The cult of single motherhood and their deadbeat status

Letters to the Editor,  November 11, 2010

According to Statistics Canada, over one-third of all children living in poverty in Canada live with a lone mother who earns zero income. At least half live with a lone mother who earns not enough income to support herself, let alone a child.

So why isn’t the government interested in rounding up all these “deadbeat moms” with the same vigour that it pursues “deadbeat dads”? It can’t be because they are all young, uneducated mothers of infants, who are incapable of working. In fact, the average age of lone mothers is 38. Moreover, lone mothers have higher educational levels than lone fathers. Yet lone fathers find a way to earn twice as much income as lone mothers, which is why child poverty is rare among lone fathers.

If our courts and our politicians truly cared about the best interests of children, they would make laws that (a) give custody to working dads much more often than at present; and (b) tell single moms to get a job or lose their kids. Is that too harsh? Then why are loving fathers routinely subjected to this inhumane treatment — dozens of times every day in Canada?
Grant A. Brown, Edmonton.

Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/11/11/todays-letters-jack-olivia-living-large-at-our-expense/#ixzz14zR9mRWV

I offered some comments on Mr. Brown's letter on the letters page as follows:

Mr. Brown's letter with respect to the bizarre new law in Ontario confiscating a father’s vehicle is instrumental in showing how our country, and this Province in particular, is turning into a gynocracy. We have multiple laws targeting men as unfit to be a custodial parent after divorce (but we seem to be OK before this happens), even though the Divorce act is Gender Neutral (it clearly states maximum contact for both parents is important).

Judges make up the rules as they go along awarding over 90% of sole physical custody to moms. Why? Judges receive training from a secretive organization called the National Judicial Institute. Within this training they are told men have power, women are victims and it is their job to ensure moms get the entitlements at the expense of men - and sadly - at the expense of the children. Dads seldom get more than a visitation schedule of 15%. Yet, mom's boyfriend gets to see them 24/7 setting in motion many negative outcomes for children that last a lifetime. These range from abuse to being killed as mom and her new partner are far more likely to bring harm to the child than dad.

Family Court Judges are, by far, the most negative and insidious social engineers in Canada. They deplore 50-50 shared custody for reasons already mentioned yet they then send the largest group of people into poverty by awarding sole physical custody to mom. Single mothers are then revered, but yet, they are the single largest group of deadbeats in Canada. They live off dad with alimony and child support, the latter of which is tax free but taxable to dad. This income does not show up on any statements, including from the CRA, as it is tax free. They collect welfare, live in subsidized housing and receive bonuses in the form of child tax credits. There are lots of incentives to work on yet they whine and complain about how hard done by they are. It is as though the system is set up to encourage single motherhood and cater to the whining.

Judges are responsible for billions upon billions of tax dollars to be input into the cult of single motherhood while, at the same time, denigrating the children’s biological fathers.

Want to save tax dollars, decrease poverty, and reduce divorce. Pass 50-50 equal shared parenting legislation and free up mom to get some further training and a job while allowing children to bask in the glow of two loving parents looking after their needs not the current acrimonious and adversarial system lawyers love. They make billions from it. Eighty percent of Canadians across all political stripes support Bill C-422 for equal shared parenting. The Canadian Bar Association and Feminist Lawyers like Pamela Cross and Tasha Kheiriddin don’t. Who is right? I’d vote for the 80% of Canadians.

The Minister's in the incompetent Liberal Government enacting these draconian laws are Madeleine Meilleur, a feminist Liberal lawyer, in charge of the Mom Stazi Police collection agency called FRO, who will enforce these laws. Laurel Broten is the Minister responsible for Status of Women and is also a Feminist Liberal lawyer and has at least $208,000,000 at her disposal for women's issues, none for men. Kathleen Wynne, Minister of Transportation has this on her books now as the person responsible for the safety on our highways. She is a pro-feminist sycophant along with her male colleagues in the cabinet who see this new law as useful in their war against fathers.  It certainly is a highway safety issue to seize a father's car, which he likely needs to try and keep a job.  All of the money taken from the father as a result of these rules will not go to his children. it will help employ more public servants.

Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/11/11/todays-letters-jack-olivia-living-large-at-our-expense/#ixzz14zVIXiL4

An Ode to Family Court Judges

Barbara Kay: Courts get a new way to discriminate against fathers

Madeleine  Meilleur, a feminist liberal lawyer, (what a combination) is the Minister responsible for FRO. This is the oxy-moronically named Family Responsibility Office (Mom's Stazi Police) designed to be the official misandric arm of the Ontario Provincial Government currently ruled by the most incompetent Liberal government in Canadian history.  In previous correspondence with her colleague Laurel Broten another feminist Liberal lawyer, to allow men access to DV assistance and counselling on an equal basis to females she used some cherry picked and bogus stats, supplied by her professional feminist staff in her Status of Women portfolio to deny my request. Keep in mind she is both Ontario's Official Feminist in Chief but is allied with Meilleur in the DV Industry the chief cause of radical feminists.

The feminists in charge of these gulags relish in the power they get over men on an official basis. Most men pay their child support. The smaller number of non-custodial moms are by far less likely to pay but you can bet it would be front page news if one of them were thrown into jail for non-payment. The MSM would be demanding changes because then the chivalrous and protective editors would finally see the stupidity of these laws. The vast majority of those who cannot pay are unemployed or underemployed after being laid off. Those who have cars or trucks often live in them under the circumstances as mom gets to stay in the family home in many cases, while collecting welfare, child benefits, and from hubby. Who’s the real dead beat here?

We have devolved to the 18th century including debtors prisons thanks to feminists like Broten and those kindly male sycophantic politicians who think they are being white knights. They are, in a manner, self loathing by thinking fathers are unimportant, when that in fact is scientifically, a malicious misandric myth. The gulag called FRO is the manifestation of misandry perpetuated by the political and judicial class. Mom’s get 90% of sole physical custody, ownership and control of the children to do with what she may, including denying access with impunity.

The Political class’ response is to create further impediments to dad earning a living through loss of license, jail, posting his picture for the world to see on a website, humiliating his children, and now impounding his vehicle. What morons we have in the Government and FRO. What do you get when a moron makes the rules for other morons? Chaos and the further denigration of men.


Some research notes with respect to child support:

“Studies show that the overwhelming majority of steadily employed divorced fathers pay their child support. While there are a few well‑heeled divorced dads who stiff their children, most non‑paying dads are either poor, unemployed, disabled, or incarcerated. According to a US Government Accounting Office report, two‑thirds of those fathers who do not pay their child support fail to do so because they are financially unable to do so.” 

Source: Judi Bartfield and Daniel R. Meyer: "Are There Really Deadbeat Dads? The Relationship Between Ability to Pay, Enforcement, and Compliance in Nonmarital Child Support Cases," Social Service Review 68, 1994, pp. 219‑235.

Source: "Deadbeat Dad Image A Myth, Study Finds,"  New York Times,  May 5, 1999.  See: http://sharedparent.freeyellow.com/ddiamsf.pdf.  Look for "Divorced moms reported."

Source: Cathy Young, Ceasefire!: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality, The Free Press, 1999, pp. 206‑207.

Source: Kathleen Parker, "Deadbeat dads more myth than reality," The Orlando Sentinel, Jan 24 1999. See: http://www.dadi.org/kpdbeat2.htm. Look for "Census Bureau."

“Fathers have a much better record of paying court-ordered child support than mothers do.” When children were living with dad and support was ordered moms paid an average of 33% owed; dads paid an average of 62% owed. 13% of dads overpaid but not a single mom. Keep in mind the moms salary exceeded dads otherwise support would not likely be ordered.

Conclusion: When dads have the children, moms are far less likely to be ordered to pay support, are ordered to pay less, are less likely to pay it, and never overpay.

Source: John Siegmund, “Preliminary Analysis of the Database of the DC Office of Paternity and Child Support Enforcement” compiled for the Children's Rights Council, November 9, 1999.

Father and Child Reunion, Warren Farrell, PhD, page 179

Compiled by Glenn Sacks and located at http://www.glennsacks.com/blog/?page_id=1000 and Mike Murphy. MJM

Barbara Kay: Courts get a new way to discriminate against fathers

Barbara Kay  November 9, 2010 – 10:40 am

 

GREG WOOD/AFP/Getty Images

Wait a minute ... a man with a stroller? You mean men are parents too? But why should men have access to their children? This is weird.

“They throw guys in jail for non-support all the time, and when they do, the guys serve the whole 30, 60 or 90-day sentence (the term keeps lengthening), even though cocaine dealers routinely get out of jail after serving half their time.”

Ontario’s Family Responsibility Office, which is responsible for ensuring that custodial parents don’t get stiffed for child support payments by the non-custodial parent, has a lot of power.

Starting Dec. 1, someone (read “father”) in arrears on their support payments can have their car impounded. That’s about the stupidest punishment for non-payment one can imagine, since most people need their cars in order to work. As Lloyd Gorling, a father’s rights activist put it, “How are you going to make support payments if you can’t get to work? If you can’t make support payments, does the government really think you’re going to be taking a taxi every day to work?”

If you’re going for irrational responses to non-payment, why not just throw the guy in jail –– but oh wait, they already do that. They throw guys in jail for non-support all the time, and when they do, the guys serve the whole 30, 60 or 90-day sentence (the term keeps lengthening), even though cocaine dealers routinely get out of jail after serving half their time.

In 2004 an FRO staff member didn’t bother waiting for a court date to review the financial status of an out-of-work truck driver. He just suspended his license because – hey, because he could, you see. But the guy couldn’t pay, because he had no job, you FRO idiot. He had no money to pay with, you FRO moron. He was looking for work, and the FRO decided that the best way to deal with a non-paying parent was to make it impossible to find a job so he could pay the support. Nice going, FRO. His suicide note lamented that he didn’t see any way out of his situation and had lost hope. And did anyone pay for that? Of course not.

The FRO is accountable to no one.

Let’s look at the bigger picture, though. What is the guy paying child support for? Yeah yeah, to support his children. But that means they are, you know, sort of his children, right? Not necessarily. The custodial parent, almost always the ex-wife, although supposed to grant agreed-upon access rights to the children’s father, can arbitrarily decide she doesn’t want to allow access, and for any old reason — oh sorry, little Jimmy has a play date, oh sorry little Emma has too much homework, oh sorry, I just don’t want to — can deny the father access. And does she pay for that? No. Oh, she might get a scolding from the judge, but there is no downside for her. No custodial mom has ever spent a night in jail or had her licence suspended for refusing her children’s father legal access to them. If they have, enlighten me. I have never heard of such an outcome.

You want to impose draconian punishments for non-support? Fine. But be rational about them. The arbitrary car-licence suspension is simply stupid. It punishes the children. But reluctance to punish children is the rationale for not jailing mothers who refuse access to fathers. Judges continually say they can’t put the mother in jail, because how would it look for the kids to see their mothers punished? One might ask the same question about their dads, no? Or does nobody care how it is for children to know their dads are in jail because they couldn’t give their mothers money? Rhetorical question. Of course nobody cares how a father’s suffering impacts on children, because only mothers’ suffering has the attention of family courts, police and the FRO.

If I were paying money for child support – and by the way, no custodial parent is obliged to say how she spends the money she gets for the children; she could be using it for spa days and nobody at the FRO would care – I wouldn’t be much encouraged to carry on with it if I never got to see my kids. It would occur to me that the state considers money more important to children than fathering. If the state feels that way, maybe society does too. Kind of an incentive-suppressant for fathers.

This story is about a lot more than car licences or what the appropriate punishment should be for failure to pay child support. Double standards abound in the custody industry. The FRO is a very scary agency characterized by way too much power, and far too little intelligence.

National Post

Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/11/09/barbara-kay-courts-get-a-new-way-to-discriminate-against-fathers/#ixzz14oC463HU

Clark University: New study: Men suffering ‘intimate terrorism’ by women partners

Clark University

 

Thursday, August 12, 2010

The first findings of the largest study to date focusing on male victims of female-perpetrated domestic violence were recently released, showing the existence of severe, controlling abusive behavior by women toward their male partners, on a level that many would describe as “intimate terrorism.”

Study results will be published as “Intimate terrorism by women towards men: Does it exist?” (Journal of Aggression, Conflict, and Peace Research) and “A closer look at men who sustain intimate terrorism by women” (Partner Abuse).

 


Clark University research assistant professor of psychology Denise A. Hines is the lead author/researcher on the Men's Experiences with Partner Aggression Project, a study at Clark University funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. The co-investigator is Emily M. Douglas, of Bridgewater State College’s Department of Social Work.

The research team analyzed data collected from 302 men who sustained physical violence from a female partner within the past year and sought help. The overarching goal of this study is to better understand the experiences of men who are in relationships with women who use violence.

“Extensive research has shown that men are at risk for sustaining partner violence in their relationships, yet few studies have investigated their experiences, and there are few resources available to such men,” Hines notes. “This is an under-recognized problem in the United States, and by conducting this research project, we hope to provide much needed information on these men, their relationships, and their needs.”
Fact sheets about the research and final drafts of the articles can be found online at http://www.clarku.edu/faculty/dhines/results.htm.

The studies show that the 302 men in the research sample, on average, sustained physical violence and controlling behaviors on a weekly basis, and that over three-quarters had been injured in the previous year, on average about every other month, with 1/3 of them sustaining a severe injury (i.e., something that would need medical attention) in the past year.

“With every analysis that we do of these data, what is very apparent is how much these men resemble the women who participate in studies of battered women who go to shelters,” Hines says. “The level of violence these men sustain, their reactions to the violence, their reasons for staying, their protectiveness of their children, and their mental health, all very much mirror what we’ve seen in studies of battered women over the past 30 years.”

Contrary to popular stereotypes of male victims, the men in the sample were the size of an average man and were bigger than their female partners, and about one third of them were employed in stereotypical masculine or high-status occupations, such as a soldier, doctor, lawyer, or business owner. When their female partners are violent, their most common response is to try to get away or escape from her.

Why don’t the men leave? The most common reasons are because of love and commitment to the marriage and because of the children. The men do not want to leave the children with a violent woman, and they are often afraid that they would lose custody of their children in a family court system that tends to favor mothers in custody disputes. Many men also discuss the financial repercussions of leaving – about half indicate that they do not have the money or resources to leave, with others discussing their fear of losing all, if not at least half, of everything they have worked for and saved in their lives.

Hines: “What should also be noted is the profound effect that this violence probably has on the children involved. We know that at least 70 percent, if not more, of the children who were involved in these relationships either saw or heard the violence. From prior research, we know that child witnesses of domestic violence against women can suffer severe psychological consequences. There is no reason to expect that child witnesses of domestic violence against men won’t suffer the same consequences.”

Implications: Given the serious level of the domestic violence that these men sustain, it is necessary to educate practitioners, researchers and the public about men sustaining domestic violence, their experiences, and their barriers to leaving, which can include both their emotional ties and commitments, and a lack of resources. All of the men in this study indicated that they had sought help of some form, and because of the very serious nature of their victimization, it is important to educate and train front-line domestic violence workers about the existence of male victims, the seriousness of their domestic violence experiences, and their needs.

“It is important for all who work in the field of domestic violence to realize and acknowledge that both men and women can perpetrate even the most severe forms of partner violence and both men and women can be victimized by severe forms of partner violence,” Hines says. “Serious violence and controlling behaviors demand our attention, regardless of the gender of the perpetrator or victim.”

Hines and Douglas are currently working on publishing more analyses of the data from the men in this study, in addition to developing follow-up studies on the mental and physical health consequences to these men and their children, and on male victims’ experiences in both the family court and criminal justice systems. Hines also directs the Family Impact Seminars at Clark and is co-Director of the Clark Anti-Violence Education (CAVE) Program.

Since its founding in 1887, Clark University in Worcester, Mass., has a history of challenging convention. As an innovative liberal arts college and research university, Clark’s world-class faculty lead a community of creative thinkers and passionate doers and offer a range of expertise, particularly in the areas of psychology, geography, urban education, Holocaust and genocide studies, environmental studies, and international development and social change. Clark’s students, faculty and alumni embody the Clark motto: Challenge convention. Change our world. www.clarku.edu

http://news.clarku.edu/news/2010/08/12/new-study-men-suffering-%E2%80%98intimate-terrorism%E2%80%99-by-women-partners/

An archive of News & Media Relations posts can be found at https://news.clarku.edu/news.

£100bn cost of broken homes: Tory minister declares children whose parents split are NINE times more likely to commit crime

By Steve Doughty
Last updated at 7:30 AM on 4th November 2010

Hit out: Iain Duncan Smith said the collapse of marriage was behind Britain's crime figures

Children from broken homes are nine times more likely to commit a crime than those brought up in stable families, a senior Cabinet minister warned last night.

Iain Duncan Smith said the collapse of marriage had brought soaring crime rates, doubled the chances of living in poverty and cost the country an astonishing £100billion a year.

The Work and Pensions Secretary accused Labour of undermining marriage and family life and said the country had paid a ‘heavy price’ in deeper poverty, high crime and poor life chances for the children of families that failed to stay together.

Mr Duncan Smith’s speech to representatives of the Relate counselling charity was the strongest defence of marriage made by a major government figure in years.

It contrasts powerfully with the Whitehall line in Labour’s years which said that marriage did not matter and that it was not for government to interfere with people’s choice of how they arranged their lives.

And it signalled that Mr Duncan Smith will fight for the restoration of the privileges of marriage that were whittled away by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

The Coalition pledged to support married couples in the tax system – but any practical help for couples is on the backburner while ministers try to cut debt.

Mr Duncan Smith said: ‘It is important that we recognise the role of marriage in building a strong society, especially if we want to give children the best chance in life.

‘Sadly, the last government seemed determined to undermine marriage – for example, by removing references to it from official forms.’

He declared: ‘Evidence shows that family influences educational outcomes, job prospects, and even life expectancy.

‘When government abandons policies that support families, society can pay a heavy price.’


Citing evidence collected by ministries, police and government agencies – but rarely referred to by ministers – Mr Duncan Smith said: ‘Lone-parent families are more than twice as likely to live in poverty than two-parent families.’

Troubled: Two-thirds of young offenders come from single-parent homes (picture posed by models)

On crime, he said children from broken homes were more than twice as likely to live in poverty than two-parent families.

‘Only 30 per cent of young offenders grew up with both parents. Children from broken homes are nine times more likely to become young offenders.’

He added: ‘This is not some abstract debate. Family life affects all of us – what happens on our streets; in our communities; and in our economy. What you learn from a very early age has a great deal to say about the person you will eventually become and the life you lead.’

Mr Duncan Smith said no-one’s life was determined by their family circumstances and many people overcame early difficulties to achieve great things.

But he added: ‘We would be foolish to ignore the weight of evidence which shows just how influential family life can be to life outcomes.

‘That was one of the problems with the last government’s approach. They treated children in isolation from the family that reared them, chasing the child but ignoring the family structure.’

He quoted figures from different sources putting the cost to the country of family breakdown at between £20billion and £40billion a year.

‘The costs to society as a whole through social breakdown, addiction, crime, lost productivity and tax revenues are very difficult to quantify – but research suggests they could be up to £100billion,’ Mr Duncan Smith said.

No laughing matter: Gordon Brown, pictured meeting young offenders, was responsible for abolishing the married couple's tax allowance

That is roughly the same as the cost of the NHS.

He promised that the Coalition would support ‘committed, stable relationships with two parents that produce the best outcomes for adults and children’.

There would be ‘unapologetic support for marriage, recognising that this provides a sound basis for the majority of long-term relationships’.

Mr Duncan Smith said there would be help for organisations such as Relate to provide ‘proper support for families under stress to minimise the risk of family breakdown.’

The speech reverses Labour’s policies set out shortly after Mr Blair’s 1997 election victory which said that all kind of families, no matter whether two birth parents were involved, were as good as each other.

Mr Brown abolished the last tax break for married couples, the Married Couples Allowance, while Chancellor.

In 2003, the Daily Mail revealed that ministers had ordered the word marriage to be dropped from all official documents because it implied ‘presumption of someone’s sexual orientation’.

Even Mr Duncan Smith’s phrase ‘broken homes’ was banished as ministers and officials preferred to use such wording as ‘reformed families’.

After the speech in Daventry, Northamptonshire, charity chief Claire Tyler said: ‘To hear Iain Duncan Smith talk about the realities of married and family life is a welcome reminder that this Government is taking relationships seriously.’


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1326420/Children-parents-split-NINE-times-likely-commit-crime.html#ixzz14MhPg9dt

Obama’s domestic violence initiative neglects male victims of abuse

By Caroline May - The Daily Caller   2:34 PM 10/29/2010

In honor of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, President Barack Obama introduced his administration’s new “government-wide” domestic violence initiative this week.

Missing from his words about a renewed focus on victims, however, was half of the population: men.

When looking at violence within intimate relationships, men are often viewed primarily as perpetrators, yet this is not always the case. Martin S. Feibert, psychology professor at the University of California, Long Beach, has highlighted more than 270 scholarly investigations, empirical studies and reviews, “which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners.”

Equity feminist and Reason magazine contributing editor Cathy Young told The Daily Caller that while the cause was a good one, she was disappointed to see male victims excluded from the president’s equation, for just that reason.

“I was looking at the president’s comments today and one thing that really did leap out at me is that the discussion seemed to be framed entirely in terms of violence against women and children,” she said. “And I think that that leaves out a fairly sizable part of the population that is in danger of being abused. There are men who are abused both in gay relationships and in the heterosexual ones,” Young said.

According to a study, conducted by Daniel J. Whitaker and Linda S. Saltzman at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Violence Prevention, and published in 2007 by the American Journal of Public Health, nearly one in four relationships had some violence, and in 49.7 percent of those relationships, the violence was reciprocal. In relationships in which the violence was not reciprocal, women were the perpetrators in 70 percent of cases.

Despite the prevalence of female violence against their male partners, men were more likely to cause bodily harm.

“Regarding injury, men were more likely to inflict injury than were women, and reciprocal intimate partner violence was associated with greater injury than was nonreciprocal intimate partner violence regardless of the gender of the perpetrator,” the study reads.

Columnist Carey Roberts told TheDC that the reason for the focus on female victims in discussions of domestic violence is the fact that men rarely if ever report such incidents, making domestic violence a widely under-reported crime.

“The Department of Justice does what’s called a National Crime Victimization Survey, NCVS. The NCVS is exactly that, it’s a survey of perceived crime. When a girlfriend slaps a man, he doesn’t think of that as a crime,” Roberts said.

Embarrassment is another reason, as a 1997 ABC 20/20 episode highlighted, in an expose on the realities of “battered men.” One of the victims the show chronicled, David Nevers, explained that he covered up the beatings his wife gave him out of a fear of humiliation. “I was so ashamed and embarrassed about what happened that I told them it was an accident … that I had backed into the door and that’s how it happened,” he said.

Feibert estimates that men are seriously injured in about 38 percent of the instances of “extreme aggression.”

“My take is that women are more likely to be more injured, but not a lot more,” Fiebert told the Los Angeles Times in 2002. “The reason is that women are more likely to use weapons in domestic situations than men — such as guns, knives and rolling pins — and men are more likely to use physical strength.”

Young says that while men may not seem to be hurt in the numbers that women are, that is not a reason to leave men out of the equation.

“Even if you take the lower end estimate, if you say that only 15 percent of domestic abuse victims are male, that is not a reason to completely ignore them,” Young said. “One good analogy: Fatalities in the workplace from job related injuries are almost 90 percent male. I think if the president was giving a speech about safer workplaces and combating fatalities on the job and talked exclusively about men, that would be perceived very negatively. Nobody would say it doesn’t matter because women are only 10 percent of the victims.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/10/29/obamas-domestic-violence-initiative-neglects-male-victims-of-abuse/print/#ixzz148Z6xf35

Swiss stage world’s first antifeminism event

This portends good things as it appears some men are actually organizing and willing to take the pillaging which will occur from all the feminist ideologues and their media sycophants. Anti-feminism is not anti-women or misogyny. It is a distaste for the decades of misandry using deceit and lies to portray men as abusive, coercive and evil.  This will spread world wide eventually and I've been willing to put my name out here in Canada as decidedly anti-feminist. They will argue all they are after is equality, but that is pure unadulterated BS.  They thrive on their victimization mantra that keeps the money and sympathy flowing in from gullible politicians.  See here for the various tribes in feminism today, and some of their comments. 

Of note are the feminist spokespersons consulted and quoted by the reporter. Sabin Bieri, of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies in Bern is a case in point. She is supposedly in gender studies but who wants to bet it isn't just womyn's studies all gussied up to include Lesbians, Gays, and the other variants of sexuality except men. MJM

Image Caption: IGF founder René Kuhn, pictured here with his wife Oxana, is giving the opening remarks at the meeting (pixsil/D. Büttner)

by Jessica Dacey, swissinfo.ch

---

Somewhere in Switzerland on Saturday around 150 men’s rights activists will be gathering at a secret location for the “first international antifeminism meeting”.

Amid plans by feminist activists to hold protests, the venue was changed and the new location kept under wraps until the last minute.

Only those who filled out an application form and paid the SFr55 ($55) registration fee will find out. And around 30 journalists who expressed an interest in attending.

“Even I don’t know where it is being held,” said Ulf Andersson, a member of the Swiss-based antifeminist interest group IGAF (Interessengemeinschaft Antifeminismus) organising the event.

IGAF says “the meeting is an exceptional opportunity of making our concerns known to the public”.

Addressing the day-long conference will be IGAF founder René Kuhn, and speakers from a German gender policy initiative, the Swiss men’s political party, an interest group for divorced men and European and Swiss men’s and father’s rights groups.

Andersson described it as a “very special” and “historic moment”.

“The major goal is not to come to conclusions about anything but mostly to meet like-minded people. As you have seen, there are forces trying to stop us from having this meeting,” Andersson told swissinfo.ch.

News of the meeting was reported in the press and led to a demonstration by 50 feminist activists in Zurich and graffiti was sprayed on a community hall in Uitikon, canton Zurich, where the meeting was planned. Leaflets have also been handed out for a rally to coincide with the event.

“A lot of people have the wrong impression about what an antifeminist really is,” said Andersson. “They believe that an antifeminist is a woman-hater. Not at all. An antifeminist is a kind of peacekeeper who wants to return things to normal. As an antifeminist I believe in true equality between a man and a woman.”

Core beliefs

In a written statement prepared for Saturday’s meeting, Andersson has drawn up five key beliefs of antifeminists: “opposing the feminist hatred of men, valuing the nuclear family, believing in the child’s rights to both its parents after a divorce or a separation, looking at the individual and not judging people by their gender, and accepting that men and women are different and counting that as assets”.

Anderson founded the Swedish father’s rights group PappaRättsGruppen after being prevented from seeing his daughter for six years after getting divorced from his wife. With support from a father’s rights group his situation has since changed and he is now able to see his 11-year-old occasionally.

But he blames “feminist” social workers for his plight. In his eyes, “feminists have hijacked the word equality” and today, “feminist stands for pure evil”. He cites radical feminist organisations who call for men to be grounded at home after 9pm or bear placards calling for “male slaughter, female supremacy”, as an example.

Risk of discrimination

“A totalitarian ideology like feminism draws particularly strong opposition” in Switzerland, said IGAF president Urs Bleiker, explaining one of the reasons why it was chosen as the location for the international meeting. The organisers are Swiss, he noted, but “the Swiss love of freedom” also was a contributing factor in choosing the location.

While the Swiss Federal Office for Gender Equality is not worried about the event happening within the country’s borders, director Patricia Schulz told swissinfo.ch that she was concerned by “this movement’s denunciation of all women who do not correspond to its limited vision of what constitutes a ‘real woman’. There is a very high risk of discrimination in the ideas of this movement.”

She added that the organisers did not appear to be looking to stimulate debate that could lead to solutions to the real problems faced by many men, rather they “seem particularly to want to place the responsibility for its problems on women who can be described as ‘emancipated’, without realising that there are certainly other causes”.

Marginal position

By holding the meeting in Switzerland, the organisers are capitalising on the “current conservative discourse which is very prevalent, and where parts of the agenda put forward by the antifeminists seem to fit nicely”, commented Sabin Bieri, of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies in Bern.

“Feminist positions today, although diverse, stand for more justice in our societies, including politics and the economy. This does not mean – and has never meant - a reversal of discriminating structures,” said Bieri.

She said one of the most popular examples drawn upon by antifeminists and more mainstream men’s interest groups is the discrimination of fathers in divorce decrees.

“All I can read from the antifeminist position is frustration, possibly rooted in personal experiences. I think it is a very marginal position with no potential for generating initiatives which would be acceptable for average citizens,” she added.

Jessica Dacey, swissinfo.ch

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss_news/Swiss_stage_world_s_first_antifeminism_event.html?cid=28666110

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