That was almost a good post!

Just lose the LL blurb and the gender whining at the top, and put the math story up there, and one might actually think Clark-Flory respected the intelligence of her readers for a moment; or wanted to do more than generate tabloid controversy to milk her angstful readers for ad revenue.

Or at least she has mistakenly given that impression for once.

You can read her proof of thermodynamics of Ashkin–Teller spin system percolation here:

http://www.danicamckellar.com/math/percolation.pdf

I'm not saying he's not responsible, but um, since Mom was basically a single mother, why are you looking to pin it on Dad?

Jeez, you harpies do as much you can to get Dad out of the kids' lives extolling the virtues of sole custody and progesterone enhanced childhood, but should one of them end up a snatch exposing car crashing alcoholic skanky dopester, then sure, it's Dad's fault.

I will agree with you and ask you to tell me again why the National Organization for Women is lobbying for sole custody and against a rebuttable presumption of shared custody.

If you're going to tell me that Dad should have been in her life and not in jail, then I will ask you what you think of the State of Virginia's child abuse campaign.

http://glennsacks.com/blog/?p=857

Since apparently Dina Lohan and Lindsay are poster children for the success of single parentage, don't you think you Broads should be celebrating Lindsay's very feminist stance, I am in charge of my own body, I have a healthy sexuality thank you very much, why are you slutshaming me Broadshseet, I think you are just envious of my riches, ambition, talent, and youth.

She grew up rich enough and empowered enough to cast off the shackles of the Patriarchy (and believe me, many of us wanted to shackle her) and she grew up confident in herself and proud of her body and knowledgeable about her own sexuality. Why ARE you slutshaming her?

It just doesn't seem very feminist of you to do that. Seriously, I think you ought to invite her to be a coblogger at Broadsheet. She seems to be a model feminist.

I kind of hate to be skeptical, especially since I am fully aware of the horrors in the Congo, which are very very real, but there is a difference between fact and propaganda, even when the propaganda is directed at the evil.

I am sorry, but every time I read about "men forced to rape their daughters in front of their families" I have to think, nope. Speaking as a man (let alone father) I am pretty darn sure that the necessary hydraulics would be unobtainable. Having a gun pointed at you would probably be enough, let alone the presence of your family, let alone, well, your mom. Let alone you are supposed to be raping your daughters, sisters, and mom. I really don't think so. Physically, it just couldn't happen.

Or are Congolese men somehow different from the rest of us? Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, being white and all.

And I wonder, what do people who report this uncritically believe about male sexuality (to say nothing of black male sexuality)? That we are all secret rapists, able and indeed on some level wishing to do this to our daughters? Our Moms?

Not only do I call bullshit on this, I really wonder about anybody that could believe it.

National Organization for Women is lobbying for sole custody and against a rebuttable presumption of shared custody.

I detect a whiff of disbelief though.

http://glennsacks.com/blog/?p=894

GlennSacks.com » Blog Archive » NOW's National Conference July 13-15--'Fast Forward: Women Take Charge'

The National Organization for Women turned 40 this summer, and formally celebrated its anniversary at its national conference in July. NOW President Kim Gandy has proudly recounted her organization's successes in opening up opportunities for women, and says they are “never giving up the dream of full equality for all.”

Unfortunately, on some issues – particularly in family law and child custody – NOW's policies and actions contradict its ideals of “full equality for all.” This is most evident in the group's dogged opposition to joint custody and shared parenting.

The logic behind shared parenting is hard to dispute. Kids love, want and need both their parents. When divorcing parents cannot agree on custody arrangements, as long as both parents are fit, they should both be allowed to share in parenting their children. Not surprisingly, research shows that children of divorce fare better under joint custody – where they spend significant amounts of time with each parent – than under sole custody.

NOW and its co-thinkers, to their credit, once encouraged fathers, fathering and shared parenting. In 1971 Gloria Steinem wrote that children suffer from having “too little father” in their lives, and that a more equal balance of parenting was needed. Karen DeCrow, president of NOW from 1974 to 1977, says “it was clear from the feminist writings and ideas of the '60s and '70s that joint custody was what we supported after a divorce.”

Fathers have embraced the call for more father involvement. Despite an ever-expanding work week, children today benefit from receiving more hands-on fathering than ever before. The Families and Work Institute found that fathers now provide three-fourths as much child care as mothers do – 50 percent more than 30 years ago.

Paradoxically, while fathers are more directly involved in their children's lives than ever, their bonds with their children are also more fragile. In the late 1970s NOW reversed itself and began promoting sole custody in divorce cases. In most divorces mothers are awarded sole (or de facto sole) custody of the children, and most post-divorce parenting time schedules offer fathers and children less than 20 percent physical time together.

Men who don't provide for their families are not respected, yet family courts treat fathers who have worked hard to support their families like absent parents whose bonds with their children merit limited consideration. DeCrow rightly denounces this practice as “sexist” and “inhuman.”

Along with divorce attorneys, NOW is the largest organized group fighting shared parenting legislation. It has issued numerous warnings, including one that says fathers' groups seeking joint custody laws are “using the abuse of power in order to control in the same fashion as do batterers.” In their statements the words “husband” and “father” are generally preceded by the word “abusive.”

Using these scare tactics, NOW has blocked shared parenting bills in several states this year, including New York and Michigan. Yet as even feminist firebrand Martha Burk notes, “With close to half of all marriages ending in divorce, it's impossible to believe that the majority of divorcing fathers are violent, and it would be wrong to base public policy on the notion that they are.”

Over the past four decades America has come a long way in redressing the grievances of disadvantaged groups, including women, African-Americans, Latinos and gays. The most glaring civil rights violations in America today are those suffered by divorced dads, many of whom have been pushed out of their children's lives without justification. It's time for NOW to re-examine its misguided stand against shared parenting, and to bring its policies into line with its stated ideals.