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Fathers For Justice
Other Fathers Groups Miss The Big Picture
Good analysis; kudos to
http://www.angryharry.com/esFatherGroupsMissTheBigPicture.htm
for not focusing on individual father cases but public awareness
Thanks to the highly successful publicity-seeking campaigns
conducted by the UK's Fathers For Justice team, the problems facing fathers
have been hitting the headlines all over the world.
And so let me say again to all those members of various men
and fathers groups whose 'leaders' have in the past decried the type of
activities carried out by Fathers For Justice that they need to ditch those
leaders as quickly as possible and substitute them for those who know how
the real world works.
Or, perhaps, they should support another group!
As proof that Fathers For Justice is having a major impact on
the issues of concern - as if any further proof was needed - here is one
media research organisation stating that "Fathers 4 Justice, has mounted
one of the most successful media campaigns of modern times".
The report benchmarks the media visibility of other high profile
political campaigning organisations, including F4J's sister organisation,
Families Need Father, gay rights organisations Outrage and Stonewall, and
international organisations such as Amnesty International. Analysing more
than 10,000 articles from 330 UK newspapers published in the last four
years, the report finds that:
1. F4J has been quoted in 1335 newspaper articles (compared to 188 for
Families Need Fathers) since January 2002
2. Articles on fathers rights have increased by over 700% since F4J
mounted its high profile media campaign
3. F4J has engaged the political establishment to speak on fathers
rights, Tony Blair and Michael Howard have been cited in 277 and 54 press
articles respectively.
And it is a real pity that so many 'leaders' of the various men's groups around the world do not appear to have any appreciation of the fact that ongoing maximum publicity is crucial to their aims.
Furthermore, most of these demonstrably lame 'leaders' are
living in Cloud-Cuckoo Land. They naively believe that merely demonstrating
the validity of their various cases and arguments is all that is required to
bring about changes of policy by their governments. And they seem completely
ignorant of the fact that government officials, government workers and
politicians have their own agendas - which are very often antagonistic to
the well-being of the people whom they are supposed to be serving.
Goodness me. You only have to look at the numerous
and serious social pathologies that have mushroomed in western
countries over the past four decades as a result of
fatherlessness to realise that what is good for the people - and for the
children - cuts no ice when it comes to government policy.
The Number One priority of governments and their workers is to look after themselves. It is most definitely not to look after the well-being of their own people; though they are very adept at pretending otherwise. And given that the horrible consequences of widespread fatherlessness provides millions of western government workers with so many career opportunities, western governments will quietly resist doing anything that will reduce the incidence of fatherlessness - see below - unless, that is, they are put under considerable public pressure. Indeed, the only way that men and fathers are going to create a world in which they are not forever being demonised, disadvantaged and discriminated against is by waging some kind of public war against those who promote such things, not by pleading with them.
Talking politely to the powers-that-be achieves absolutely
nothing.
These people only respond appropriately when their lofty
positions are threatened in some way.
And Fathers For Justice will have done far more for fathers
and their children over the past few months than have all the placid
activities of scores of fathers groups that have been operating in many
cases for well over a decade - in some cases for well over three decades.
Indeed, it was around 1993 that I read Warren Farrell's
brilliant book The Myth Of Male Power which exposed just how poorly men and
fathers were being treated, but, despite its brilliance and despite Warren
Farrell's many other scholarly endeavours, and, indeed, despite the good
work of many other serious and respectable researchers, absolutely nothing
was ever achieved.
Absolutely nothing.
Feminism and man-hatred simply marched onwards completely
unopposed - while greedy politicians ever desperate to increase their own
powers continued allying themselves with these unholy forces in order to
profit from the negative consequences arising from them.
Of course they did.
Governments love to stir up problems. Problems are the only
way that they can fully justify their existence. Without problems, there is
no need for large swathes of government.
And governments will surreptitiously stir up problems
wherever they can in order to empower themselves; e.g. see AH's
The Governing Elite.
And what could be more lucrative for them than to do this by
arranging matters so that as many males as possible end up behaving in a
dysfunctional manner and/or can be portrayed as doing such?
Fatherlessness and feminism have therefore been goldmines for
them.
They love such things.
Governments have little interest in seeing their societies
running smoothly.
What they do have is a great deal of interest in looking
after themselves.
And this is why the various antics of the Fathers For Justice
activists are having such a large effect on them while the placid activities
of just about all other fathers' groups have had virtually no effect at all.
In other words, these Fathers For Justice activists are
finally rocking some government boats.
And it is a pity that the 'leaders' of so many men's groups
are angling for some kind of political positions for themselves, because
they inevitably see the more aggressive antics of others associated with
their cause as being detrimental to their own personal ambitions - though
some of them, of course, are quite happy to see activists taking a more
aggressive stand because this gives them some extra clout, even though in
public they will wash their hands of them for fear that they might be
associated with them.
But this seems to be the way that things generally work when
it comes to political matters that are particularly contentious; i.e. there
is a whole range of thought and activity; from the coolly mediated to the
aggressively passionate.
However, in the case of the Men's Movement - where the
many issues in its spotlight should be of considerable
concern to half the population - the continuing coyness and
reticence of many men's 'leaders' are completely unnecessary. And in many
ways these 'leaders' are actually detrimental to the whole cause because
they blinker the members of their own groups by confining their attention to
limited forms of action and, indeed, thought.
For example, they often seem to be so concerned over one
particular problem and so adamant in their belief that there is just one
route in which to tackle it that they fail completely to see the bigger
picture, and, as a consequence, they spend many years getting precisely
nowhere.
They are like a heavily-blinkered Jewish man living in the
Germany of the early 1930s wondering why on Earth the court decision went
against him when he seemed to have such a very good case.
And, worse, these blinkered men's 'leaders' also keep telling
the men and fathers who are members of their various groups that if they can
just 'get their documents into better shape' then the courts will be bound
to act upon them - which, of course, they won't.
They do not seem to have any awareness that the particular
problems that concern them so are arising from forces that are vastly bigger
than what they are perceiving.
Let me give you just a little insight into this.
A few years ago I was watching a woman's programme on TV in
the afternoon and the chairman of a big Japanese car company (and I cannot
remember which one) was being questioned over some of his company's car
advertisements that made humour out of situations wherein women were being
aggressive and callous toward men (e.g. kicking them out of the car door
while the car was moving etc.).
He said that these car sales were being targeted at women who
wanted to be independent of men, and who could show men that they could
happily do without them.
The interviewer (a woman) then asked him whether or not his
advertisements depicting female aggression toward men might actually
encourage women to feel this way, and so were bad for gender relations.
The chairman laughed and nodded politely, shrugged his
shoulders, and pointed out that such an effect would help his company to
sell many more cars. After all, if women were more independent of men then
they would more likely buy their own cars.
The female audience laughed.
But he was not joking.
He was being coy; but he was being honest.
His multinational company stood to make hundreds of millions
of dollars more in profit every year if it could persuade more women to
become more independent of men; and one way of doing this was to promote
hostility in women towards men.
And, unfortunately, the same is true for hundreds of large
companies.
As a result, our societies are constantly being bombarded
with advertising material designed to inflame women's hostility towards men.
Indeed, this technique started to be employed in the 1920s when cigarette
advertisements indoctrinated potential women smokers with the view that
taking up smoking was a very good way for women to liberate themselves from
men.
The campaign was hugely successful. And this was the case
even though it was not men but women themselves who had seen smoking as
being an overtly masculine - and somewhat dirty and smelly - activity.
In other words, even though it was women who
had largely persuaded women that smoking was an unwholesome activity for
women to engage in, the advertisers managed to convey the notion
to women that men were somehow depriving them of this
wonderful addiction.
The point I am making is that billions of dollars since then
have been poured by various businesses into advertising campaigns that are
designed to sour the relationships between men and women in order to
increase the sales of their products and to enlarge the market for them.
Indeed, the fashion industry has recently even targeted
children with the David and Goliath T-shirts, which bear upon them such
phrases as "Boys Are Smelly", "Boys Are Stupid", and they have sold millions
of these.
And one of the most egregious examples in recent times of
businesses conducting advertising campaigns to demonise men horribly has
been the thoroughly hateful campaigning conducted by the National Society
For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Children in the UK. This money-grabbing
organisation, in my view, has caused inestimable damage to the relationships
between men, women and children throughout the entire country by its
relentless portrayal of men and fathers as demonic child molesters and
abusers, and it has made millions of dollars by doing this; e.g. see AH's
The NSPCC Needs To Be Stopped.
In summary, there has been well over half a century of strong
campaigning by various businesses that has been designed to stir up
antagonism towards men in order to generate profits.
But even these advertising activities pale in significance
when compared to the deluge of man-hatred that has emanated from the
feminist-dominated mainstream media for the past three decades; e.g. see
Spin Sisters Sell Misery by Paige McKenzie and
Some BBC Propaganda Tricks.
TV, radio, cinema, newspapers and magazines have daily
flooded the entire western world with the most horrible portrayals of men
imaginable.
The over-riding message is that men are persistent
wife-beaters, child molesters, rapists, sexual-harassers, or some other kind
of animal that is forever abusing women and children in some way.
This onslaught has been ceaseless - but, of course, the
portrayal of men behaving in such a fashion is a turn-on for millions of
consumers, which guarantees that the audiences and, hence, the money flows
in. And, indeed, women, themselves, are clearly very much
turned on by depictions of abuse - particularly sexual abuse; e.g. see
Eastenders - The UK Woman's Favourite Soap
The problem for men is that people end up being very heavily
affected by these things in real life; not just ordinary people, but judges,
police officers, family case workers, social services, and so on.
And the consequence is that men and fathers can now be
treated like dirt - and no-one gives a damn.
Indeed, so demonised have men been, and so hated are they
nowadays, that even the savage mutilating of them has been accepted as part
of mainstream comedy - e.g. Bobbit jokes. This, alone, is
clear proof that men are nowadays a group that is very much hated
right throughout society..
But the inflammation of hatred towards men has not solely
emanated from the antics of big business and the feminist-dominated
feminist-fearing mainstream media.
There have been other hugely powerful forces doing their best
to demonise men in order to break down their relationships and their
families.
To gain a little insight into these forces, here is a bit of
history that the leaders of men's groups should know about.
Some 100 years ago the followers of a fellow by the name of
Karl Marx were becoming frustrated because they could not mobilise the
'workers' into tearing down the 'filthy capitalists' who, they reckoned,
were exploiting them. These 'communists' just could not figure out why these
'workers' remained so complacent in the face of all this capitalist
oppression, and why they could not arouse them into creating some kind of
revolution. And without these 'workers' joining them in some kind of mass
uprising there seemed to be no way in which they could realise their dream
and overthrow the capitalists.
Communists wanted communism - where everything was controlled
by the government; rather than by businesses.
And they hit upon a great idea which was taken up and
implemented gradually over the following decades.
"Break down the families," they said. "Make it difficult for
people to have close relationships. This way it will be impossible for them
to unite and to oppose the growth of government. Families are also the
reason that the workers remain so contented and at peace with their
capitalist world. Break down these families, cause as much societal discord
as possible and this will make the people beg for more government
intervention and control."
(And the Russians proceeded accordingly - and their societies
decomposed and decayed as a result.)
The feminists of the time, of course, reckoned that it was
women who were being abused and repressed rather than the
workers. And they reckoned that it was the men who were
abusing and oppressing them.
Indeed, the feminists believed that the institution of
marriage itself was a major cause of this oppression. And so, just like the
communists, they also became imbued with the notion that the breaking down
of people's relationships and marriages was a good idea.
And so it was, for example, that the suffragettes of the
1900s - having read a bit about the new grand idea of the communists -
suddenly changed their minds and supported entry into World War 1. By having
millions of men engaged with matters to do with war - with many of them sent
abroad to fight - families and relationships could be broken down much more
easily. And, even better, women could then be enticed out of their homes and
into the workplaces to fill the jobs that were previously being done by the
men - who would now be at war.
And so it was that the communists and the feminists were
united in the view that the breaking down of close relationships and
families would serve both their purposes rather well.
And this is why, for example, the leading feminists of the
60s - Betty Friedan, Jane Fonda etc - were ardent supporters of communism.
Communism would free women from oppression, they said - but
they did not say this too loudly at the time, because most of the western
world was vehemently opposed to communism; having seen what kind of life
those in communist countries were actually leading.
Bit by bit, however, western governments have grown hugely in
size since then. And they are now extremely powerful.
And what has happened is that the politicians and the
government workers themselves have now become a force - a huge force - that
is far less concerned with serving the people, and far more concerned with
serving itself.
And this is why the distinction between, say, the left and
the right of politics has all but evaporated in recent times. As governments
have grown ever larger over the past 100 years (about 70-100 times larger
judging by the tax take) there has emerged a new force for big government -
government itself.
And with millions of government workers across the western
world now exerting a truly massive force in favour of themselves - i.e. in
favour of 'government' - the people are being both suckered and forced into
supporting their various self-serving agendas.
And, unfortunately for us, what the politicians and the
government workers have gradually 'discovered' is that the communists were
correct.
A great way to maintain big government is to break down
people's close relationships and their families.
And this is why western governments nowadays do all that they
can to interfere with people's relationships and why it is that feminists -
and feminist thinking - are now so entrenched within government departments.
And this is why men now have to walk on eggshells in their
dealings with women and children. They can be accused at the drop of a hat
of sexual harassment in the workplace, of domestic violence and sex-assault
in the home, of abusing their own children, and the government will
immediately step in and attempt to persecute and prosecute them in some way;
even when there is not a shred of objective evidence in support of any case.
Men can also be thrown out of their homes, denied access to
their very own children and divorced with impunity.
The idea behind all these things is to make it very difficult
for men to maintain close relationships.
Western governments are also ploughing millions of dollars
annually into demonising men through their various bogus and
highly-inflammatory campaigns associated with domestic violence and
sex-assault, and they are constantly urging women to come forward to allege
that they have been abused in some way.
And when it comes to the children, there is nowadays an
enormous amount of governmental effort being expending on luring them away
even from their mothers.
In summary, there are huge forces emanating from big
business, the media, the government and the feminists that strive to break
down people's close relationships and their families. Indeed, even those in
the judiciary and the legal profession are involved in this. After all, they
also benefit enormously from all the problems that relationship breakdowns
bring about.
In other words, the forces that bear down upon men and their
relationships are nowadays positively enormous.
They are unimaginable. Literally.
And this is why various men's groups hither and thither are
going to achieve absolutely nothing by politely sitting down and discussing
the matters that concern them with those who have the power to help them.
As George Orwell said - more or less - having studied the
situation for some 30 years; "It is no use appealing to their sense of
honour or justice. The only thing that they respond to is the threat of
losing some of their own power."
Of course, I am not suggesting that every politician and
every government worker is involved in some kind of heinous plot to break up
people's relationships. I see these things in terms of 'organisms' -
enterprises - which serve themselves. And the people who make up these
organisms often do not know what their organisms are doing.
For example, the Japanese car manufacturer alluded to above
employs tens of thousands of workers, very few of who will actually realise
that their company is spending millions of advertising dollars designed to
make women more likely to reject close relationships with men.
Nevertheless, those tens of thousands of workers do,
unwittingly, buttress and sustain a truly mighty force. And this force is
being guided by a few of them in a direction that is very detrimental to the
well-being of men.
And the same is now largely true of those who work for
western governments. They also buttress and sustain a mighty force - much of
which is being guided in a direction that is very detrimental to the
well-being of men.
Unfortunately, however, for some time now, western
governments have also actually been indoctrinating their own workers with
anti-male sentiments, and they have also been selecting their employees on
the basis of their political beliefs.
And so, unlike the Japanese car manufacturer, where most of
the workers have no idea what is going on when it comes to undermining men,
western governments are now packed full of workers who know full well what
is going on.
As such, many government workers that those in men's groups
tend to come across when making their various complaints - e.g. over child
access - are extremely hostile to their points of view at the outset. And
there is just no way that they will accommodate to them.
At best, they will duck and dive, slip and slide, and do
everything that they can to thwart any attempts to do much in the way for
men.
And so, for example, even if some future laws were enacted to
give fathers greater powers of access to their children, such laws would
simply be accompanied by various extra legal impositions upon them.
For instance, they would probably include caveats that no-one
could possibly disagree with publicly in these politically-corrected times.
For example ...
"But if there is even a hint of domestic violence then the
father has no rights."
... And, bit by bit, the government workers will simply
define domestic violence in such a way that no normal man going through a
divorce could avoid being guilty of it.
"He shouted at me. I was living in fear."
The result will be that more fathers will end
up with child access problems.
And if, for example, some law was created which mandated that
a 50/50 form of shared parenting should be the starting base when couples
divorced, then men (not women) would somehow be targeted if they failed to
come up with their allotted percentage.
And, of course, they would also be far more likely to be
falsely accused of something - and, hence, persecuted by government in some
way - by women who were unhappy about handing their children over to them
for the agreed percentage of time.
The upshot would be that more fathers would have child access
problems than there are currently.
All in all, therefore, men and fathers are going to achieve
precious little in their various battles against their ongoing demonisation
and discrimination because the forces that militate against them are
nowadays just too great ...
... unless, that is, they take heed of George Orwell's
sentiments.
"It is no use appealing to their sense of honour or justice.
The only thing that they respond to is the threat of losing some of their
own power."
I have watched the various antics of the feminists, the
women's groups and their associated comrades in government, academia and the
media very closely for some ten years now. And I can assure you that these
groups have lied, and lied, and lied, and lied on just about every issue
which they address. Their belief is that the end justifies the means. Lying,
deceiving, distorting, exaggerating - always with the aim of demonising men
and breaking up their relationships - and so empowering themselves - are
activities that they engage in without limit, without conscience and without
concern.
In the UK, for example, senior police officers and their
colleagues at the Home Office have been caught lying time and time again
over issues connected with sex-assault and domestic violence; and even the
most senior judge in the Family Court Division has recently
resorted to lying in an attempt to undermine fathers groups; e.g. see AH's
piece entitled
Judges.
And so it is that the leaders of men and fathers groups also
need to understand that they are not likely to be dealing with honest or
honourable people when they seek for men to be
treated fairly in matters to do with their families or their relationships.
On the contrary, they are most likely to be dealing with what
can best be described as devious parasites who thrive on the breaking down
of men and the stirring up of hatred towards them.
Finally, does anyone reading this think that the chairman of
the Japanese car company would alter his advertising strategy - and thus
lose himself and his shareholders millions of dollars - following a few
polite complaints from a few disgruntled men?
Of course he wouldn't.
Indeed, if he even dared to contemplate such a thing, he
would very quickly be booted out of his job.
Well. The same goes for those who work in government.
They might smile a great deal, and they might say that they
will 'look into the matter', but they will not lift a finger to help men.
"It is no use appealing to their sense of honour or justice. The only thing
that they respond to is the threat of losing some of their own power."
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