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

I watched this South Pacific Pictures movie last night and recommend it highly to all. It’s about Dave Henderson’s real-life fight against the IRD that shafted him. Many have been shafted by government departments and Courts, but few battle as effectively as Mr Henderson did.

Notable in the story were the gender issues. The problem apparently began when a male IRD officer made inappropriate personal comments to Mr Henderson’s partner. When Mr Henderson attempted to defend her honour by threatening violence, the IRD officer mounted a vendetta.

His partner, though initially happy at his chivalry, soon became stressed at the developments. She started attributing the problem to Mr Henderson’s own shortcomings, his anger and social impropriety (even though he behaved quite well after his initial outburst). She pushed him against his better judgement to share details about what was happening but as soon as he did she sulked and complained that he was raising his voice. She became angry with him when in his stressed condition he showed impatience towards her son. She berated him for raising his voice etc even while she was shouting at him about it. In the middle of it all she left him because it was too stressful, thereby wrecking the bond he had fostered with her son and leaving Mr Henderson bereft. When he eventually succeeded she was back to “I miss you”, and his chivalry extended to forgiving her readily for her abandonment of him in his hour of need.

Many men will find the themes quite familiar from their own experiences. Of a number of morals to this story, I will highlight only the importance of keeping detailed records of all communications and experiences when involved in a dispute.

1. J.A.M has been developed by Jim Bagnall during and through his support for over 10,000 Fathers and a few Mothers going through the Family Court.
2. The word justifiable applies to the context of the anger and its source and does not glorify anger in anyway. Justifiable is a word for an acceptance of that person’s anger.
3. The Pay/Fight back scale provides a framework and a structure in which anger exists and an explanation both to the angry person and their helper of how both the energy from the anger can be used and how a person can use the scale not only for understanding their anger but for analysis and action to combat their role deletion.
4. The scale usually should be read or listened to from its base which starts out with description at the Instinctual level and then moves up through anger’s mind treadmills and obsessions to a social level and a place where a person can find outlets for his/her analysis of where he/she is at.
5. At the top of the scale there is a place where standards are reshaped through analysis and where a re formed identity is realized and a higher justification is reached based on valuing people and a just outcome giving new strength through adversity.

Contact Jim Bagnall for J.A.M
09 815 0307 or 021 170 7375

Multi-Party Group Works On Family Violence Prevention

www.mensgroups.org.nz has been developed by David Brindley. Drawing on experience as a Trustee of MensTrust in Christchurch, his own growth through Men’s Work and as a participant and organiser of Men’s Groups, David has worked to create an informative web site to support Men currently in groups and to encourage Men to seek and join a Group.
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Sorry for the short notice but we have tickets for free parking in a city carpark and free tickets for a special area where children will not only see the Santa Parade but receive free goodies and such.

Santa Parade for single parents (mums and dads)

Also free tickets for a family show from Southern Stars Charitable Trust. Once again these tickets are $30 each to the public.

Date: 8th December 2007
Venue: ASB Showgrounds, Greenlane Rd West, Auckland
Times: 10am, 1pm and 4pm.

Christmas Adventure

Please let me know ASAP. If I can’t get the tickets out to you in time you can pick them up from my home.

julie@singleparents.org.nz

Sunday Star Times

Callister, a senior research fellow at Victoria University, is leading a three-year, $1.7 million study into what has happened to those “missing men”.

He says the plight of New Zealand men has historically been desperately under-researched. He blames a mindset which goes like this: men still hold most of the top corporate jobs and have higher average salaries, therefore women are still disadvantaged, and therefore we needn’t worry about men.

“It’s not either-or,” says Callister. “You can have men over-represented at the bottom, and still have them over-represented at the top.” No doubt feminism’s battle is not yet over, but “it’s not like you have to win one before you start with the other”.

Sad that it is going to take 3 years for this study to finish and then the effects will take longer. It seem that Universities are starting to openly discuss the real need for research on men and the Family’s Commission also but still there is nowhere near the resources available for men’s studies/issues as there are for women’s studies/issues. And all this is going to take time.

Feminists have to share resources. There is on other way.

Eyore Eyore he ought to tell that joke to everybody.

Wake up my friends and fellow countrymen; it is not sufficient that we blame our errant youth, that we sacrifice their exuberance and energy to excuse our….. aberrance. It is us who have closed our mind to that essential propriety, which is the essence of society, and our children who suffer, not an enduring devolution, but an enduring de-evolution.

And now beware the uneducated thug who would steal away your life, but beware also the academic tyrant who would steal your way of life. Such is the importance of republicanism, the voice of the people that reminds us that there is a balance in life, that which is the ‘common sense’ of the people.

Politics in isolation is the lost cause of those who would endlessly debate your options. You pay their expenses and they mourn your losses, but somewhere amid this mess of words is an unauthorised shame. The shame of competition and zest that says that success is second best.

If only we could live in fairyland, side by side with the wisdom to aspire, without that frivolity of desire, but alas I see the time has come, to acknowledge what history has always said we would require; the intuition to be consummate, in a passage of society that our future generation will reflect upon and admire.

For all you good folk out there who have battled are battling IRD heres a must see movie.

In February 1994, Christchurch businessman Dave Henderson walked into the Inland Revenue Department. Dave was not a happy man.

His girlfriend had recently been there to collect a refund Dave’s company was owed.
An IRD staff member made some suggestive comments to her.Dave told the IRD officer that if he ever talked to one of his employees like that again he would kick his “fat arse from one end of Cashel Street to the other”.

And so began a saga of Kafkaesque and yet comedic proportions.

But Dave refused to give in. He kept fighting

He also kept both his sense of humour and his records – of every surreal phone conversation;of every demand; of every piece of paper.

He kept fighting until his battle reached the very highest levels of Government.

And finally, four years after the comedy of errors began, Dave Henderson won.

Dave got his life and his business back together. And in a final ironic two-fingered salute, he bought he building which houses the South Island head office of the IRD.And renamed it Henderson House.

We’re Here to Help is a Kafkaesque comedy based on the true story of one man’s
David-and-Goliath battle with the biggest bureaucracy of all – the tax department.

An international child support convention that will enter its final stages of negotiation on Monday is intended to ease the plight of single parents and their children worldwide.

The International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance Convention, a widely-supported initiative that is due to be finalized later this month.