National Writers Syndicate – PC Feminism and the DV Courts

National Writers Syndicate – PC Feminism and the DV Courts.

Written by David Heleniak

Of the various branches of political correctness, PC feminism has arguably been the most successful. ….

… Thanks to PC feminists, we have the theory of the patriarchy and the PC conception of domestic violence (DV), two ideas that are responsible for widespread violations of the civil rights of men and pervasive damage to father-child relationships.

Political correctness is not, as many believe, the act of being non-offensive. It is, rather, an ideology resulting from the transformation of the Marxist concept of class oppression. Orthodox Marxism teaches that the world is made up of two economic classes, the capitalist class and the working class, and that the capitalist class oppresses the working class. The rich get richer while the poor get poorer.

When the orthodox Marxist theory of class oppression was shown to be a dead end, some leftist intellectuals turned their attention from economic classes to social classes. It’s not capitalists oppressing workers, they determined, it’s dominant social groups oppressing non-dominant groups, as in whites oppressing blacks, heterosexuals oppressing homosexuals, Christians oppressing non-Christians, and men oppressing women. Of the various branches of political correctness, PC feminism has arguably been the most successful.

PC feminism is not your mother’s feminism. As Cathy Young states in her book Ceasefire: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality, we owe a lot to the feminists of the past.

“They deserve credit for helping break down the barriers of discrimination in the public arena; for making gender neutrality an accepted legal principle; for challenging stereotypes about women’s nature. Thanks to them, achievement and ambition are no longer considered unfeminine and women are expected to make something of themselves, not just marry. Thanks to them, most of us believe that both parents can nurture young children.”

Thanks to PC feminists, in contrast, we have the theory of the patriarchy and the PC conception of domestic violence (DV), two ideas that are responsible for widespread violations of the civil rights of men and pervasive damage to father-child relationships.

PC feminist Adrienne Rich defines patriarchy in her book Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution as “the power of the fathers: a familial–social, ideological, political system in which men–by force, direct pressure or through ritual, tradition, law, and language, customs, etiquette, education, and the division of labor, determine what part women should or shall not play.”

In her article “Disabusing the Definition of Domestic Abuse: How Women Batter Men and the Role of the Feminist State,” law professor Linda Kelly states the PC feminist definition of domestic violence “as the use of physical power by men against women not motivated simply by a desire to inflict physical pain or even emotional suffering but rather as part of a larger effort by men to gain and maintain control over women.” A more detailed explanation of the relationship between domestic violence and the patriarchy is provided by social psychologist Donald G. Dutton, in his article “Patriarchy and Wife Assault: The Ecological Fallacy,” where he observes that according to the PC feminist theory of domestic violence, “wife assault is seen to be a systematic form of domination and social control of women by men. All men can potentially use violence as a powerful means of subordinating women. Men as a class benefit from how women’s lives are restricted because of their fear of violence. Wife abuse reinforces women’s dependence and enables all men to exert authority and control…. Wife assault is mainly ‘normal’ violence committed, not by madmen who are unlike other men, but by men who believe that patriarchy is their right, that marriage gives then unrestricted control over their wife and that violence is an acceptable means of establishing this control.” Wendy McElroy sums up the PC feminist approach to domestic violence in her book Sexual Correctness: The Gender-Feminist Attack on Women this way: “men are said to beat women to retain their place in the patriarchal power structure.”

A critical component of the PC feminist conception of domestic violence is the denial that women commit domestic violence against men. Studies of domestic violence have consistently revealed that women are at least as likely as men to commit domestic violence, that in about half of all cases, minor and severe, the aggression is mutual, that about 38% of the people injured by domestic violence are men, and that self-defense accounts for less than one-fifth of domestic violence committed by women. PC feminists, however, refuse to accept the findings as true. Linda Kelly explains why. “Domestic violence is not viewed as just another tool used by men in the subordination of women. Rather, it is considered ‘one of the most brutal and explicit expressions of patriarchal domination.’ Such strong roots in patriarchy have produced an equally strong force against accepting female violence. Acknowledging female violence risks negating the very basis of the existing domestic violence definition.” As Kelly perceives, “[d]omestic violence represents the prized gemstone of … [the] message that our legal, social, and cultural norms are fashioned in a manner which permit men to engage in a constant and pervasive effort to oppress women by any and every available means.”

If the PC feminist theory of domestic violence was only being taught to womens’ studies majors, that would be one thing, but it’s being taught to judges charged with the responsibility of granting temporary and permanent DV restraining orders, and, to some degree, with the responsibility of deciding custody and visitation issues. In a report entitled “Education for Injustice,” RADAR (Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting) identified a number of examples of this. Here are two: West Virginia’s benchbook on domestic violence, the official judicial handbook, states, incorrectly, that “women are overwhelmingly the typical victims of domestic violence;” similarly, Alabama’s benchbook puts forth the false claim, “National crime statistics show that about 95% of spouse-abuse victims are women.” This “education” is funded by the federal government pursuant to the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).

For years, many family court judges have held the view that fathers are ice cream, moms are the meal. Dads are nice, but nonessential. Kids can easily do without them, just like they really don’t need dessert. In 1985, the “Honorable” Richard Huttner, former chief judge of the King’s County (Brooklyn) Family Court took this further, telling New York Magazine: “You have never seen a bigger pain in the ass than the father who wants to get involved: he can be repulsive. He wants to meet the kid after school at three o’clock, take the kid out to dinner during the week, have the kid on his own birthday, talk to the kid on the phone every evening, go to every open school night, take the kid away for a whole weekend so they can be alone together. This type of father is pathological.” VAWA was passed in 1994. Considering the “men are bad and women are victims” ideology that’s been promoted since then, one can only believe that the bias against fathers is even worse than it was in the 1980s. Fathers are not just useless pains in the asses, they’re evil.

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David Heleniak is a civil litigation attorney in New Jersey and Senior Legal Analyst for the True Equality Network.

Children’s rights should include life with both parents.

by Phyllis Schlafly

Debates about same-sex marriage and gay adoptions always include the argument that a child has the right to both a father and a mother. ….

…. If that is true, why is a child usually deprived of that right when heterosexual couples divorce?

It would seem that maintaining the father’s love and authority would be crucial when a child’s life is turned upside down by divorce. Yet, family courts routinely deprive children of one parent, usually the father, restricting his time with his child to about six days a month.

The courts pompously assert they are invoking “the best interest of the child,” but how can it be in the best interest of children to make them forfeit one parent?

We hear many pious comments about the need for fathers to be involved in the upbringing of their children. This need should be even more important in times of emotional stress, such as divorce, than the need for fathers to play ball with their kids in an intact family.

Some states are considering legislation that establishes a presumption of shared parenting whereby divorced parents divide equally both time and authority over the children. This enables children to maintain strong ties to both parents.

When primary or sole custody is given to the mother, the father becomes merely a visitor in the child’s life (that’s why it’s called “visitation”), whose only value is to mail a paycheck and be an occasional baby sitter. The father loses his parental authority and fades out of his own child’s life.

An argument is sometimes made that shuttling back and forth between two homes might be upsetting or a nuisance, but there is no more shuttling with equal custody (where parents, for example, get alternating weeks) than with the typical mother-custody/father-visitation schedule (where the father gets two weekends a month plus some Wednesday evenings). Do the math; both plans have about the same number of shuttles between homes.

An argument is also made that giving custody primarily to the mother promotes stability, but the need for stability is really a reason forshared custody. The stability of parental relationships is a great deal more important than contact with material things.

Americans have always assumed that parents share decision-making authority because only parents can determine what is in the best interest of their own children. As recently as 2000, the Supreme Court in Troxel v. Granville reaffirmed this principle and rejected the argument that a judge could supersede a fit parent’s judgment about his child’s “best interest.”

Nevertheless, in what Stephen Baskerville calls a “silent revolution,” millions of divorced parents have had their fundamental right to decide what is in the best interest of their own children taken away and given instead to a vast array of government officials and so-called “experts” such as judges, lawyers, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, childprotective services, child support enforcement agents, mediators, counselors, parenting classes, and feminist groups.

This shift began in the 1970s after the spread of unilateral divorce was followed by the creation of a giant federal child support-enforcement bureaucracy. The notion that this mix of government officials and government-appointed advisers can dictate what is the best interest of the child rather than a child’s own parents is how liberals and feminists are fulfilling their goal that “it takes a village (i.e., the government) to raise a child.”

An example of the bias against fathers can be seen in the Responsible Fatherhood Act of 2007 recently introduced by Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Evan Bayh, D-Ind. The bill mentions “child support” 65 times, but not once does it mention parenting time, custody, visitation, or access denial.

Baskerville’s new book, “Taken into Custody: The War Against Fatherhood, Marriage, and the Family” (Cumberland House, $24.95), provides a copiously documented description of society’s injustices to children who have been deprived of their fathers and of fathers who have been deprived of their children. This book is a tremendous and much-needed report on how family courts and government policies are harming children.

It is a breakthrough for shared parenting that a noncustodial father, Robert Pedersen, was recently named runner-up in the nationwide Best Life Magazine‘s “Hero Dad” Contest. Pedersen is only allowed 6 to 8 days a month with his two children from a previous marriage.

Pedersen has devised a novel way to demonstrate the importance of fathers to children of divorced parents. He is leading an “Equal Parenting Bike Ride” starting in Lansing, Mich., on Aug. 11 and culminating with an Aug. 18 rally in Washington, D.C.

- – -

Phyllis Schlafly is a lawyer, conservative political analyst and the author of the newly revised and expanded “Supremacists.” She can be contacted by e-mail at phyllis@eagleforum.org. © Copley News Service

NWS Thanks John Schlafly at Eagle Forum for approving the republication here at NWS. Sr. Ed

National Writers Syndicate – Children’s rights should include life with both parents..

NH Supreme Court: Parental Alienation Inimical to Child’s Best Interests « Fathers & Families

NH Supreme Court: Parental Alienation Inimical to Child’s Best Interests

April 4th, 2011 by Robert Franklin, Esq.

This case is excellent, not only because of its result, but mostly because of its sound analysis.  It should serve as a template for courts not only here in the U.S. but in other countries as well.

It comes to us from the Supreme Court of New Hampshire and analyzes a situation in which false allegations of child sexual abuse were used by a mother to deprive a father of contact with his children.  It’s a familiar pattern of facts and altogether too rare an outcome.

In 1999, James Miller met Janet Todd online.  They developed a relationship and, although they never married, had two daughters.  Laurel was born in 2002 and Lindsey in 2003.  Ultimately, a New Hampshire court awarded joint custody with Todd as primary custodian and Miller with visitation rights.

But early on, Todd’s mother claimed she had seen Miller sexually abusing Laurel.  Thus began a long series of allegations of child sexual abuse against Miller.  They were still going on as late as March, 2009, some five years after the first one.

Each and every claim was investigated; each and every claim was determined to be unfounded.  As part of the investigations, the girls were subjected to invasive pelvic examinations at least twice each.

False though the allegations were, they served a purpose; they caused the New Hampshire family court to suspend Miller’s parenting time with his children throughout the course of the proceedings.  That meant that, for over two years, he had no contact with his daughters and they none with him.

Eventually, in July, 2006, the court ordered psychologist Dr. Peggie Ward to thoroughly examine Miller, Todd, the girls and the family situation to determine issues of custody, alienation, sexual abuse, etc.  It took Ward 17 months to produce her 88-page report which the court found to be “extraordinarily thorough.”

What Ward concluded was that there was no reliable evidence of sexual abuse by Miller.  She also concluded that Todd had probably not set out to deliberately alienate the girls from their father; that probably originated with Todd’s mother.  The problem stemmed not only from the various claims of abuse, but from Todd’s almost total inability to accurately process everyday occurrences.

[p]sychological testing shows that Ms. Todd has a “serious
impairment in her ability to accurately process the information she takes in from her surroundings and the degree of misperception she demonstrates has major implications for her adaptive functioning. Ms. Todd’s level of distortion is substantial and predisposes her to misunderstanding and misconstruing intentions, motivations and actions of other people. This places her at great risk for faulty judgment, for errors in decision-making, and for behaving in ways that are based on inaccurate information.  These data indicate that Ms. Todd will not only fail to recognize or foresee the consequences of her actions at times, but that she will also become confused at times in separating fantasy from reality.”

In other words, Todd was unable to sort out false allegations from real ones.  Into the bargain, Todd failed to protect her daughters from her own feelings and fears about what she thought may be happening, thereby perpetuating the girls’ own confusion about the nature of what daddy had or had not done.

So, given years of false allegations against Miller and the manifest inability by Todd to (a) distinguish fantasy from reality and (b) promote a healthy relationship between Miller and his daughters, the trial court did what so many of them do; it gave custody to the children’s mother.

That violated New Hampshire law which requires parents to promote positive relationships between the opposite parent and the children.  It also ignored the rather startling fact that Todd’s emotional problems posed obvious risks for any child in her care.

So why did the court give her custody?  Because the kids had been with her for several years during which time they’d had no contact with Miller.  They’d developed friendships at school and so, according to the court, their “best interests” required them to see little or nothing of their father, depending on the decisions of their clearly unbalanced mother.

If that makes sense to you, please explain it to me.

The New Hampshire Supreme Court squashed that one like a bug.  Its opinion grasps what so many courts do not – that continuing, deep and rich relationships with both parents are in the child’s best interests.  The mother’s obstruction of  such relationships between the children and the father is per se not in their best interests.

Why that should be so difficult to understand is beyond me.  The statutes of New Hampshire make it clear as do the statutes and courts of other jurisdictions.  The court said:

“Across the country, the great weight of authority holds that conduct by one parent that tends to alienate the child’s affections from the other is so inimical to the child’s welfare as to be grounds for a denial of custody to, or a change of custody from, the parent guilty of such conduct.”

And yet time and again, courts ignore statute and case law and look only at the fact that the child has been separate from the father for a certain period of time.  They then conclude that the he cannot have future contact or that it must be limited, without ever noticing how his lack of contact came about.

The New Hampshire court specifically objected to the concept that Todd had “benefitted from her own misbehavior.”  That’s a concept I’ve waited many years to hear a court articulate.  For as long as I’ve been a student and advocate of fathers’ rights, I’ve been astonished at courts’ willingness to ignore mothers’ wrongdoing in order to grant them custody.  That happens as a matter of routine in adoption cases.

What Miller v. Todd does is to show that the requirement on the part of each parent to promote the child’s relationship with the other parent is necessary and beneficial to the child.  It also shows that courts will not reward the alienating behavior of parents.

And that, in a nutshell, is how courts should rule in these cases.  They should make it clear that false allegations of abuse are not acceptable and that they will not be used to benefit the alienating parent.

It’s a simple concept that more courts need to grasp.

Thanks to Timothy for the heads-up.

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NH Supreme Court: Parental Alienation Inimical to Child’s Best Interests « Fathers & Families.

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