MENZ Issues: news and discussion about New Zealand men, fathers, family law, divorce, courts, protests, gender politics, and male health.

The courts (and feminists themselves) operate on the principal that women are children. If there is something favourable about being an adult then it is the woman’s human right to have it. However when it comes to responsibility and consequences then women will be treated as a child.

For example in Britain a man who was the passenger has been jailed for 4 years for failing to prevent the female driver killing someone. Of course if he had used any sort of force to try and stop her he would also have done jail time.

Keep in mind that he did not force or coerce her to drive. He just didn’t stop her. No doubt this was because he was drunk and thus his own judgement was impaired. Whatever the reason he didn’t force her to do something against her will. I.e he didn’t force her not to drive. Therefore he gets 4 years. But is he did force her to do something against her will then it is domestic violence or rape or some such charge.

From NZH:

“A man in Britain has been jailed for four years for causing death by dangerous driving even though he was not behind the wheel when the crash happened.

John Nichols, 59, was a passenger in his Jaguar XJ8 when it hit and killed a young couple on the A1 in Lincolnshire.

His partner, Mary Butres, 48, had been driving the vehicle at the time.

But because she was drunk, and Mr Nichols, a millionaire businessman, had allowed her to drive, he too was convicted.

A jury decided he had failed to tell her to slow down and could have prevented the tragedy.”

I am young enough to be a father but too old to rebuild all my life after divorce again. I still want to be an involved father more than anything in the world. Until just recently I thought this meant I needed to get married again. However the dates I have had recently have caused me to question this assumption. Do I need a wife? Perhaps good reader you would like to offer your view on this topic.

Under NZ law a 3 year defaco relationship is the same as marriage. So for a male any long term relationship carries all the same risks as marriage. For simplicity I will talk about “marriage” or “being married”. However in fact I mean “have a relationship for longer than 3 years”. In other words it is not relevant if there is a marriage ceremony or not. That is not the issue. It is just rather long winded to say should I stay with a woman for more than 3 years?

Dear reader keep in mind that my parents were childhood sweathearts who married until “death do us part”. Which to them meant exactly that. Hence this is my view of marriage also. I have never had any problem getting dates. I was married. Staying married requires both peple to work on the relationship which requires certain qualities. Finding a woman who is and will always stay comitted to marriage I have found to be so far impossible.

I am still open to that. If happen to bump into the love of my life then great. I certainly take great pleasure in loving and being loved by someone special.

However now I am questioning why would I hunt for it and sign up to marriage?

It is nice and would be best for any child but the risks and costs are extrodinary. Any child has a high risk of being denied one parent anyway.  It seems to me that the laws and women themselves have priced themselves out of the market. I don’t want to reach retirement in poverty it is true. But more than that I can’t afford to have another child shut out of my life. However there is a greater than 50% chance of  exactly both of those things happening.

Do I risk having a shortened life of poverty for a 50% chance of having a child and a wife?

Or do I find another way to have a child (who may well have no mother) ?

Please don’t tell me to change the system. In case you haven’t noticed the system has not changed and I will not live for ever. I have to make a decision based on the society and the system I live in now.

Over recent weeks there has been heated (and often abusive) debate about Union of Fathers’ president Alan Harvey working as an access supervisor. He is not the first men’s advocate to have done so – Craig Davis from Shore Fathers has also been employed in this position, and likewise faced a torrent of abuse and accusations from an angry male client.

It will be obvious that I have not been doing much moderation in recent weeks – many of the commenters repeatedly break the MENZ rules – my only excuse is that the sun was shining, and the trail inviting.

I’m leaving the discussion unaltered because I think much of it is valuable. There is very little mention of the NZ Supervised Access regime in the mainstream media, and many important issues are raised. (more…)

Hi MENZ Readers,

I work out of the Canterbury Men’s Centre which supports guys by telling them about local useful services and sets up projects relevant to men.

I find myself advocating for men in different government forums and I found this course really useful for me to make a solid case for men in the health and community sector. It is post-graduate level (you need an undergrad degree I think), and extramural (long distance learning works for it).

I didn’t catch even a whiff of feminism in the course content or design and found I could openly discuss my reflections on NZ men’s jouneys without getting bashed. It was also felxible enough to give me the basic info about men’s health, and allowed me to follow my special areas of interest.

I suggest you get in touch with the lecturer if you have any questions. You can also contact me if you want more info.

http://www.canterbury.ac.nz/courseinfo/GetCourseDetails.aspx?course=HLTH451

Is the mother in the article Shock at ’subjecting children to unimaginable and horrific living conditions ‘acting outside her normal gender role??? Is this possible?? If so then males must be capable of it as well. This then makes it a non gender issue…period.

James Cameron, when writing AVATAR, portrayed a society on planet PANDORA as being close to ‘mother’ nature but even James slipped up when he showed only the female of the species looking after the children. There needs to be a paradigm shift in the way males are portrayed in society, only then will all the bullshit in the courts disappear. Until then pull the hatch down and prepare to take a beating.

Here’s an interesting article from Carey Roberts, a US “commentator on political correctness”. He describes how the Democrat (Obama’s) candidate lost the recent Massachusetts senate election because she previously discriminated against a male and tried to keep him, but not females convicted of the same offences, in prison for sexual convictions based on ridiculous evidence, similar to but even more ridiculous than our Peter Ellis case. The US public appears to be losing respect for male-bashing women, and that will increasingly happen in NZ too. Robers writes: “Prosecuting innocent men for crimes they didn’t commit is no longer the sure-fire formula to electoral success it once appeared to be.”

This topic is likely to cause some of you to vent… if you need to, do it within the rules of the site and, perhaps in a constructive way…

I like to read submissions here and try to understand the viewpoints from each and everyone.

I have seen Allan make various claims about the Union of Fathers. I think this is the correct place to do that.
He suggests he is there to help fathers when in fact he has stated on other thread and on others that UoF ‘is a parents group who focus on what is best for children’.
So; in essence, UoF is a children’s support group, not a fathers support group. He uses the word ‘parent’ instead of father which I find troubling myself since the organization is called Union of Fathers!

I think we need to be clear that Allan is offering a service that is useful to certain people because of the way the system works. His organisation is not there to challenge the system but to work within in it.

Allan; this is a discussion so please enlighten us.

Also; any other organizations that provide a service to men, please let us know what is available.
I have used the services of the single parent trust and can say that I have had a couple of sessions at the ASB showgrounds with show tickets from the trust. Hats off to you Julie as that’s a great de-stressor

In 2005 airlines such as Air New Zealand and Qantas were found to have a policy that children and teenagers who are unaccompanied by parents or caregivers cannot sit next to men. Air New Zealand spokesman David Jamieson said the company had no intention of reviewing the policy and admitted that it had been in place for many years.British Airways also has the same policy which was revealed in 2001.

Ex Feminist leader of the Children’s Commissioner Cindy Kiro stated “children’s safety is paramount and she commends the airline for putting thought into how it can keep children safe.” Interestingly, her feminist ideology states that men cannot be trusted with children and they should not be encouraged to have a position of trust around children.

In return a number of men spoke up against the policy including politicians.

Michael Irwin, a former school principal and now senior lecturer at Massey University’s College of Education, says the policy adopted by Air New Zealand and Qantas sent a “misleading message” that men were uncaring when it came to young children.

“It’s saying to society that it’s not men’s role to be involved with their children or any children and that’s ridiculous,” he said.

Mr Irwin said such policies could cause men to feel alienated from schools, childcare centres and nursing, and were also harmful to the wider society, which would miss out on male involvement.

“If a child falls down and hurts themselves. . . is a man supposed to stand around until a woman can be found to help?

“I believe it sends a signal to children: ‘don’t trust a man’.”

The director of the Centre for Public Policy at Massey University, Stuart Birks, said the ban was “a clear case of discrimination with no obvious rational basis”.

It was as “pointless and ridiculous” as discriminating against passengers on grounds of race, religious belief, or appearance, he said.

“Would they have a policy of not seating children next to Maori passengers, or skinheads or Muslims? or only male Maori, skinheads and Muslims?”

The story also featured on TV One Close Up. Susan Wood read out part of an e-mail by MRA Darryl Ward:
(more…)

The Office of the Auditor-General is at the early stages of a performance audit of how well Inland Revenue manages child support debt. They are looking to get the views of people interacting with IRD about child support.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the agenda is to find ways to collect money but it can also IMHO be an opportunity to show up the flaws of Inland Revenue’s system and express the ill treatment from some of the staff. If you work with Inland Revenue on behalf of clients … I hope you speak up and if you have an experience of your own to share … I hope you speak up.

Contact Chris Gianos

Email : enquiry@oag.govt.nz

BTW, belated Merry Xmas and Happy New Year to you all.

Firstly let me say that my thoughts are with the Haiti people. Such a scenario could easily happen here. Not only that but men always come off worse in such disasters. So there are 2 reasons beyond basic humanity for caring about Haiti.

My post is not actually about Haiti or earthquakes. It is more about the way NZ media report all stories. You will no doubt have heard about the NZ toddler recovered from the rubble. In NZ this is reported as “Kiwi woman’s missing daughter found”. In Australia this is reported as “NZ toddler found under dead father”.

If you look at news sites around the world that report the same stories as NZ media and you will find there is a pattern here.