Washington DV Press

Harry sheared these links with me, followed up by some personal thoughts regarding his experiences within the family court systems out there. He places things into perspective well and outlines what men are up against when questioning such a system. Well done, Harry.

Why Aren’t There Sleazy Sex Scandals Involving Powerful Women?

http://www.alternet.org/story/144821/why_aren%27t_there_sleazy_sex_scandals_involving_powerful_women?page=2

10 Defining Feminist Moments of 2009

http://www.alternet.org/story/144835/10_defining_feminist_moments_of_2009?page=entire

Both articles are interesting but the perspectives are fascinating, at least in my world as a men’s rights activist.

Unrelated, last night I attended a get-together for another start-up family rights organization, one triggered by a horrendously failed family court child custody evaluator.  Many on this distribution list are members of that group. The meeting was set with wine and fancy food in an upscale neighborhood, Del Mar, one of the most moneyed-up conclaves in America. This is a mixed group of ill treated mothers and fathers, parents unmercifully dragged through the family court system. One mother has been fighting for divorce for over a decade, which in no way is unique to those in the group. Many in the group are convinced gender bias plays no role in such dreadfully heart-wrenching and destructive processes. Instead they believe the “System” is wholly driven by avarice.

As I’ve said many times corruption like nepotism, cronyism, other “isms”’ and even bribes have been part and parcel of our judicial system since its earliest inception; and, that will never change, never. It should come as no surprise that money corrupts. It should come to no surprise to anyone with wealth that others may do whatever legally and often illegally possible to extract it given the opportunity.

Virtually all the women and a few of the men at the get-together had or have significant resources. Most or all of the women either had or have their own money, family money, or other money, or were in a failed relationship with partner who had their own money, family money, or other money, and lots of it; or, the prevailing parent may have been moneyed-up and connected to the System through nepotism, cronyism, other “isms” or even bribes.

There was one woman, a professional, not unlike most men who unsuccessfully traveled the gauntlet of family court, burdened with debilitating child support payments who revealed she would soon be living in her car.  Others in the group made the point that the group was almost evenly divided between men and women, as if a gathering of 30 or so people was somehow statistical proof that gender discrimination plays no part in family court.  In fact, more than one vehemently decried even the possibility of gender bias in favor of branding the entire System corrupted merely by money.

Amazing to me was the vehemence with which such denials came.  It was no surprise such doggedness came primarily from the ill treated women. As interesting were the responses from the men. Two NCFM members other than me injected radical feminism as a contributing if not driving force behind the family court debacle. The other men became more cautious after several women and a couple of men steadfastly held to the notion that gender bias did not exist in the family court system

In a nutshell, the laws successfully installed by the radical feminist movement have opened wide the doors for expanding myriad forms of corruption and allowed the age old and well established forms, the “isms” as it were, to flourish unchecked. In fact, the radical feminist movement largely insists and exists upon such corruption as a conduit for transferring power, control, and wealth from a perceived patriarchal system to an envisioned matriarchal system. How better to ensure high paying soft jobs for the ideologically impaired as well as grow and nurture one’s political base?

For example, anyone who cares to examine the beginning and explosive growth of social service, mental health, and even legal field programs in post-secondary education would know the influence of radical feminism on the family court system. Anyone who cared enough to do the most cursory research about the successes of now deeply rooted women’s studies programs would have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to understand the last 30-year assault on traditional values like fairness, equity, and even common sense. “Feminist jurisprudence” and “feminist dominance” rule virtually all aspects of judicial, political, and social service systems. Feminist jurisprudence did away, or at least undermined, even the most fundamental of protections, like due process, right to address one’s accusers, evidence, and the notion that one is innocent until proven guilty, particularly as it applies to family and dependency courts. All one has to do is read.

To hold to the belief that money is the root of the family court mess is like embracing the belief that capitalism drove the Third Reich rather than narcistic fascism. For sure capitalist enterprises reaped rewards and avarice flourished back then. Similarly, rigid radical feminist influences and chivalrous male acquiescence thereto, not unlike the self-serving Third Reich, opened the doors for corruption and avarice to flourish through the disenfranchisement and graves of the abused, not for the sake of money but for the sake of ideology. Instead of ethic cleansing radical feminism targets half the population of the planet, men. Here, the fact that some women are thrown to the wolves with men is nothing more than a cost of doing business in the pursuit of establishing feminist dominance in all things.

It may be that overtime as any intolerant ideology displaces and supplants fundamental principles of humanity that avarice indeed rules, perhaps as evidenced by those in power excluding themselves from the rules established for the citizenry; or, perhaps worse, when there is one set of rules for one gender and another set for the other…

Last week one member of this group asked me through email about such gender bias. As long as I’ve known this good man he has camped in the no gender biased crowd. At the end of our discussion he noted that other than the women in this group he knows no other such women, though he knows many men outside of the group who have been abused by the family court system. Maybe that’s because throughout the westernized world family courts award primary physical custody of children to mothers roughly 90% of the time, which should tell even the most challenged of readers that bias against fathers in family court is pervasive, no other evidence is required.

It was good to see such activism though. It takes all forms, ideas, and efforts to clean up the “System”. Plus, that artichoke whatever was tasty.

Harry Crouch

California Men’s Centers

National  Coalition For Men

932 C Street, Suite B

San Diego, CA 92101

619-231-1909