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Many of us have to be anonymous in this forum because, sadly, we are involved in family court.
We are trying to share the custody and share the parenting time of our children, and we know too well how the courts and the court psychologists use stereotypes to victimize the fathers (and the children.)
This does not mean we are anti-feminists. Feminism use to be about lifting both sexes and freeing them from stereotypes. Amanda believes that "the patriarchy is to blame for everything", and she has said that the child should be with the parent that brought it up. She firmly believes that if a man goes back to work and leaves the child with mom because mom can breast feed the child, than the man has given up any right to ask for a shared custody later on. She has said, just before banning me.
Because of the ridiculous nature of the way charges are laid out in court, there are many of us that keep our names anonymous. Though fathers' rights groups can have good resources for fathers, if it becomes known to the lawyers and the judge you are a member of a fathers' rights group, it puts you in a corner for the undeserved stereotype is that of an angry man that doesn't want to pay for child support.
Child support IS an issue, but in no way is it the fundamental issue. The fundamental issue is our ability to share custody and have a significant share of our children's time so that we can parent them.
Amanda, who is young, and never married and never divorced, spreads the stereotype and curses out fathers' rights activists left and right. But she has no real experience or knowledge of family court. She is her grandfather that used to curse the darkies and fear how they wanted to date his daughter.
So we keep anonymous for that reason.
And we keep anonymous because the liberal blogosphere is lucky to have some very good, progressive young writers that also buy into this stereotype or are otherwise afraid to call Amanda out on her nonsense.
Calling out a self-proclaimed feminist on her sexist bullshit is the third-rail of the progressive blogosphere.
Top tier bloggers like Duncan Black, Ezra Klein, Matthew Yglesias, Digby and others should be able to see through the nonsense. But for the most part they too are young, and inexperienced with divorce and families and family court so they don't recognize yet that the systemic inequalities that some men complain about are in fact terribly real and really terrible.
As we do participate in these blogs with a name, we are forced to keep anonymous in Amandas and here. Why? Read the comments at Pandagon. Read how dissent is greeted with insult, with sexist comments. How dissenters are demeaned, dehumanized, and blamed. Look at how academics and well known intellectuals like Michael Berube have also signed onto these tactics. If we wish to participate in blogs in a meaningful way in other issues, than we are forced to partition off that side of us that has been deeply hurt by the courts as well as by the Amanda Marcottes.
