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Saturday, Jul 4, 2009
One of Amanda's favorite whipping boys in the Fathers' Rights Movement.
She says the people in this movement are out for one thing: to reduce their child support. She says they are batterers. She says they abandoned their families. She says they are misogynists. She says they are liars. She says they are bitter used up men.
One of the best spokesman for fathers is Glenn Sacks (from who I lifted some of the paragraphs below). Amanda states the Sacks is a conservative, and hateful. I find Sacks to be progressive liberal, and very fair to his opponents.
Is Amanda right? Is Sacks a conservative? Are Fathers' Rights Groups misogynists?
The California National Organization for Women recently issued a 95-page report called Disorder in the Courts: Mothers and Their Allies Take on the Family Law System, in which they warn “the fathers’ rights movement has been gaining strength and legitimacy. Fatherhood groups are well-funded, well-organized and publicly supported through conservative mouthpieces in the media.” In the report, many prominent figures in the Feminist Family Law Movement (FFLM) call for a “mothers’ rights movement” to block the rising fatherhood movement.
The FFLM insists that false accusers and parental alienators are inventions of the fatherhood movement, and asserts that judges need more “training” so they can better recognize the veracity of women’s abuse claims when no conventional evidence is presented. FFLM luminary Lundy Bancroft, author of When Dad Hurts Mom: Helping Your Children Heal the Wounds of Witnessing Abuse, has written extensively on how courts should identify batterers in this manner. Bancroft, a leading voice in PBS’s Breaking the Silence, penned an article called “Making a Mothers’ Movement” for the California NOW report. He explains:
“Batterers are known for often being unusually appealing superficially, and sexual abusers are similarly often people who are identified as especially ‘good with children’…They may be professionally successful or socially popular, and may be involved in charitable or civic activities that make them appear outstandingly kind and responsible. Victims of both kinds of abuse face disbelief because ‘he’s just not the type.’”
In fact, Bancroft explains, dad often treats the child he sexually abuses very well, and as his favorite child.
Newsweek explains:
“Family-court judges often look favorably on the alleged abuser because he seems more willing to share custody than the accuser–who is hell-bent on keeping the father away from the child.”
Salon, maybe Amanda, NOW, and the Feminist Family Law Movement are right. And maybe they are wrong, and it is the Fathers' Rights Movement that is right. Maybe they are all full of it.
Isn't there a series of articles there? Isn't this the sort of issue relevant to your readers that a progressive liberal magazine needs to take up?
The mainstream doesn't realize that many blogs are the written equivalent of dinner conversation rather than carefully crafted op-ed pieces. That's why they work so well, because we can all drop the act and just speak our minds. Of course, that leads immediately to vast expanses of choice quotes that when presented within a mediated context look less like spur-of-the-moment thoughts and more like well-deliberated policy positions. But I don't worry about it much.
The day is coming when text blogs become realtime video blogs, when every moment from every public and private figure will be recorded somewhere and ready for worldwide distribution. Everytime a president has that "my mind is empty" look on their face, every time a vice president calls a Congressperson a motherfucker, everytime a pundit grabs as ass when they think they are off camera, everytime a closeted gay-bashing preacher drives over to their secret gay escort: those moments will come back to haunt them as they get broadcast in hi-def and 3D surround to the world.
To those of you who think Marcotte is an ultra-left-wingnut Christ-hating lesbian feminazi: First, you really ought to get out more -- what she writes on her blog is quite civil compared to what I used to hear around the dinner table even in semi-rural Republican North Carolina. (Go buy a copy of Bitch or Bust sometime.) Second, when we reach the day every public figure looks like an ass, are you going to keep rooting for the ones whose well-crafted writings contradict everything they privately say and do, or will you support the ones whose writings back up their actions even if they cussed a little over the years?
Poor little anti-Catholic bigot wasn't allowed to be her vulgar feminist self in bad world of politics -- what a surprise!
Does anyone know about North Carolina -- one of the least Catholic (and most anti-Catholic) states in the union? Where the dispensationalist evangelicals rail against the Devil Vatican and Satan Pope with as much bile as Amanda does? She was probably brought on by someone who thought that people felt that way all over the country.
But those evangelicals don't like foul-mouthed termigants. Duh. Call them Neanderthal, but it's real, and they vote.
As a lawyer, Edwards could argue over what evidence the jury could see. Major league. Big time. But politics ain't the courtroom, and, in the modern super-politicized world, anything goes.
You were a "bad fit," Amanda. You can join all the rest of the collateral damage at the side of the road to Baghdad.
So cminimus, your response wasn't sufficient unless it had your insult to Chloe: she's a zell miller democrat, a dino. Good job! Now you don't have to listen to anything she might have to say.
That's a rather... idiosyncratic... intepretation on your part, considering that I then spent the next two paragraphs responding to what Chloe had to say.
(And are you going to say my characterization is wrong, then? She did use a term used by conservatives to refer to Democrats in a way no liberal or moderate would. If someone said "as an Orthodox Jew, I'm very worried that virtually none of my co-religionists have accepted Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, into their hearts," would you really believe they were an Orthodox Jew?)
I'm willing to argue with an honest conservative, or an honest anybody else for that matter. Part of that means admitting what you are. I am a liberal Quaker. Chloe seems to be a conservative Catholic. You are whatever you are; you didn't say, but smart money says some variant of conservative.
Yes, yes, I am certain you are a pandagon commenter. You have the behavior down pat.
My hunch is that this is your attempt to dehumanize me in an attempt to dismiss what I'm saying, but I choose to take it as a compliment instead.
The media outlet's use of Bush euphemisms sparks a much-needed debate on journalistic standards.
The Wasilla soap opera just gets weirder as Palin complains critics are "picking apart a good point guard"
And so are his Fox News pals, who lambasted Sen. Al Franken's "stolen election"
An inflexible right wing is allowing the Golden State to drown in debt. But it's not alone
Thanks for sharing, Governor. Now please take a cue from Norm Coleman, and go away
Salon headlines in your mailbox
