions of men across the western world who feel similar in many ways, and one can expect to see much more destruction emanating from them in the future,” he wrote. “One of the main reasons that I decided to post this diary on this website was because the western world must wake up to the fact that it cannot continue to treat men so appallingly and get away with it.” In a phone interview, Angry Harry said, “Of course there will be more Sodinis—there will be many more,” likening him to Marc Lépine, a Canadian man who killed or wounded 28, claiming feminists had ruined his life...Perhaps, Angry Harry mused, that as the ranks of online MRAs grow, “the threat” of their violence “may be enough” to bring about the changes they desire.

Glenn Sacks dismissed Angry Harry as an “idiot” without real power in the movement and yet he cautiously defends him. “I want to be careful in wording this,” he says, “but the cataclysmic things I’m seeing done to men, it’s always my fear that one of these guys is going to do something terrible. I don’t want to say that like I condone it or that it’s OK, but it’s just the reality.”

I specifically, repeatedly, and emphatically told Joyce that any linkage between the men's & fathers' movements' grievances and Sodini is not my view. What I did say was that when I do hear of a drastic action--a man on a bridge threatening to jump, the guy here in LA who tried to commit suicide by parking his car on a train track, etc.--my first thought is that it might be a guy dealing with a painful family law issue or injustice.

In 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) about Joyce's article, she picked up on the erroneous attribution, writing:

It's certainly chilling to hear Sacks empathize (albeit ambivalently) with men like George Sodini, the deeply misogynist Pittsburgh gym shooter...

Again, I never said anything remotely sympathetic to Sodini and I made that abundantly clear to Joyce.

I complained to Slate.com and Kathryn Joyce and Joyce, to her credit, quickly responded, explaining, "Glenn did not defend George Sodini whatsoever in our conversation, and although this seemed clear in the original sentence, Double X is further clarifying it now so that it is not misread. I regret any confusion."

DoubleX/Slate.com fixed the sentence and also added a note at the bottom of the piece explaining the correction.

Berman said she would forward the issue to her editor at Salon.com for an update.

I'm writing several posts about the issues raised in these two articles--to read the others, click here.

But from I can gather of what O'Neill said, there doesn't need to be a connection.  Recently NOW also demanded that New York State Senator Hiram Monserrate be removed from his elected position because he pulled his unwilling girlfriend through a hallway.  That claim of course had profound implications for the democratic process that the demand for Cable's ouster does not.  Before his conviction on the misdemeanor charge, NOW had declared the entire New York State Senate to be a "hostile work environment," presumably because of Monserrate's presence there.  The notion that the voters of Monserrate's district should be the ones to decide whether he remains in office is simply ignored by NOW.  NOW of NY has decided he is unfit to represent his district and that seems to be all there is to it.

And so it is with the Oakland football team, which is of course a private entity.  That fact tells us where NOW is going with this.  As far as I can tell, the commission of any act of domestic violence will move NOW to demand the discharge from employment of any male person.  To date they haven't demanded that any woman be fired for DV, so until they do, I'll assume they're confining their outrage to the actions of men.

But consider the implications of O'Neill's demand that Cable be fired.  According to her, it is a condition of employment - presumably at any job - that a man never has committed an act of domestic violence in the past.  Mail carriers, plumbers, lawyers, doctors, all must be vetted according to (and presumably by) NOW.  Never mind that no law requires any such thing.  Never mind that Cable is protected by a collective bargaining agreement, which again requires no such thing.  In other words, I suspect that Al Davis couldn't fire Cable for his past marital actions even if he wanted to.

In fact, I'm giving NOW the benefit of the doubt.  I've been assuming that they're only basing their demand on what Cable's admitted to doing.  The simple fact though, is that they're also tossing in allegations of DV as grounds for firing.  That's why O'Neill says that women "do not make such accusations lightly."  Her meaning is that, even though they're only accusations, they must be true.

Interestingly enough, O'Neill's words are contradicted by a significant amount of police research.  At least one study, referred to here, shows that as many as 80% of all DV complaints received by police involve no serious physical violence at all (AZ Central, 8/28/09).  Another study by the Morrison Institute of Arizona State University found that at most 37% of their sample of DV complaints that actually resulted in a criminal charge involved any form of physical violence, no matter how slight.  In fact, because most of those charges were for "assault" and because the definition of that charge includes the mere threat of the use of force or violence, the actual number is less than 37%, but the report doesn't explain just how much less.

The above is not to suggest that men or women in volatile domestic situations can't have a genuine fear for their safety even without actual violence occurring.  Of course they can.  I only mention those studies because the popular conception of DV, actively promoted by O'Neill and NOW, is of "battering."  Indeed, as the article shows, they tend to use the terms interchangeably, which gives the false impression that every woman who claims to be a victim of DV has been battered, and every man who's been arrested for DV is a batterer.  Their elision of the difference is by no means accidental.

So let's be clear.  The verb "to batter" means, in its non-legal definition, actual, and repeated violence using heavy blows which cause physical harm.  It is, in short the type of domestic violence the state has a genuine interest in punishing and trying to stop.  Domestic violence, even when the allegations are real, is a far, far broader term.  The vast majority of DV reports to police involve no physical violence or injury at all.

Back to Cable, though.  I can easily see him getting fired.  The Raiders look like a far worse team than they ought to be, given the players they put on the field.  Of course the lynchpin of any team, the quarterback, is no prize either. Whoever is at fault, their performance on the field is subpar.  That's the type of thing that can get you fired.

They've also asserted cultural power over them as part of the usual military and economic hegemony.  Often this took the form of pronouncing as "heathens" those who worshipped gods deemed false by Christian traditions, but it took many other forms as well.  Clothing, language, schooling, laws, architecture and countless other things were considered fair game by agents of imperial domination.

The fine movie "The Last Emperor" catches the cultural imperialism of the West very neatly in one brief scene.  Peter O'Toole plays an English tutor who has been hired to instruct the youthful emperor.  To that end, the Englishman seeks to give him an examination to find out what he knows.  But the very concept of a commoner's questioning the emperor is anathema to Chinese tradition.  So the emperor says archly "You cannot examine an emperor."  To which the Englishman replies "Well, that'll have to change."  A couple of thousand years of Chinese tradition is waved away like a house fly.

Said's point is not only that cultural imperialism exists, but that it is perhaps more deeply resented by subject peoples than even military and economic domination.  Defeat our armies, exploit our resources, and our lives will go on, so the thinking goes.  But take away our traditions, our gods, our languages, our way of life and you take away our very being.

Even as I write this, a modern myth persists among the peasantry of southern Mexico and Guatemala.  It holds that American doctors kidnap indigenous children, eviscerate them and use their internal organs in transplant opertions in the United States.  The myth is completely false, but it powerfully reflects the deeply-felt resentment of the injuries done by El Norte to the indian cultures of Meso-America.  We rip the guts out of them for out own benefit.  Edward Said would understand completely.

As I said, sometimes liberals pretend to understand and care about the deep resentments western imperialism engengers in  peoples whose cultures are vastly different from ours.  And sometimes they don't.  A U.S. invasion of a country like Iraq or Afghanistan is always accompanied by much (to my mind justified) liberal hand wringing about our inability to understand the culture.

So it's interesting that the same liberals who bewail U.S. military interventions cheerfully spearhead attacks on cultures that, in their opinion, insufficiently conform to our notion of women's rights.  The Global Gender Gap Report is properly viewed as a small front in that attack, and various people around the world are certain to see it just that way (WE Forum, 2009).  It's message is unmistakable - our newly-acquired respect for women's equality is just our most recent tool to reveal your moral inferiority.  Five-hundred years ago it was the Bible; now it's The Feminine Mystique.  We call this progress.

So, if not enough of a country's girls go to school, if not enough women are elected to office, if not enough are lawyers or doctors, we will assign a grade to that country that reflects its moral debasement in our eyes.  While we're at it, we'll conveniently forget the fact that we just got this religion of gender equality 40 years ago or so.

And we have decreed that those nations must change, sometimes at the point of a gun.  It was only a few months ago that our "paper of record," The New York Times, editorialized that one reason for the U.S. Army's presence in Afghanistan was to ensure that girls there can attend school.  The imperialist implications of that opinion may be lost on liberals here, but in Afghanistan, they understand it just fine.

Me?  I'm all for women's equality, but then I would be.  The cultural and educational tradition I've lived with all my life would hardly permit anything else.  I think it's outrageous that, in many parts of the world, girls can't go to school and that women can't vote or hold certain jobs or have a genuine existence outside that of their husbands, fathers, brothers, etc.  That's my heritage, but it's certainly not that of, for example, the people of remote tribal areas of Afghanistan. 

I also don't mind opening a magazine and seeing a nearly-naked woman in an advertisement; I rather like it actually.  But many Muslims, male and female alike, don't like it one little bit.  It offends them deeply, and when we demand that their cultures treat women the way we do, they understandably balk.  If women in Saudi Arabia want equality, they need to stand up and fight for it.  If they do, it will be appropriate for the West to support those movements.  Until they do, it won't be.

So Western cultural sorties like the Global Gender Gap Report are not only radically anti-male; they're yet another attack on the cultures of other countries.  We're fervent in our beliefs, but of course we always have been.  The people of those countries have seen this before, time and again, and know it for what it is - the liberal face of European imperialism. 

If he were alive, Edward Said could tell us.

Help, Resources for Dads The National Fathers' Resource Center is a division of Fathers For Equal Rights, Inc. (FER), located in Dallas, Texas, with offices in both Dallas and Ft. Worth. In existence for over three decades, it has services and resources for dads nationwide and is one of the largest and most active fathers' rights organizations in the U.S. www.fathers4kids.org

The main thrust of the anti-dad crowd is that, allowing children time with their fathers increases the likelihood of child abuse.  The fact that a welter of data show the opposite to be true - that mothers are more likely to harm children than are fathers and that boyfriends are far more likely to do so - matters not a whit to equal parenting opponents.  They've got their story and they're stickin' to it.

Now, reading between the lines of this article, there may be another front in the attack on father-child relationships - move- aways (The Australian, 10/29/09).  The piece reports on a mother, who's separated from her husband, and who wants to move from Sydney to Queensland to be with her boyfriend whom she met online.  Her estranged husband has a close relationship with their three-year-old daughter though, and a court has refused the mother permission to move the child away from her father.

Federal magistrate Janet Terry found the child had a "meaningful relationship" with both parents in Sydney, where she was able to "see her father regularly". If the mother was allowed to move, that contact would "inevitably diminish".

It would make the father a "holiday parent" who couldn't have any involvement with his daughter on school days. Ms Terry said: "The father is a good parent who is keen to be involved with (the child) on a regular basis. It would be a significant loss for (her) if she moved."

The court said there was no guarantee the new relationship would work out. The woman has never lived with the man, and has visited him only once.

"In my view, the child's interests will be best served by dismissing the mother's application to relocate from Sydney, to enable the girl to spend regular time with her father in Sydney," Ms Terry said.

In short, the court upheld the child's and father's rights to a relationship at the expense of the mother's ability to relocate and maintain primary custody.  The article makes a definite connection between this win for fathers' rights, the new laws and the idea that changing those laws will allow custodial mothers greater freedom to relocate and deprive their exes of contact with their children. 

The decision is a win for fathers who say that old custody laws too often enabled mothers to relocate after divorce, rupturing relationships between children and their dads. Two academic studies have shown that relocation has become more difficult under the shared parenting laws introduced by the Howard government in 2006.

Those laws are now under review.

It goes on to say that, prior to the presumption of equally-shared parenting, a mother's desire to relocate was given "great weight" by courts.  The obvious answer to the argument that equally-shared parenting laws conflict with women's right to travel is that they do no such thing.  Clearly, if a mother wants to move, and doing so would mean the child can't see his/her father, the mother may relinquish custody.  After all, she's the one who wants to move and deprive the child of one parent.  Why should the father be the one to give up his relationship with his child to accomodate his ex's wishes.  Simple fairness dictates that, if she's the one who wants to move, she's the one who should bear the consequences of that decision. 

Whether the Australian backlash against the rights of fathers and children will actually allow mothers to deny those rights by the simple expedient of moving hundreds of miles away, remains to be seen.  If the article is any indication, it may well do just that.