Good questions.  The net has solved many of our leadership and agenda problems.  The Father's Rights guys are still a mainstay but now we are solidly behind anti-feminism and organized ideologically that way.  The coalition behind reforming the domestic violence laws has been the major advance and that is what these feminists are bellyaching about.  This is essentially an anti-feminist advocacy and we have one of the leading all time anti-feminists in that coalition...Phyllis Schlafley, along with many others on both the Left and Right.  Warren Farrell and Baskerville come to mind.  This is all academic and ideological like what the feminists are doing.  It scares the hell out of them because they know we have their number and are going after them effectively.  We also now have professional political people helping us.  In the long run it's a major boon for the Father's Rights guys as well as many of their side issues and general men's issues.  All of this came together on the net about 5-10 years ago.  Since then we have made more progress on Father's Rights than in the 40 years before that.  We are also positioned to do much more for men.

Tom

--- On Sun, 11/15/09, nerosfiddle1 <creative_internet_ideas@...> wrote:

From: nerosfiddle1 <creative_internet_ideas@...>
Subject: [MensRights] Re: Fw: [ms-discussion] (USA) "Men's rights" groups go mainstream
To: mensrights@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sunday, November 15, 2009, 9:21 PM

 

I haven't read the whole thing but saw this on Glen Sacks website.
Question-is there cause for concern over how exaggerated the feminists
get per MRA's? They make us sound like hungry, dangerous Werewolves (on a Full Moon, roving around for virgin lambs to eat...)

Question-would an anti-propaganda Committee of MRA's help? Also how
effective do you think Glen Sacks is? I wonder, is he the voice of MRA's? Is Fathers 4 Justice? Do we have one voice for MRA's? :)

I can picture a day when we have Counter-Propaganda Committee's, Action Committees, Mission Committees, Publicity, Fund Raising, etc.

Peace,

Steve

--- In mensrights@yahoogro ups.com, Tom Smith <qim@...> wrote:
>
> Courtesy of Tom Knoll of ms-discussion. ..
> Tom Smith
>
> --- On Sat, 11/7/09, Tom Knoll <knolled@... > wrote:
>
> From: Tom Knoll <knolled@... >
> Subject: [ms-discussion] (USA) "Men's rights" groups go mainstream
> To: "Men's Studies Discussion List" <ms-discussion@ yahoogroups. com>
> Date: Saturday, November 7, 2009, 7:07 AM
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>  
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Three articles are provided below FYI.
>
>
>
> The first is a response, by Glenn Sacks, to the following two attacking and
>
> deceitful articles by feminists, seeking to minimise and shut down the
>
> growing work men and separated fathers are doing for their children and
>
> themselves.
>
>
>
> Feminist dissembling (attacking and trying to pull apart, with the intent
>
> of diminishing and dismissing) continues as men and fathers continue
>
> working for the rights their children and themselves.
>
>
>
> ------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- -----
>
>
>
> http://glennsacks. com/blog/
>
> http://glennsacks. com/blog/ ?p=4359
>
>
>
> 6 November 2009
>
>
>
> Slate.com & Salon.com Attack the Fatherhood Movement (Part I)
>
> By Glenn Sacks, MA for Fathers & Families
>
>
>
> Two major online publications - Salon.com and Slate.com - recently did
>
> articles about the men's and fathers movement. The articles discuss various
>
> aspects and actors in the movement, and also quote and misquote me. This
>
> series of posts will comment on the articles and also straighten out
>
> certain misrepresentations.
>
>
>
> Kathryn Joyce of Slate.com is a feminist writer who has written much about
>
> what she calls the "Christian patriarchy" movement. She told me she was
>
> doing a story about George Sodini, who she (accurately) describes as "the
>
> Pittsburgh man who opened fire on a gym full of exercising women this
>
> August, killing three and leaving behind an online diatribe journaling his
>
> sense of rejection by millions of desirable women."
>
>
>
> I knew from the beginning that Joyce would try to somehow wrap Sodini
>
> around the men's and fathers' movement, and I was very hesitant to be
>
> interviewed. I consented, for two reasons:
>
>
>
> 1) I still nurture the dream that someday feminists and fatherhood
>
> activists can understand each other and work together.
>
>
>
> 2) I hoped that maybe I could get her to understand the absurdity of her
>
> premise, and to understand that our movement is based on legitimate grievances.
>
>
>
> No good deed goes unpunished. Joyce writes:
>
>
>
> "Sodini’s diary was republished widely, including on the website of a
>
> popular men’s rights blogger, “Angry Harry,” who added his assessment of
>
> the case. “MRAs should also take note of the fact that there are probably
>
> many millions of men across the western world who feel similar in many
>
> ways, and one can expect to see much more destruction emanating from them
>
> in the future,” he wrote. “One of the main reasons that I decided to post
>
> this diary on this website was because the western world must wake up to
>
> the fact that it cannot continue to treat men so appallingly and get away
>
> with it.” In a phone interview, Angry Harry said, “Of course there will be
>
> more Sodinis - there will be many more,” likening him to Marc Lépine, a
>
> Canadian man who killed or wounded 28, claiming feminists had ruined his
>
> life ... Perhaps, Angry Harry mused, that as the ranks of online MRAs grow,
>
> “the threat” of their violence “may be enough” to bring about the changes
>
> they desire.
>
>
>
> "Glenn Sacks dismissed Angry Harry as an “idiot” without real power in the
>
> movement and yet he cautiously defends him. “I want to be careful in
>
> wording this,” he says, “but the cataclysmic things I'm seeing done to men,
>
> it’s always my fear that one of these guys is going to do something
>
> terrible. I don't want to say that like I condone it or that it’s OK, but
>
> it’s just the reality.” "
>
>
>
> I specifically, repeatedly, and emphatically told Joyce that any linkage
>
> between the men's & fathers' movements' grievances and Sodini is not my
>
> view, but I guess she was determined to jam it in there anyway.
>
>
>
> What I did say was that when I do hear of a drastic action - a man on a
>
> bridge threatening to jump, the guy here in LA who tried to commit suicide
>
> by parking his car on a train track, etc. - my first thought is that it
>
> might be a guy dealing with a painful family law issue or injustice.
>
>
>
> Judy Berman of Salon.com, writing about Joyce's article, writes:
>
>
>
> "It's certainly chilling to hear Sacks empathize (albeit ambivalently)
>
> with men like George Sodini, the deeply misogynist Pittsburgh gym shooter..."
>
>
>
> Again, this is ludicrous - I never said anything remotely sympathetic to
>
> Sodini and I made that abundantly clear to Joyce.
>
>
>
> Joyce writes:
>
>
>
> "The movement seems eager to supply more martyrs. After Sacks wrote
>
> about a San Diego father who shot himself on the city’s courthouse steps
>
> over late child-support payments, numerous men wrote Sacks, telling him,
>
> “They’re taking everything from me, and I want to go out in a big way, and
>
> if I do, will you write about me?” "
>
>
>
> This isn't the movement - it's desperate individual fathers who've been
>
> driven to the brink by a cruel, inhumane family law system. That's why
>
> since 2002 I've had a policy of not writing about fathers who commit
>
> suicide - I don't want to encourage copycats.
>
>
>
> The case she refers to was the Derrick Miller case, about which I wrote a
>
> column for the San Diego Union-Tribune. The case wasn't exactly "over late
>
> child-support payments" - the father, a longtime Navy veteran, was being
>
> assessed 70 or 80% of his income in child support.
>
>
>
> Joyce quotes RADAR’s Mark Rosenthal:
>
>
>
> “In any movement, there is going to be a reasonable voice and people
>
> who are so hurt, who are so injured by the injustices, that they can't
>
> afford to step back and try to take their emotions under control. But no
>
> movement is going to get anywhere without extremists.”
>
>
>
> The part about the need for extremists is a silly thing to say, but
>
> Rosenthal is usually reasonable and I frankly doubt he's being quoted
>
> correctly. If Mark would like to clarify this on my site, he's welcome to
>
> do so.
>
>
>
> The two articles are Kathryn Joyce's "Men's Rights" Groups Have Become
>
> Frighteningly Effective (Slate.com, 11/5/09) and Judy Berman's "Men's
>
> rights" groups go mainstream - Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary
>
> anti-women groups are courting respectability (Salon.com, 11/5/09). I'll be
>
> posting about them in a few parts, and clearing up more misrepresentations,
>
> as well as commenting on Joyce's and Berman's views.
>
>
>
> Posted in Feminism/NOW, Men and the Media, Men's Movement, Fatherhood
>
> Movement/Fathers' Rights Movement
>
>
>
> 57 Comments »
>
> http://glennsacks. com/blog/ ?p=4359#comments
>
>
>
> ------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- -----
>
>
>
> http://www.salon. com/life/ broadsheet/ feature/2009/ 11/05/mens_ rights/
>
> http://www.salon. com/life/ broadsheet/ feature/2009/ 11/05/mens_ rights/print. html
>
>
>
> Salon - Broadsheet
>
> 5 November 2009
>
>
>
> "Men's rights" groups go mainstream
>
> Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting
>
> respectability
>
> By Judy Berman
>
>
>
> When "Quiverfull" author Kathryn Joyce interviewed blogger Bernard Chapin
>
> <http://bernardchapi n.com/>, he insisted on addressing her as "Feminist E."
>
> You see, Joyce explains, "he never uses real names for feminists, who are
>
> wicked and who men 'must verbally oppose ... until our flesh oxidizes into
>
> dust.'" Now, Chapin's slight isn't particularly unexpected coming from a
>
> voice in the "men's rights" movement, a loosely organized coalition of
>
> individuals and organizations that believe feminist-influenced society is
>
> oppressing men.
>
>
>
> But the movement's bizarre fringe is nothing new, as Joyce reminds us in an
>
> in-depth Double X article
>
> <http://www.doublex. com/section/ news-politics/ mens-rights- groups-have- become-frighteni ngly-effective? page=0,0>.
>
> What's really frightening is the impact men's rights activists (MRAs) are
>
> having on mainstream politics. As more reasonable-sounding leaders and
>
> organizations emerge, groups arguing "that false [domestic abuse]
>
> allegations are rampant, that a feminist-run court system fraudulently
>
> separates innocent fathers from children, that battered women’s shelters
>
> are running a racket that funnels federal dollars to feminists, that
>
> domestic-violence laws give cover to cagey mail-order brides seeking Green
>
> Cards, and finally, that men are victims of an unrecognized epidemic of
>
> violence at the hands of abusive wives" are facing unprecedented success.
>
> Joyce reports that a group called RADAR (Respecting Accuracy in Domestic
>
> Abuse Reporting) <http://www.mediarad ar.org/> claims responsibility for
>
> blocking four federal domestic violence bills. And with the help of
>
> organizations like Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, MRAs are beginning to
>
> find a place under conservatism' s big, reactionary tent.
>
>
>
> The more moderate men's rights movement also features some high-profile
>
> "converts." Joyce introduces us to Glenn Sacks
>
> <http://www.glennsac ks.com/blog/ >, a popular fathers' rights radio host and
>
> writer who she describes as "a former feminist and abortion-clinic
>
> defender." Dismissive of the Bernard Chapins of the world, he's working
>
> toward the comparatively modest goals of increasing shared custody and
>
> lightening divorced dads' child-support obligations during the recession.
>
>
>
> What's so wrong with those goals, you may well wonder. As Joyce
>
> illustrates, the issues MRAs are pushing are much more complex than they
>
> seem. For instance, divorcing parents are usually able to work out custody
>
> agreements on their own. Only 15 percent of cases go to court, and, of
>
> those, half involve domestic abuse. Tragically, even in those instances,
>
> mothers don't always have the upper hand. A common family-court defense of
>
> fathers whose children testify that they are abusive is something called
>
> "Parental Alienation Syndrome," "a medically unrecognized diagnosis that
>
> suggests mothers have poisoned their children into making false accusations
>
> against their fathers." Joyce tells the story of Genia Shockome, a woman
>
> who spent 30 days in jail and whose husband was awarded full custody of
>
> their children, despite the fact that his abuse had left her with
>
> post-traumatic stress disorder. Incredibly, Shockome's story doesn't end
>
> there: After criticizing the judge's decision in print, her attorney was
>
> slapped with a five-year suspension.
>
>
>
> As for MRAs' accusations, inspired by deeply flawed studies, that men and
>
> women are equally likely to commit domestic abuse, well, the numbers speak
>
> for themselves: "While some men certainly are victims of female domestic
>
> violence, advocates say the number is closer to 3 percent to 4 percent,
>
> rather than the 45 percent to 50 percent RADAR claims." Toward the end of
>
> her piece, Joyce makes a particularly fascinating point about MRAs'
>
> domestic violence arguments:
>
>
>
> "Critics like Australian sociologist Michael Flood say that men’s
>
> rights movements reflect the tactics of domestic abusers themselves,
>
> minimizing existing violence, calling it mutual, and discrediting victims.
>
> MRA groups downplay national abuse rates, just as abusers downplay their
>
> personal battery; they wage campaigns dismissing most allegations as false,
>
> as abusers claim partners are lying about being hit; and they depict the
>
> violence as mutual - part of an epidemic of wife-on-husband abuse - as
>
> individual batterers rationalize their behavior by saying that the violence
>
> was reciprocal. Additionally, MRA groups’ predictions of future violence by
>
> fed-up men wronged by the family-law system seem an obvious additional
>
> correlation, with the threat of violence seemingly intended to intimidate a
>
> community, like a fearful spouse, into compliance."
>
>
>
> So, what do we do about the increasingly mainstream men's rights movement
>
> and the worrisome gains it has made? Personally, I'm torn. It's certainly
>
> chilling to hear Sacks empathize (albeit ambivalently) with men like George
>
> Sodini
>
> <http://www.salon. com/mwt/broadshe et/feature/ 2009/08/06/ hatred/index. html>,
>
> the deeply misogynist Pittsburgh gym shooter, telling Joyce that "the
>
> cataclysmic things I'm seeing done to men, it’s always my fear that one of
>
> these guys is going to do something terrible. I don't want to say that,
>
> like, I condone it or that it’s OK, but it’s just the reality." But I also
>
> realize that the more marginalized these groups feel, the more extreme (and
>
> potentially violent) they become. With that in mind, do we go to war, or do
>
> we try and hear MRAs out? Is there common ground to be found, or is the new
>
> men's rights movement nothing more than the old men's rights movement with
>
> a fancy haircut and a flashy suit?
>
>
>
> ------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- -
>
>
>
> <http://www.doublex. com/section/ news-politics/ mens-rights- groups-have- become-frighteni ngly-effective? page=0,0>
>
>
>
> Double X (aka Slate ?)
>
> 5 November 2009
>
>
>
> "Men's Rights" Groups Have Become Frighteningly Effective
>
> They’re changing custody rights and domestic violence laws.
>
> By Kathryn Joyce
>
>
>
> At the end of October, National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, members
>
> of the men’s movement group RADAR (Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse
>
> Reporting) <http://www.mediarad ar.org/> gathered on the steps of Congress
>
> to lobby against what they say are the suppressed truths about domestic
>
> violence: that false allegations are rampant, that a feminist-run court
>
> system fraudulently separates innocent fathers from children, that battered
>
> women’s shelters are running a racket that funnels federal dollars to
>
> feminists, that domestic-violence laws give cover to cagey mail-order
>
> brides seeking Green Cards, and finally, that men are victims of an
>
> unrecognized epidemic of violence at the hands of abusive wives.
>
>
>
> “It’s now reached the point,” reads a statement from RADAR, “that domestic
>
> violence laws represent the largest roll-back in Americans’ civil rights
>
> since the Jim Crow era!”
>
>
>
> RADAR’s rhetoric may seem overblown, but lately the group and its many
>
> partners have been racking up very real accomplishments. In 2008, the
>
> organization claimed to have blocked passage of four federal
>
> domestic-violence bills, among them an expansion of the Violence Against
>
> Women Act (VAWA) to international scope and a grant to support lawyers in
>
> pro bono domestic-violence work. Members of this coalition have gotten
>
> themselves onto drafting committees for VAWA’s 2011 reauthorization. Local
>
> groups in West Virginia and California have also had important successes,
>
> criminalizing false claims of domestic violence in custody cases, and
>
> winning rulings that women-only shelters are discriminatory.
>
>
>
> Groups like RADAR fall under the broader umbrella of the men’s rights
>
> movement, a loose coalition of anti-feminist groups. These men’s rights
>
> activists, or MRAs, have long been written off by domestic-violence
>
> advocates as a bombastic and fringe group of angry white men, and for good
>
> reason. Bernard Chapin, a popular men’s rights blogger, told me over e-mail
>
> that he will refer to me as “Feminist E,” since he never uses real names
>
> for feminists, who are wicked and who men “must verbally oppose ... until
>
> our flesh oxidizes into dust.” In the United Kingdom, a father’s rights
>
> group scaled Buckingham Palace in superhero costumes. In Australia, they
>
> [the Black Shirts www.blackshirts. info] wore paramilitary uniforms and
>
> demonstrated outside the houses of female divorcees.
>
>
>
> But lately they’ve become far more polished and savvy about advancing their
>
> views. In their early days of lobbying, “these guys would show up and have
>
> this looming body language that was very off-putting,” says Ben
>
> Atherton-Zeman, author of Voices of Men, a one-man play about domestic
>
> violence and sexual assault. “But that’s all changed. A lot of the leaders
>
> are still convicted batterers, but they’re well-organized, they speak in
>
> complete sentences, they sound much more reasonable: All we want is equal
>
> custody, for fathers not to be ignored.”
>
>
>
> One of the respectable new faces of the movement is Glenn Sacks, a fathers'
>
> rights columnist and radio host with 50,000 e-mail followers, and a
>
> pragmatist in a world of angry dreamers. Sacks is a former feminist and
>
> abortion-clinic defender who disavows what he calls “the not-insubstantial
>
> lunatic fringe of the fathers’ rights movement.” He recently merged his
>
> successful media group with the shared-parenting organization Fathers and
>
> Families in a bid to build a mainstream fathers' rights organ on par with
>
> the National Organization of Women. Many of Sacks’ arguments - for a court
>
> assumption of shared parenting in the case of divorce, or against
>
> child-support rigidity in the midst of recession - can sound reasonable.
>
>
>
> But do any of their arguments hold up? Many of the men for whom Sacks
>
> advocates are involved in extreme cases, says Joanie Dawson, a writer and
>
> domestic-violence advocate who has covered the fathers’ rights movement.
>
> The great majority of custody cases, in which shared parenting is a
>
> legitimate option, are settled or resolved privately. But of the 15 percent
>
> that go to family court - the cases that fathers’ rights groups target - at
>
> least half include alleged domestic abuse.
>
>
>
> Unsurprisingly, this argument is missing from MRA discussions of custody
>
> inequality and recruitment ads, which cast all men as potentially innocent
>
> victims “just one 911 call away” from losing everything they have earned
>
> and loved. These rallying calls, and the divorce attorneys hawking men’s
>
> rights expertise on MRA sites, promising to “teach her a lesson,” serve as
>
> what Dawson sees as a powerful draw for men in the midst of painful divorces.
>
>
>
> While MRA groups continue to expand their base of embittered fathers and
>
> ex-husbands, they’ve cleaned up their image to court more powerful allies.
>
> RADAR board member Ron Grignal, the former president of Fathers for
>
> Virginia and a former state delegate candidate, organizes the group’s
>
> Washington lobbying activities. In 2008, RADAR partnered with Eagle Forum
>
> for a conference at the Heritage Foundation about the threat that VAWA
>
> poses to the family. Grignal argues that state interpretations of VAWA are
>
> so broad they could cast couples’ money disputes as domestic violence,
>
> enabling unwarranted restraining orders that then win women’s divorce cases
>
> for them. Politicians, Grignal says, are increasingly on board with men’s
>
> rights movement concerns.
>
>
>
> “On domestic violence, I’ve had both state and federal legislators tell me
>
> they know that this process is out of control,” says Grignal. “They’re
>
> afraid if they support [reforms] they’ll be tagged as ‘for domestic
>
> violence.’ But I've had Democrats on Capitol Hill tell me they agree with
>
> everything I say. A member of the Congressional Black Caucus told me that
>
> his brother can’t see his kids, and his wife threatened to throw herself
>
> down the stairs to ruin his political career.”
>
>
>
> Some domestic-violence protections do seem to have unintended effects, such
>
> as mandatory-arrest policies that compel police to take someone into
>
> custody in response to any domestic-violence call - a policy that has been
>
> criticized by RADAR as well as by some domestic-violence advocates, who say
>
> it imposes an absurd equivalence between largely nonviolent family spats or
>
> insubstantial female violence and serious abuse. But groups like RADAR are
>
> criticizing the law for the wrong reasons. In fact, the effect of mandatory
>
> arrest in conflating women’s low-level violence with battery, seems very
>
> close to RADAR’s campaign for viewing women as equal domestic abusers.
>
>
>
> One potent idea advanced by MRAs is the claim that men are equal victims of
>
> domestic violence. Mark Rosenthal, president and co-founder of RADAR, makes
>
> a very personal argument for the phenomenon. Rosenthal, who doesn’t call
>
> himself an MRA, grew up with a mother who he says terrorized the entire
>
> family and hit her husband frequently. The true impact of the violence, he
>
> says, was more than physical and eclipsed his petite mother’s ability to
>
> inflict serious injuries. Rosenthal wants to see an appreciation for
>
> women’s nonphysical abuse incorporated into domestic-violence policy. “It’s
>
> not about size,” he told an audience at a law enforcement domestic-violence
>
> training. “It’s not exclusively about physical attacks. However, it is
>
> about a pathological need to control others, and women are as prone to this
>
> as men.”
>
>
>
> RADAR and other MRA groups base their battered men arguments largely on the
>
> research of a small group of social scientists who claim that domestic
>
> violence between couples is equally divided, just unequally reported. Most
>
> notable are the studies conducted by sociologist Murray Straus of the
>
> University of New Hampshire, who has written extensively on female violence
>
> (and who Dawson saw distributing RADAR flyers at an APA conference).
>
> Straus’ research is starting to move public opinion. A Los Angeles
>
> conference this July dedicated to discussing male victims of domestic
>
> violence, “From Ideology to Inclusion 2009: New Directions in Domestic
>
> Violence Research and Intervention,” received positive mainstream press for
>
> its “inclusive” efforts.
>
>
>
> While some men certainly are victims of female domestic violence, advocates
>
> say the number is closer to 3 percent to 4 percent, rather than the 45
>
> percent to 50 percent RADAR claims. Jack Straton, a Portland State
>
> University professor and member of Oregon’s Attorney General's Sexual
>
> Assault Task Force, argues that Straus critically fails to distinguish
>
> between the intent and effect of violence, equating “a woman pushing a man
>
> in self-defense to a man pushing a woman down the stairs,” or a single act
>
> of female violence with years of male abuse; that Straus only interviewed
>
> one partner, when couples’ accounts of violence commonly diverge; and that
>
> he excludes from his study post-separation violence, which accounts for
>
> more than 75 percent of spouse-on-spouse violence, 93 percent of which is
>
> committed by men.
>
>
>
> All in all, advocates say that cherry-picked studies from researchers like
>
> Straus, touted by the MRAs, amount to what Edward Gondolf, director of
>
> research for the Mid-Atlantic Addiction Research and Training Institute,
>
> calls“bad science.” Statistics suggesting gender parity in abuse are taken
>
> out of necessary context, they say, ignoring distinctions between the
>
> equally divided “common couple violence” and the sort of escalated,
>
> continuing violence known as battery - which is 85 percent male-perpetrated
>
> - as well as the disparate injuries inflicted by men and women.
>
>
>
> “The biggest concern, though, is not the wasted effort on a false issue,”
>
> writes Straton, but the encouragement given to batterers to consider
>
> themselves the victimized party. “Arming these men with warped statistics
>
> to fuel their already warped worldview is unethical, irresponsible, and
>
> quite simply lethal.”
>
>
>
> In this, critics like Australian sociologist Michael Flood say that men’s
>
> rights movements reflect the tactics of domestic abusers themselves,
>
> minimizing existing violence, calling it mutual, and discrediting victims.
>
> MRA groups downplay national abuse rates, just as abusers downplay their
>
> personal battery; they wage campaigns dismissing most allegations as false,
>
> as abusers claim partners are lying about being hit; and they depict the
>
> violence as mutual - part of an epidemic of wife-on-husband abuse - as
>
> individual batterers rationalize their behavior by saying that the violence
>
> was reciprocal. Additionally, MRA groups’ predictions of future violence by
>
> fed-up men wronged by the family-law system seem an obvious additional
>
> correlation, with the threat of violence seemingly intended to intimidate a
>
> community, like a fearful spouse, into compliance.
>
>
>
> MRA critics say the organizational recapitulation of abusive tactics should
>
> be no surprise, considering the wealth of movement leaders with records or
>
> accusations of violence, abuse, harassment, or failure to pay child
>
> support. Some advocates call MRA groups “the abuser’s lobby,” because of
>
> members like Jason Hutch, the Buckingham Palace fathers’ rights “Batman,”
>
> who has been estranged from three mothers of his children and was taken to
>
> court for threatening one of his ex-wives.
>
>
>
> Contrary to RADAR’s claims, domestic-violence advocates say that not only
>
> do abuse accusations not automatically win custody cases for women; there
>
> are a rising number of custody decisions awarded to abusive fathers, as
>
> judges see wives eager to protect their children as less cooperative
>
> regarding custody. More than half the time, studies have found, wives’
>
> accusations of domestic violence are met with counter-accusations from
>
> husbands of “Parental Alienation Syndrome” - a medically unrecognized
>
> diagnosis that suggests mothers have poisoned their children into making
>
> false accusations against their fathers.
>
>
>
> In one recent case, Genia Shockome, a Russian immigrant, was fighting for
>
> custody of her two children with her ex-husband, whom she charged had
>
> beaten her so severely that she suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and
>
> who had told her she “had no right to leave” since he'd brought her to the
>
> United States. The judge in the case sided with her husband’s
>
> counter-claims of Parental Alienation Syndrome and awarded him full custody
>
> (and later sentenced Shockome to 30 days in jail while she was seven months
>
> pregnant). When her attorney, Barry Goldstein, co-author of the forthcoming
>
> book Domestic Violence, Abuse and Custody, criticized the judge in an
>
> online article, the judge retaliated with a complaint, and Goldstein was
>
> given a five-year suspension. Goldstein says the sanction represents a
>
> chilling pressure on attorneys, who may now fear penalties for criticizing
>
> a court’s gender bias that will interfere with their duties to their
>
> clients and that could result in women deciding not to leave abusers out of
>
> fear they won't get a fair trial.
>
>
>
> If cases such as Genia Shockome’s are the fodder of mainstream fathers’
>
> rights advocates like Glenn Sacks - who ridiculed her claims and loss of
>
> custody as an uncredible “cause célèbre” for feminist family-law reformers
>
> - what Sacks calls the movement’s “lunatic fringe” is more vitriolic yet.
>
>
>
> Within the ranks of the men’s rights movement, vigilante “resisters” are
>
> regularly nominated and lionized for acts of violence perceived to be in
>
> opposition to a feminist status quo
>
> <http://www.foreignp olicy.com/ articles/ 2009/06/18/ the_death_ of_macho>. In a
>
> few quarters of the movement, this even included George Sodini, the
>
> Pittsburgh man who opened fire on a gym full of exercising women this
>
> August, killing three and leaving behind an online diatribe journaling his
>
> sense of rejection by millions of desirable women.
>
>
>
> Sodini’s diary was republished widely, including on the website of a
>
> popular men’s rights blogger, “Angry Harry,” who added his assessment of
>
> the case <http://www.angryhar ry.com/esGeorgeS odini.htm>. “MRAs should also
>
> take note of the fact that there are probably many millions of men across
>
> the western world who feel similar in many ways, and one can expect to see
>
> much more destruction emanating from them in the future,” he wrote. “One of
>
> the main reasons that I decided to post this diary on this website was
>
> because the western world must wake up to the fact that it cannot continue
>
> to treat men so appallingly and get away with it.” In a phone interview,
>
> Angry Harry said, “Of course there will be more Sodinis - there will be
>
> many more,” likening him to Marc Lépine, a Canadian man who killed or
>
> wounded 28, claiming feminists had ruined his life, or Nevada father Darren
>
> Mack, who murdered his estranged wife and attempted to kill the judge in
>
> their custody battle. (Also among this number is John Muhammad, the “D.C.
>
> Beltway Sniper,” whose involvement in a Washington father’s rights group
>
> and history of abuse is described in his ex-wife Mildred’s newly-released
>
> memoir, Scared Silent
>
> <http://www.amazon. com/gp/product/ 1593092415? ie=UTF8&tag= dblx-20&linkCode =as2&camp= 1789&creative= 390957&creativeA SIN=1593092415> .)
>
> Perhaps, Angry Harry mused, that as the ranks of online MRAs grow, “the
>
> threat” of their violence “may be enough” to bring about the changes they
>
> desire.
>
>
>
> Glenn Sacks dismissed Angry Harry as an "idiot" without real power in the
>
> movement, and yet he cautiously agrees that what Sacks calls "family court
>
> injustices" could lead to future violence.* “I want to be careful in
>
> wording this,” he says, “but the cataclysmic things I'm seeing done to men,
>
> it’s always my fear that one of these guys is going to do something
>
> terrible. I don't want to say that like I condone it or that it’s OK, but
>
> it’s just the reality.” The movement seems eager to supply more martyrs.
>
> After Sacks wrote about a San Diego father who shot himself on the city’s
>
> courthouse steps over late child-support payments, numerous men wrote
>
> Sacks, telling him, “They’re taking everything from me, and I want to go
>
> out in a big way, and if I do, will you write about me?”
>
>
>
> I asked RADAR’s Mark Rosenthal about the ties between groups like RADAR -
>
> claiming, however cynically, to have egalitarian motives - and the blunt
>
> anti-feminist positions of men’s movement allies like Chapin or Angry
>
> Harry. “I'd like to suggest that what you've just done is interview Martin
>
> Luther King and Malcolm X,” he told me. “In any movement, there is going to
>
> be a reasonable voice and people who are so hurt, who are so injured by the
>
> injustices, that they can't afford to step back and try to take their
>
> emotions under control. But no movement is going to get anywhere without
>
> extremists.”
>
>
>
> *Clarification, Nov. 6: This article originally said that Glenn Sacks
>
> "cautiously defends" Angry Harry. In fact, he "cautiously agrees that what
>
> Sacks calls 'family court injustices' could lead to future violence."
>

Tom Smith

--- On Sat, 11/7/09, Tom Knoll <knolled@...> wrote:

From: Tom Knoll <knolled@...>
Subject: [ms-discussion] (USA) "Men's rights" groups go mainstream
To: "Men's Studies Discussion List" <ms-discussion@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Saturday, November 7, 2009, 7:07 AM

 

Three articles are provided below FYI.

The first is a response, by Glenn Sacks, to the following two attacking and
deceitful articles by feminists, seeking to minimise and shut down the
growing work men and separated fathers are doing for their children and
themselves.

Feminist dissembling (attacking and trying to pull apart, with the intent
of diminishing and dismissing) continues as men and fathers continue
working for the rights their children and themselves.

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- -----

http://glennsacks. com/blog/
http://glennsacks. com/blog/ ?p=4359

6 November 2009

Slate.com & Salon.com Attack the Fatherhood Movement (Part I)
By Glenn Sacks, MA for Fathers & Families

Two major online publications - Salon.com and Slate.com - recently did
articles about the men's and fathers movement. The articles discuss various
aspects and actors in the movement, and also quote and misquote me. This
series of posts will comment on the articles and also straighten out
certain misrepresentations.

Kathryn Joyce of Slate.com is a feminist writer who has written much about
what she calls the "Christian patriarchy" movement. She told me she was
doing a story about George Sodini, who she (accurately) describes as "the
Pittsburgh man who opened fire on a gym full of exercising women this
August, killing three and leaving behind an online diatribe journaling his
sense of rejection by millions of desirable women."

I knew from the beginning that Joyce would try to somehow wrap Sodini
around the men's and fathers' movement, and I was very hesitant to be
interviewed. I consented, for two reasons:

1) I still nurture the dream that someday feminists and fatherhood
activists can understand each other and work together.

2) I hoped that maybe I could get her to understand the absurdity of her
premise, and to understand that our movement is based on legitimate grievances.

No good deed goes unpunished. Joyce writes:

"Sodini’s diary was republished widely, including on the website of a
popular men’s rights blogger, “Angry Harry,” who added his assessment of
the case. “MRAs should also take note of the fact that there are probably
many millions of men across the western world who feel similar in many
ways, and one can expect to see much more destruction emanating from them
in the future,” he wrote. “One of the main reasons that I decided to post
this diary on this website was because the western world must wake up to
the fact that it cannot continue to treat men so appallingly and get away
with it.” In a phone interview, Angry Harry said, “Of course there will be
more Sodinis - there will be many more,” likening him to Marc Lépine, a
Canadian man who killed or wounded 28, claiming feminists had ruined his
life ... Perhaps, Angry Harry mused, that as the ranks of online MRAs grow,
“the threat” of their violence “may be enough” to bring about the changes
they desire.

"Glenn Sacks dismissed Angry Harry as an “idiot” without real power in the
movement and yet he cautiously defends him. “I want to be careful in
wording this,” he says, “but the cataclysmic things I'm seeing done to men,
it’s always my fear that one of these guys is going to do something
terrible. I don't want to say that like I condone it or that it’s OK, but
it’s just the reality.” "

I specifically, repeatedly, and emphatically told Joyce that any linkage
between the men's & fathers' movements' grievances and Sodini is not my
view, but I guess she was determined to jam it in there anyway.

What I did say was that when I do hear of a drastic action - a man on a
bridge threatening to jump, the guy here in LA who tried to commit suicide
by parking his car on a train track, etc. - my first thought is that it
might be a guy dealing with a painful family law issue or injustice.

Judy Berman of Salon.com, writing about Joyce's article, writes:

"It's certainly chilling to hear Sacks empathize (albeit ambivalently)
with men like George Sodini, the deeply misogynist Pittsburgh gym shooter..."

Again, this is ludicrous - I never said anything remotely sympathetic to
Sodini and I made that abundantly clear to Joyce.

Joyce writes:

"The movement seems eager to supply more martyrs. After Sacks wrote
about a San Diego father who shot himself on the city’s courthouse steps
over late child-support payments, numerous men wrote Sacks, telling him,
“They’re taking everything from me, and I want to go out in a big way, and
if I do, will you write about me?” "

This isn't the movement - it's desperate individual fathers who've been
driven to the brink by a cruel, inhumane family law system. That's why
since 2002 I've had a policy of not writing about fathers who commit
suicide - I don't want to encourage copycats.

The case she refers to was the Derrick Miller case, about which I wrote a
column for the San Diego Union-Tribune. The case wasn't exactly "over late
child-support payments" - the father, a longtime Navy veteran, was being
assessed 70 or 80% of his income in child support.

Joyce quotes RADAR’s Mark Rosenthal:

“In any movement, there is going to be a reasonable voice and people
who are so hurt, who are so injured by the injustices, that they can't
afford to step back and try to take their emotions under control. But no
movement is going to get anywhere without extremists.”

The part about the need for extremists is a silly thing to say, but
Rosenthal is usually reasonable and I frankly doubt he's being quoted
correctly. If Mark would like to clarify this on my site, he's welcome to
do so.

The two articles are Kathryn Joyce's "Men's Rights" Groups Have Become
Frighteningly Effective (Slate.com, 11/5/09) and Judy Berman's "Men's
rights" groups go mainstream - Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary
anti-women groups are courting respectability (Salon.com, 11/5/09). I'll be
posting about them in a few parts, and clearing up more misrepresentations,
as well as commenting on Joyce's and Berman's views.

Posted in Feminism/NOW, Men and the Media, Men's Movement, Fatherhood
Movement/Fathers' Rights Movement

57 Comments »
http://glennsacks. com/blog/ ?p=4359#comments

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- -----

http://www.salon. com/life/ broadsheet/ feature/2009/ 11/05/mens_ rights/
http://www.salon. com/life/ broadsheet/ feature/2009/ 11/05/mens_ rights/print. html

Salon - Broadsheet
5 November 2009

"Men's rights" groups go mainstream
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting
respectability
By Judy Berman

When "Quiverfull" author Kathryn Joyce interviewed blogger Bernard Chapin
<http://bernardchapi n.com/>, he insisted on addressing her as "Feminist E."
You see, Joyce explains, "he never uses real names for feminists, who are
wicked and who men 'must verbally oppose ... until our flesh oxidizes into
dust.'" Now, Chapin's slight isn't particularly unexpected coming from a
voice in the "men's rights" movement, a loosely organized coalition of
individuals and organizations that believe feminist-influenced society is
oppressing men.

But the movement's bizarre fringe is nothing new, as Joyce reminds us in an
in-depth Double X article
<http://www.doublex. com/section/ news-politics/ mens-rights- groups-have- become-frighteni ngly-effective? page=0,0>.
What's really frightening is the impact men's rights activists (MRAs) are
having on mainstream politics. As more reasonable-sounding leaders and
organizations emerge, groups arguing "that false [domestic abuse]
allegations are rampant, that a feminist-run court system fraudulently
separates innocent fathers from children, that battered women’s shelters
are running a racket that funnels federal dollars to feminists, that
domestic-violence laws give cover to cagey mail-order brides seeking Green
Cards, and finally, that men are victims of an unrecognized epidemic of
violence at the hands of abusive wives" are facing unprecedented success.
Joyce reports that a group called RADAR (Respecting Accuracy in Domestic
Abuse Reporting) <http://www.mediarad ar.org/> claims responsibility for
blocking four federal domestic violence bills. And with the help of
organizations like Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, MRAs are beginning to
find a place under conservatism' s big, reactionary tent.

The more moderate men's rights movement also features some high-profile
"converts." Joyce introduces us to Glenn Sacks
<http://www.glennsac ks.com/blog/>, a popular fathers' rights radio host and
writer who she describes as "a former feminist and abortion-clinic
defender." Dismissive of the Bernard Chapins of the world, he's working
toward the comparatively modest goals of increasing shared custody and
lightening divorced dads' child-support obligations during the recession.

What's so wrong with those goals, you may well wonder. As Joyce
illustrates, the issues MRAs are pushing are much more complex than they
seem. For instance, divorcing parents are usually able to work out custody
agreements on their own. Only 15 percent of cases go to court, and, of
those, half involve domestic abuse. Tragically, even in those instances,
mothers don't always have the upper hand. A common family-court defense of
fathers whose children testify that they are abusive is something called
"Parental Alienation Syndrome," "a medically unrecognized diagnosis that
suggests mothers have poisoned their children into making false accusations
against their fathers." Joyce tells the story of Genia Shockome, a woman
who spent 30 days in jail and whose husband was awarded full custody of
their children, despite the fact that his abuse had left her with
post-traumatic stress disorder. Incredibly, Shockome's story doesn't end
there: After criticizing the judge's decision in print, her attorney was
slapped with a five-year suspension.

As for MRAs' accusations, inspired by deeply flawed studies, that men and
women are equally likely to commit domestic abuse, well, the numbers speak
for themselves: "While some men certainly are victims of female domestic
violence, advocates say the number is closer to 3 percent to 4 percent,
rather than the 45 percent to 50 percent RADAR claims." Toward the end of
her piece, Joyce makes a particularly fascinating point about MRAs'
domestic violence arguments:

"Critics like Australian sociologist Michael Flood say that men’s
rights movements reflect the tactics of domestic abusers themselves,
minimizing existing violence, calling it mutual, and discrediting victims.
MRA groups downplay national abuse rates, just as abusers downplay their
personal battery; they wage campaigns dismissing most allegations as false,
as abusers claim partners are lying about being hit; and they depict the
violence as mutual - part of an epidemic of wife-on-husband abuse - as
individual batterers rationalize their behavior by saying that the violence
was reciprocal. Additionally, MRA groups’ predictions of future violence by
fed-up men wronged by the family-law system seem an obvious additional
correlation, with the threat of violence seemingly intended to intimidate a
community, like a fearful spouse, into compliance."

So, what do we do about the increasingly mainstream men's rights movement
and the worrisome gains it has made? Personally, I'm torn. It's certainly
chilling to hear Sacks empathize (albeit ambivalently) with men like George
Sodini
<http://www.salon. com/mwt/broadshe et/feature/ 2009/08/06/ hatred/index. html>,
the deeply misogynist Pittsburgh gym shooter, telling Joyce that "the
cataclysmic things I'm seeing done to men, it’s always my fear that one of
these guys is going to do something terrible. I don't want to say that,
like, I condone it or that it’s OK, but it’s just the reality." But I also
realize that the more marginalized these groups feel, the more extreme (and
potentially violent) they become. With that in mind, do we go to war, or do
we try and hear MRAs out? Is there common ground to be found, or is the new
men's rights movement nothing more than the old men's rights movement with
a fancy haircut and a flashy suit?

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- -

<http://www.doublex. com/section/ news-politics/ mens-rights- groups-have- become-frighteni ngly-effective? page=0,0>

Double X (aka Slate ?)
5 November 2009

"Men's Rights" Groups Have Become Frighteningly Effective
They’re changing custody rights and domestic violence laws.
By Kathryn Joyce

At the end of October, National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, members
of the men’s movement group RADAR (Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse
Reporting) <http://www.mediarad ar.org/> gathered on the steps of Congress
to lobby against what they say are the suppressed truths about domestic
violence: that false allegations are rampant, that a feminist-run court
system fraudulently separates innocent fathers from children, that battered
women’s shelters are running a racket that funnels federal dollars to
feminists, that domestic-violence laws give cover to cagey mail-order
brides seeking Green Cards, and finally, that men are victims of an
unrecognized epidemic of violence at the hands of abusive wives.

“It’s now reached the point,” reads a statement from RADAR, “that domestic
violence laws represent the largest roll-back in Americans’ civil rights
since the Jim Crow era!”

RADAR’s rhetoric may seem overblown, but lately the group and its many
partners have been racking up very real accomplishments. In 2008, the
organization claimed to have blocked passage of four federal
domestic-violence bills, among them an expansion of the Violence Against
Women Act (VAWA) to international scope and a grant to support lawyers in
pro bono domestic-violence work. Members of this coalition have gotten
themselves onto drafting committees for VAWA’s 2011 reauthorization. Local
groups in West Virginia and California have also had important successes,
criminalizing false claims of domestic violence in custody cases, and
winning rulings that women-only shelters are discriminatory.

Groups like RADAR fall under the broader umbrella of the men’s rights
movement, a loose coalition of anti-feminist groups. These men’s rights
activists, or MRAs, have long been written off by domestic-violence
advocates as a bombastic and fringe group of angry white men, and for good
reason. Bernard Chapin, a popular men’s rights blogger, told me over e-mail
that he will refer to me as “Feminist E,” since he never uses real names
for feminists, who are wicked and who men “must verbally oppose ... until
our flesh oxidizes into dust.” In the United Kingdom, a father’s rights
group scaled Buckingham Palace in superhero costumes. In Australia, they
[the Black Shirts www.blackshirts. info] wore paramilitary uniforms and
demonstrated outside the houses of female divorcees.

But lately they’ve become far more polished and savvy about advancing their
views. In their early days of lobbying, “these guys would show up and have
this looming body language that was very off-putting,” says Ben
Atherton-Zeman, author of Voices of Men, a one-man play about domestic
violence and sexual assault. “But that’s all changed. A lot of the leaders
are still convicted batterers, but they’re well-organized, they speak in
complete sentences, they sound much more reasonable: All we want is equal
custody, for fathers not to be ignored.”

One of the respectable new faces of the movement is Glenn Sacks, a fathers'
rights columnist and radio host with 50,000 e-mail followers, and a
pragmatist in a world of angry dreamers. Sacks is a former feminist and
abortion-clinic defender who disavows what he calls “the not-insubstantial
lunatic fringe of the fathers’ rights movement.” He recently merged his
successful media group with the shared-parenting organization Fathers and
Families in a bid to build a mainstream fathers' rights organ on par with
the National Organization of Women. Many of Sacks’ arguments - for a court
assumption of shared parenting in the case of divorce, or against
child-support rigidity in the midst of recession - can sound reasonable.

But do any of their arguments hold up? Many of the men for whom Sacks
advocates are involved in extreme cases, says Joanie Dawson, a writer and
domestic-violence advocate who has covered the fathers’ rights movement.
The great majority of custody cases, in which shared parenting is a
legitimate option, are settled or resolved privately. But of the 15 percent
that go to family court - the cases that fathers’ rights groups target - at
least half include alleged domestic abuse.

Unsurprisingly, this argument is missing from MRA discussions of custody
inequality and recruitment ads, which cast all men as potentially innocent
victims “just one 911 call away” from losing everything they have earned
and loved. These rallying calls, and the divorce attorneys hawking men’s
rights expertise on MRA sites, promising to “teach her a lesson,” serve as
what Dawson sees as a powerful draw for men in the midst of painful divorces.

While MRA groups continue to expand their base of embittered fathers and
ex-husbands, they’ve cleaned up their image to court more powerful allies.
RADAR board member Ron Grignal, the former president of Fathers for
Virginia and a former state delegate candidate, organizes the group’s
Washington lobbying activities. In 2008, RADAR partnered with Eagle Forum
for a conference at the Heritage Foundation about the threat that VAWA
poses to the family. Grignal argues that state interpretations of VAWA are
so broad they could cast couples’ money disputes as domestic violence,
enabling unwarranted restraining orders that then win women’s divorce cases
for them. Politicians, Grignal says, are increasingly on board with men’s
rights movement concerns.

“On domestic violence, I’ve had both state and federal legislators tell me
they know that this process is out of control,” says Grignal. “They’re
afraid if they support [reforms] they’ll be tagged as ‘for domestic
violence.’ But I've had Democrats on Capitol Hill tell me they agree with
everything I say. A member of the Congressional Black Caucus told me that
his brother can’t see his kids, and his wife threatened to throw herself
down the stairs to ruin his political career.”

Some domestic-violence protections do seem to have unintended effects, such
as mandatory-arrest policies that compel police to take someone into
custody in response to any domestic-violence call - a policy that has been
criticized by RADAR as well as by some domestic-violence advocates, who say
it imposes an absurd equivalence between largely nonviolent family spats or
insubstantial female violence and serious abuse. But groups like RADAR are
criticizing the law for the wrong reasons. In fact, the effect of mandatory
arrest in conflating women’s low-level violence with battery, seems very
close to RADAR’s campaign for viewing women as equal domestic abusers.

One potent idea advanced by MRAs is the claim that men are equal victims of
domestic violence. Mark Rosenthal, president and co-founder of RADAR, makes
a very personal argument for the phenomenon. Rosenthal, who doesn’t call
himself an MRA, grew up with a mother who he says terrorized the entire
family and hit her husband frequently. The true impact of the violence, he
says, was more than physical and eclipsed his petite mother’s ability to
inflict serious injuries. Rosenthal wants to see an appreciation for
women’s nonphysical abuse incorporated into domestic-violence policy. “It’s
not about size,” he told an audience at a law enforcement domestic-violence
training. “It’s not exclusively about physical attacks. However, it is
about a pathological need to control others, and women are as prone to this
as men.”

RADAR and other MRA groups base their battered men arguments largely on the
research of a small group of social scientists who claim that domestic
violence between couples is equally divided, just unequally reported. Most
notable are the studies conducted by sociologist Murray Straus of the
University of New Hampshire, who has written extensively on female violence
(and who Dawson saw distributing RADAR flyers at an APA conference).
Straus’ research is starting to move public opinion. A Los Angeles
conference this July dedicated to discussing male victims of domestic
violence, “From Ideology to Inclusion 2009: New Directions in Domestic
Violence Research and Intervention,” received positive mainstream press for
its “inclusive” efforts.

While some men certainly are victims of female domestic violence, advocates
say the number is closer to 3 percent to 4 percent, rather than the 45
percent to 50 percent RADAR claims. Jack Straton, a Portland State
University professor and member of Oregon’s Attorney General's Sexual
Assault Task Force, argues that Straus critically fails to distinguish
between the intent and effect of violence, equating “a woman pushing a man
in self-defense to a man pushing a woman down the stairs,” or a single act
of female violence with years of male abuse; that Straus only interviewed
one partner, when couples’ accounts of violence commonly diverge; and that
he excludes from his study post-separation violence, which accounts for
more than 75 percent of spouse-on-spouse violence, 93 percent of which is
committed by men.

All in all, advocates say that cherry-picked studies from researchers like
Straus, touted by the MRAs, amount to what Edward Gondolf, director of
research for the Mid-Atlantic Addiction Research and Training Institute,
calls“bad science.” Statistics suggesting gender parity in abuse are taken
out of necessary context, they say, ignoring distinctions between the
equally divided “common couple violence” and the sort of escalated,
continuing violence known as battery - which is 85 percent male-perpetrated
- as well as the disparate injuries inflicted by men and women.

“The biggest concern, though, is not the wasted effort on a false issue,”
writes Straton, but the encouragement given to batterers to consider
themselves the victimized party. “Arming these men with warped statistics
to fuel their already warped worldview is unethical, irresponsible, and
quite simply lethal.”

In this, critics like Australian sociologist Michael Flood say that men’s
rights movements reflect the tactics of domestic abusers themselves,
minimizing existing violence, calling it mutual, and discrediting victims.
MRA groups downplay national abuse rates, just as abusers downplay their
personal battery; they wage campaigns dismissing most allegations as false,
as abusers claim partners are lying about being hit; and they depict the
violence as mutual - part of an epidemic of wife-on-husband abuse - as
individual batterers rationalize their behavior by saying that the violence
was reciprocal. Additionally, MRA groups’ predictions of future violence by
fed-up men wronged by the family-law system seem an obvious additional
correlation, with the threat of violence seemingly intended to intimidate a
community, like a fearful spouse, into compliance.

MRA critics say the organizational recapitulation of abusive tactics should
be no surprise, considering the wealth of movement leaders with records or
accusations of violence, abuse, harassment, or failure to pay child
support. Some advocates call MRA groups “the abuser’s lobby,” because of
members like Jason Hutch, the Buckingham Palace fathers’ rights “Batman,”
who has been estranged from three mothers of his children and was taken to
court for threatening one of his ex-wives.

Contrary to RADAR’s claims, domestic-violence advocates say that not only
do abuse accusations not automatically win custody cases for women; there
are a rising number of custody decisions awarded to abusive fathers, as
judges see wives eager to protect their children as less cooperative
regarding custody. More than half the time, studies have found, wives’
accusations of domestic violence are met with counter-accusations from
husbands of “Parental Alienation Syndrome” - a medically unrecognized
diagnosis that suggests mothers have poisoned their children into making
false accusations against their fathers.

In one recent case, Genia Shockome, a Russian immigrant, was fighting for
custody of her two children with her ex-husband, whom she charged had
beaten her so severely that she suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and
who had told her she “had no right to leave” since he'd brought her to the
United States. The judge in the case sided with her husband’s
counter-claims of Parental Alienation Syndrome and awarded him full custody
(and later sentenced Shockome to 30 days in jail while she was seven months
pregnant). When her attorney, Barry Goldstein, co-author of the forthcoming
book Domestic Violence, Abuse and Custody, criticized the judge in an
online article, the judge retaliated with a complaint, and Goldstein was
given a five-year suspension. Goldstein says the sanction represents a
chilling pressure on attorneys, who may now fear penalties for criticizing
a court’s gender bias that will interfere with their duties to their
clients and that could result in women deciding not to leave abusers out of
fear they won't get a fair trial.

If cases such as Genia Shockome’s are the fodder of mainstream fathers’
rights advocates like Glenn Sacks - who ridiculed her claims and loss of
custody as an uncredible “cause célèbre” for feminist family-law reformers
- what Sacks calls the movement’s “lunatic fringe” is more vitriolic yet.

Within the ranks of the men’s rights movement, vigilante “resisters” are
regularly nominated and lionized for acts of violence perceived to be in
opposition to a feminist status quo
<http://www.foreignp olicy.com/ articles/ 2009/06/18/ the_death_ of_macho>. In a
few quarters of the movement, this even included George Sodini, the
Pittsburgh man who opened fire on a gym full of exercising women this
August, killing three and leaving behind an online diatribe journaling his
sense of rejection by millions of desirable women.

Sodini’s diary was republished widely, including on the website of a
popular men’s rights blogger, “Angry Harry,” who added his assessment of
the case <http://www.angryhar ry.com/esGeorgeS odini.htm>. “MRAs should also
take note of the fact that there are probably many millions of men across
the western world who feel similar in many ways, and one can expect to see
much more destruction emanating from them in the future,” he wrote. “One of
the main reasons that I decided to post this diary on this website was
because the western world must wake up to the fact that it cannot continue
to treat men so appallingly and get away with it.” In a phone interview,
Angry Harry said, “Of course there will be more Sodinis - there will be
many more,” likening him to Marc Lépine, a Canadian man who killed or
wounded 28, claiming feminists had ruined his life, or Nevada father Darren
Mack, who murdered his estranged wife and attempted to kill the judge in
their custody battle. (Also among this number is John Muhammad, the “D.C.
Beltway Sniper,” whose involvement in a Washington father’s rights group
and history of abuse is described in his ex-wife Mildred’s newly-released
memoir, Scared Silent
<http://www.amazon. com/gp/product/ 1593092415? ie=UTF8&tag= dblx-20&linkCode =as2&camp= 1789&creative= 390957&creativeA SIN=1593092415>.)
Perhaps, Angry Harry mused, that as the ranks of online MRAs grow, “the
threat” of their violence “may be enough” to bring about the changes they
desire.

Glenn Sacks dismissed Angry Harry as an "idiot" without real power in the
movement, and yet he cautiously agrees that what Sacks calls "family court
injustices" could lead to future violence.* “I want to be careful in
wording this,” he says, “but the cataclysmic things I'm seeing done to men,
it’s always my fear that one of these guys is going to do something
terrible. I don't want to say that like I condone it or that it’s OK, but
it’s just the reality.” The movement seems eager to supply more martyrs.
After Sacks wrote about a San Diego father who shot himself on the city’s
courthouse steps over late child-support payments, numerous men wrote
Sacks, telling him, “They’re taking everything from me, and I want to go
out in a big way, and if I do, will you write about me?”

I asked RADAR’s Mark Rosenthal about the ties between groups like RADAR -
claiming, however cynically, to have egalitarian motives - and the blunt
anti-feminist positions of men’s movement allies like Chapin or Angry
Harry. “I'd like to suggest that what you've just done is interview Martin
Luther King and Malcolm X,” he told me. “In any movement, there is going to
be a reasonable voice and people who are so hurt, who are so injured by the
injustices, that they can't afford to step back and try to take their
emotions under control. But no movement is going to get anywhere without
extremists.”

*Clarification, Nov. 6: This article originally said that Glenn Sacks
"cautiously defends" Angry Harry. In fact, he "cautiously agrees that what
Sacks calls 'family court injustices' could lead to future violence."