NZ: MERE MALE-the new oppressed sex?
Evidence
No 9 Autumn 2004
Pages 10-15
Maxim Institute
MERE MALE???the new oppressed sex?
By Alexis Stuart
Alexis Stuart looks into allegations of a "poisonously anti-male subtext" in New Zealand popular culture and finds support groups for men are growing as fast as the Family Court is spitting them out.
Feminists sometimes like to think in terms of a "men???s movement" and a male "backlash". However, the groups they refer to can no longer be dismissed as 36 angry white men and the power of the internet. They may not be a unified body, but they are organised, internationally networked, and full of vitality and scholarly research, the groups speaking for men and/or fathers present a range of perspectives.
Nevertheless, men???s and fathers??? groups in New Zealand???including Union of Fathers, Families Apart Require Equality (FARE), Man Alive and New Zealand Father and Child Society???would agree that clich??s about divorce, custody and domestic violence don???t adequately convey the civil liberties disaster that is taking place.
Is there a "poisonously anti-male subtext" in our popular
culture? Many men in this country think so. They believe that, dangerously, men???s humanity is no longer acknowledged.
It was not too long ago that "suffragettes" were getting themselves deliberately chucked in prison, starving themselves and throwing themselves in front of coaches.
Second-wave feminists like Andrea Dworkin openly advocated that women become vigilantes and murder the men who "oppressed" them.1 Anger was a leading instrument in the feminist movement. Why should it be more acceptable from women than men?
Not all feminists will appreciate this intrusion on to what has been their turf for decades, but can we have a healthy discourse when only one side has a voice?
Women have opportunities now that our great grandmothers only dreamed of. But if misogyny is out, misandry (the hatred of men) is often excused or trivialised, even justified.
Some feminists claim that hostility towards men is a corruption of feminism. But there does not have to be hostility for men to be sidelined. A focus solely on women, or selective choice and interpretation of evidence to favour women, is sufficient.
"At the end of the day, gynocentric ideas (and their misandric results) have become so persuasive???trickling down to popular culture???that they cannot be explained away as the results of a few academic loonies," say Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young, the authors of Spreading Misandry.2
"In the 1970s, when the men???s movement began to emerge, the women???s movement was already splintering," says Dr Paul Callister, an independent social researcher based in Wellington. "Society is becoming more diverse, so the men???s movement never had the same unity that the early women???s movement originally had."
Some men???s and fathers??? groups have concentrated on grass roots supportive agencies, others on government legislation. They represent a variety of political opinions and often disagree on what the solutions are, but all agree that men are the new oppressed sex.
The largest area of men???s activity is the fathers??? movement.
Callister, who also researches for the New Zealand Father and Child Society, the mainstream voice of the father???s movement, has lodged a detailed complaint to the Human Rights Commission over the injustice of the Paid Parental Leave Amendment Act. The Society believes it is a breach of the section of the Human Rights Act which makes discrimination on the basis of sex unlawful. It argues that fathers should have access to paid parental leave.
Callister explains that New Zealand has yet to understand that the natural co-requirement for equality in the paid workforce is equality in parenting.3
The most prominent item in the debate concerning fathers has been claims of the Family Court???s systematic bias against fathers.
ACT MP Dr Muriel Newman has tirelessly campaigned on this issue for years. She introduced a private member???s bill to Parliament to allow shared parenting and to open up the Family Court, but it was defeated by the government.
Darryl Ward and Bruce Tichbon of FARE backed Newman???s defeated Bill. FARE claims, "There has been a long and carefully orchestrated political campaign over recent years, much of it funded by the government, to put in place affirmative action policies under the label ???gender equity??? (often simply called ???equity??? or ???fairness???). The aim of the gender equity policies is to tip the social balance more in favour of women. The Family Court is being used as an instrument to implement a politically motivated affirmative action campaign. The courts themselves have thus become political."
Stuart Birks, Director of the Centre for Public Policy Evaluation at Massey University says, "The courts themselves have, perhaps unwittingly, become political. It has happened through the acceptance of underlying assumptions about such things as the nature of family violence (patriarchal power and control), the preference for sole custody, and the substitutability of ???male role models??? for fathers."
Newman herself explains, "Our Family Court system is a disaster zone: it is often regarded as unfair and unjust, its costs are excessive, the processes take far too long, it fails to uphold court orders, it perpetuates false allegations, it is totally biased against fathers, and in alienating fathers and grandparents it is damaging to children".4
Feelings are running deep in other countries, too. The Hon. Peter Lewis, the speaker of the Australian House of Representatives, recently claimed the Family Court there was "racist, sexist, abusive, biased, crook and criminal".5
Recently, in The New Zealand Herald, Patricia Schnauer, a lawyer and interestingly an ex-ACT MP, took issue with Newman???s criticism. Schnauer claims the Family Court in New Zealand does a good job within the legislative context in which it resides.6 It still begs the question???is the Family Court a reflection of government legislation or popular opinion?
Darryl Ward claims that "Judges are schooled in feminist mythology, and counsellors, psychologists and other so-called ???professionals??? who receive work from the court must provide politically correct results or their funding dries up."
Dr Stephen Baskerville of Howard University, the president of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children (ACFC), claims: "The combination of ???no-fault??? divorce and new enforcement law has created a system that pays mothers to divorce their husbands and remove children from their fathers. A father who has done nothing wrong can be hauled into divorce court and deprived of his children, his income, his savings, his home, his inheritance??? he can lose everything he has and he doesn???t have to have done anything wrong, and he doesn???t have to have agreed to a divorce...
When you think about it, it???s a very dangerous principle.
You???re talking about the government seizing control of the children of citizens who have done nothing wrong."7
How did we reach this point throughout the English-speaking world?
Our sociologically confused background is rooted in the feminist movement which, while rightly contributing to the recognition of the equal value of men and women, also allowed androgyny to flourish. This has lead to the present deeply embedded belief that men and women are not only equal in value but also in function.
Fiona Mackenzie, a family lawyer and senior Counsel for Child working in the Family Court, says: "Men and women, fathers and mothers, should be complementary to each other.
They should not compete, but complete. So for fathers to be saying to the Family Court and anyone else who will listen that they can do anything mothers can do and do it better, is actually buying into the same feminist rhetoric which they have soundly condemned. Two wrongs don???t make a right."
Melanie Phillips, author of The Sex-Change Society, claims feminist ideology has led to the view that: "Male oppression of women is only made possible by the fact that men are intrinsically predatory and violent, threatening both women and children with rape and assault. Men are therefore the enemy, not just of women but of humanity???the proper objects of fear and scorn."8
In some feminist circles it has become heresy to suggest there are degrees of suffering and oppression which need to be kept in perspective. It is heresy to suggest that a woman who has to listen to her colleagues tell stupid sexist jokes has a lesser grievance than a woman who has been physically assaulted by her supervisor. It is heresy, in general, to question the testimony of self-proclaimed female victims of date rape or harassment or domestic violence and abuse.
The implication is that men are always guilty. By the time false accusations have been dismissed, the accuser has gained sole custody of the child by default. The procedure has threatened the very concept of innocence.
The Manawatu Evening Standard editorial of January 23 ended: "But there are still many men for whom women are playthings and for whom the notion of consent seems to be a trifle. The possibility of some complaints turning out to be false is surely a small price to pay for ensuring that the sexually violent among us are detected and put behind bars."9
This is a weird view of justice. Does it not matter if some who are innocent are put through a major ordeal, or falsely found guilty? Does it not matter that there are some women who think men are fair game for wild accusations, cutting them off from their families and causing them to lose their jobs?
Misandry has been mainstream in popular culture since the 1980s. The signature slogan of Star Trek has shifted from its original "to boldly go where no man has gone before" to (25 years later) "boldly go where no one has gone before".
Whereas The Shadow (1994), was marketed with its original slogan, "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men".
Philip Chapman (who likes to be called Guy Chapman) is the President of the New Zealand Father and Child Society. He warns, "Our culture sees men as a risk, not an asset. In some schools, male teachers have to be accompanied by female teachers in the boys changing rooms".
Darryl Ward points out that when a man contributes to the public good he is a "police officer" or "fire fighter" because "policeman" and "fireman" are apparently sexist. But if he does something negative, his sex is emphasised.
He is called a "gunman", not a "gun person". Paradoxically, we hear no objection to the use of the term "princess".
Advertising and shows in which women show contempt for men have been applauded as sophisticated commentaries. Adverts like Tip Top???s Things get UGLY without a Choc Bar???in which a woman without a Choc Bar??? fatally stabs a man in the back with a red stiletto???and shows such as Sex in the City and The Vagina Monologues are commended for pushing the boundaries.
"Patriarchal society, like the Marxist ???bourgeoisie???, is seen as inherently wrong. Matriarchy on the other hand can be celebrated as a sign of strength," says Ward.
Peter Zohrab, acting president of the New Zealand Equality Education Foundation, says: "Nowadays, feminism is so mainstream that Mussolini???s grand-daughter, the leader of a neo-Fascist party, described herself as feminist."10
Steve Flynn, the Christchurch Area organiser of Union of Fathers, claims the real attack on fatherhood came from WINZ. The Domestic Purposes Benefit (DPB) was introduced in 1972 to help women escape violent relationships and raise children on their own. Promoters of the Social Security Amendment Bill predicted that the number needing assistance would never be more than 20,000, including widows. It was expected to cost $250,000 per year???it now costs close to $2.5 billion and supports approximately 110,000 women. Who needs a father when the state will provide?
Lindsay Mitchell, an advocate for welfare reform says, "In defence of it, we are commonly told that before the DPB some women (and doubtless some men) were trapped in violent and dysfunctional relationships. These were exceptional cases, however, and there were emergency benefits already available. This was the beginning of subsidised single parenthood and the erosion of fatherhood. The result, at the last Census, is we have over 140,000 families with dependent children headed by a single parent, usually a woman, and around 83 percent of them rely on a benefit."
No-fault divorce came in with the Family Proceedings Act in 1980 and the Property Relationships Act 1976. These also served to weaken commitment in relationships. Since then, the divorce rate has settled about 70 percent higher and co-habitation has increased.
Barry Maley, a senior Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney, explains: "The change to unilateral, no-fault divorce law has opened up opportunities for spouses to exploit one another. Such opportunism affects both men and women. Women in traditional marriages concentrating on domestic production and raising children are vulnerable.
Men are vulnerable to losing contact with their children".11
It is telling that in over a century of feminism, and with all the legislative changes that have resulted, family life has become increasingly fractured. One wonders if the men???s movement will be any more successful. Perhaps that depends on whether it just responds to (and perpetuates) the feminist divisive paradigm, or whether it challenges the basic assumptions of feminism.
Birks contends that polarisation between the sexes helps no-one. "Should people be encouraged to show allegiance to their sex ahead of their partners, children, parents, siblings? How would that help them in their personal lives?"
One of the strengths of the men???s movement is that it is decidedly more pro-marriage than feminism. It is essentially a reaction against ideological feminism, rather than an ideology that seeks to redefine social norms. Most men involved in these groups still assume that men and women need each other and children need both.
"Men have been hamstrung by the way criticism of feminism has been misinterpreted as criticism of women. Most men are not anti-women, and see their lives and society as a whole as involving men and women working collaboratively. It is feminists who have chosen to divide society into two camps, describing men as ???the enemy???. Unfortunately, there are few women prepared to publicly question the value of this perspective. Even the government is seeking separatist outcomes, with autonomy and independence for women," says Birks.
To date, feminists have successfully silenced or rubbished most opposition. Not for long. The shared parenting debate isn???t going away. MP Muriel Newman has already proven her tenacity, and the men???s groups are growing as fast as the Family Court is spitting them out.
What isn???t clear is what shared parenting means. Is it simply the 50:50 "equal time" week-about arrangement promoted by some men???s groups, or is it based in a recognition and sharing of responsibility, parental authority and valuing the respective roles of mother and father, which are not always going to be the same in either time or function? To leave this in its present confused state assists no-one, least of all children.
What is clear is that divorce is traumatic for all involved. Research from Australia and America suggests that even modest shifts towards shared parenting have a lowering impact on the divorce rate.
"A sure means of lowering the divorce rate? Now wouldn???t that be something? With most Western countries struggling with the high cost of divorce, a drop in divorce rates has to be seen as a giant leap for mankind, somewhat akin to finding the cure for cancer," Bettina Arndt wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald.12
Talk to mothers and most acknowledge that if they ever entertain thoughts of leaving their marriages, they do so assuming their children will come with them. They admit they would never think of leaving without the children.
Selective non-judgementalism seems kind, but consequences are cruel. Shared parenting, whatever that may end up meaning, may go some way to serve justice, reduce divorce or alleviate negative impacts of divorce on children. But it will only go so far. A move away from no-fault to a realistic acceptance of fault might be radical but is likely to be more effective.
A society that values and celebrates life-long marriage, and recognises a family comprising of the biological father and mother as the ideal environment for raising children, would be better still.
At the Ministry of Social Development???s "Strengthening Families" conference in December, the Minister of Social Development, Steve Maharey, in a now infamous claim said that he knew "of no social science that says a nuclear family is more successful than other kinds." 13
The very next speaker, Professor Paul Amato, a Professor of Sociology, Demography, and Family Studies at Pennsylvania State University, gave a detailed account of an extensive study that detailed how weak father-child relationships negatively affect a child???s well-being and education.14
The next international speaker, Professor Thomas Bradbury from the University of California, gave a detailed account of how divorce and insufficient positive experience of a father and mother relating negatively impacts the success and stability of a child???s future relationships.15
Significantly, Mr Maharey left before these speakers took the podium.
Alexis Stuart is a freelance journalist and social commentator from Christchurch.
Endnotes
1 Andrea Dworkin, ???Kill Wife Beaters Who Go Free, Feminist-Rights Activist Urges???, Montreal Gazette.
2 Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young, Spreading Misandry, McGill-Queens University Press, 2001, Preface xiv.
3 http://www.fatherandchild.org.nz/contactus.htm Complaint to Human Rights Commission regarding the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave) Amendment Act ??? The New Zealand Father and Child Society.
4 Muriel Newman, ???Racist, Sexist, Abusive, Biased, Crook and Criminal???, 8 Jan 2004, http://www.act.org.nz/item.jsp?id=2517
5 Hon. Peter Lewis, MP CLIC, Independent Member for Hammond, House Of Assembly, Australia, 31 December, 2003.
6 New Zealand Herald, 22 January, 2004.
7 Stephen Baskerville, interview on "The O???Reilly Factor": 10/16/00 transcript
http://www.dadi.org/b-factor.htm
8 Melanie Phillips, The Sex-Change Society, Social Market Foundation, 1999.
9 http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/eveningstandard/0,2106,2791969a6504,00.html
10 Peter Zohrab, ???Sex Lies and Feminism???, New Zealand Equality Party, 2001.
11 Barry Maley, Divorce Law and the Future of Marriage, The Centre for Independent Studies, 2003 pxv.
12 Bettina Arndt, ???For better or worth???, The Sydney Morning Herald, 19/08/2000.
13 Strengthening Family Relationships Conference, 4 December 2003, full notes available www.msd.govt.nz
14 ibid.
15 ibid.
From Maxim Institute???s Evidence journal, issue 9, Autumn 2004
Maxim Institute, 40 Cape Horn Road, Hillsborough, Auckland, Tel. 09 627 3261
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