Ideology Trumps Equality

28/06/06

Barbara Kay

'For Heaven's sake, a man is cheating on you, you do what every wife in this country does: You take him to the cleaners. Get his house, car, kids -- make him wish he was dead."

Those were the words of a female assistant district attorney explaining to a Texas jury in 2003 that there was no need for defendant Clara Harris to have resorted to murdering her philandering husband (she drove his new Cadillac back and forth over his body before horrified onlookers -- when family law already offered such excellent legal remedies for revenge.

"Make him wish he was dead"? Addressing 12 mainstream men and women it was utterly crucial not to offend, the prosecutor took for granted their complicity in winking at overt anti-male bias in the justice system.

Note also that she ranked "kids" last amongst men's assets, furthering the popular myth that separated fathers disengage easily from their children.

In fact, non-custodial fathers' loss of their children causes them fathomless anguish. Herein lies a paradox: We know that fatherlessness is the single biggest predictor of criminality for boys, and low self-esteem for girls, leading to a variety of social failures. Nevertheless, no significant swell of political will has yet materialized to bring more balance into post-separation childcare.

Family law in the U.S. and Canada today continues to serve up the "make him wish he was dead" option to women, who win sole custody in 90% of disputed cases. Non-custodial fathers are perceived as money machines with occasional babysitting privileges. Mothers can flout court orders and block access with impunity, but fathers are immediately and disproportionately criminalized by failure to provide often-ruinous "child" support (mothers are not accountable for expenditures). Cocaine dealers -- half of whom, ironically, are fatherless -- serve 20 days out of 30-day jail sentences; a father in support arrears serves the full 30.

Echoing the fate of all political revolutions, reform of the patriarchy began as a campaign for equality -- then the pendulum swung too far, ending in rigid CorrectThink, the suppression of heresies and wholesale blame of the Other (men) for the delayed realization of Utopia.

The family law system is now systemically colonized by radical feminists. Their goal is the complete autonomy of women (except for financial support), via the incremental legal eclipse of men's influence over women's spheres of "identity" interests, which includes children. Thus the custody issue has become a front line in the gender wars.

By no means an exhaustive list, radical feminism is supported by collective rights-dominated law school curricula; feminism-riddled "cultural studies" and the humanities in general; women's studies departments, in reality feminist recruitment and networking centres/ideological boot camps; politically powerful, tax-funded feminist groups who extend strategic mentorship to a wide substratum of women's causes; supine prime ministers and go-with-the-zeitgeist justice ministers; and a critical mass of ideologically aggressive judges, whose juridical archives, bristling with subjective, gender-biased judgments, discredit their vocation and call into question the whole notion of equality under the law.

To illustrate, just a few examples:

- Supreme Court of Canada chief justice Beverley McLachlin: "We have to be pro-active in rearranging the Canadian family"

- Former justice minister Martin Cauchon: "Men have no rights, only responsibilities"

- Feminist psychologist Peter Jaffe, a social-context educator of family court judges: "[J]oint custody is an attempt of males to continue dominance over females"

- National Association of Women and the Law: "Courts may treat parents unequally and deny them basic civil liberties and rights, as long as their motives are good"

Their efforts have not gone unnoticed. "Feminists have entrenched their ideology in the SCC and have put all contrary views beyond the pale," lawyer and civil libertarian Eddie Greenspan has said. Liberal MP Roger Galloway, who chaired the 1998 Report of the Special Joint Committee on Child Custody and Access, has commented that "Justice, if it occurs in a divorce court, is accidental".

It's a trickle-down process. Elites like Status of Women write the script. A social services "gofer" reads it, then asks a child in an assessment interview (the following was read to me from an actual transcript): "What's the best thing and the worst thing about your father no longer living [at home]?" The best thing? Why this leading question?

Fortunately children don't read or care about feminist scripts. As the "worst thing", that particular pre-adolescent girl responded, "I don't have a father." And the "best thing"?

"Nothing."

Next week, I'll continue my series on anti-male bias with a look at solutions: what children, fathers and 90% of Canadians want, but feminists are determined they won't get.

...

A simple way to confirm that a particular ideology has captured mainstream culture is to monitor the political vigour or sluggishness around the causes that it deems "correct" and "incorrect."

Gay marriage, a "correct" feminist cause, affects 2% of the population and enjoys about 50% public support -- yet was passed into law at the speed of light, without meaningful consultation or debate. But decades-long appeals for reform to outdated custody laws, affecting 40% of the population (many more tangentially), languish in near-obscurity.

And though eight years have passed since a non-partisan, Canada-wide task force made up of MPs and Senators garnered wide support in recommending shared parenting as a default post-divorce arrangement, feminism still trumps gender equality in family court. That is, women are still awarded sole custody in 90% of disputed cases.

This reflects judicial acquiescence to reigning feminist orthodoxy: Children are essentially the possessions of women, women never lie (or are justified when they do) and men want access to children only to control women.

Objective research points to partner violence and child abuse as bilateral phenomena, with up to 85% of divorce-related abuse allegations manufactured by women (or urged upon them by venal advocates) to gain sole custody. Yet strategically whipped-up media hysteria around bogus data and presumed entitlement in lieu of evidence remains a successful formula for custody-bent women.

Anti-male bias is further entrenched when unsupported grievances on only one side of a divorcing couple are not held up to scrutiny by judges, politicians or journalists. (Voluntary professional delinquency is another symptom of a captured culture.) At the crux of family law's failure is a cynical tolerance for erratic courtroom decisions, with unaccountable judges routinely winking at perjury and child-access obstruction -- jail-worthy misdemeanours acknowledged by court players and observers to be systemically rampant. Indeed, one lawyer confided his intention to abandon family law, as he becomes physically ill anticipating the arbitrarily plucked ruling awaiting his male clients.

The remedy is to abandon existing family law. In its place, we should combine gender equity with the best interests of children by legislating default shared parenting -- the preferred option for child-focused women, virtually all fathers and most kids.

Numerous studies have concluded that children under shared parenting do significantly better on all adjustment measures than those in sole custody. Contrary to the claims of feminist consultants to family courts, peer-reviewed data shows that over time shared parenting decreases parental conflict, increases co-operation and boosts support compliance.

Most significantly, in all six American states with legislated default shared parenting, divorce rates have fallen markedly -- confirming a widely held belief in the field that expectation of sole custody is the main reason a large number of divorce cases are initiated by women. The positive economic and social fallout from fewer divorces is plain to eyes that see.

Recent benchmark studies have, for the first time, also culled the opinions of children -- up to now pawns in a "best interests" game that means something different to every stakeholder. University of British Columbia sociology professor Edward Kruk, a specialist in divorce and custody issues, analyzed all new research on the subject from 2000-2005. He found that 70% of college-age children of divorce believe equal time between parents is optimal, and that shared parenting creates better relations with both.

Along with other credible academics, Kruk recommends default shared parenting (rebuttable in proven cases of abuse by either parent) and maximum access to both parents. Thus, current scholarship echoes the report by the 1998 Canadian Joint Parliamentary Committee on Custody and Access report, whose "incorrect" conclusions were politically marginalized by relentless feminist lobbying.

In the course of my research, I have read many chilling testimonials by and about men unjustly "disappeared" from their families. Countless other fathers are exiled daily to the same degrading psychological gulag.

Legislators, throw off your ideological shackles. Disenfranchised fathers must be restored to their children, and their children to them. There is no possible restitution for a lost childhood. And all decent men -- which is to say most of them -- must be freed from fear of a lost fatherhood.