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

Just looking on google news, searching for “Family Court” and all I can find, is regarding the parental tests that was announced last month, and a thing on a family of 15 living in the bush.

 has anyone tried to invite the media to their family court hearing? 

What would be the process of doing this?

The family court definatly needs more media attention in the smaller cases, that don’t inparticualry mean anything to anyone, but without this attention, their will continue to be a gender bias, and secrecy in court.

I issue a general warning to avoid Relationship Services. I had an unpleasant experience with a fat feminasty counsellor there who would or could not answer clearly my questions about the circumstances in which she would breach confidentiality. She then accused me of being a controlling male abuser (although no assessment or information about me had even taken place) and refused to work further with me and my ex. This was in counselling funded by the Family Court.

Since then I have had several clients who approached Relationship Services in good faith but had confidentiality breached even though there was no imminent danger to anyone. The Tauranga branch seems more interested in being social police aiming to prosecute men for anything they might ever have done wrong, than in helping their clients.

Auckland’s domestic violence victim support agency wants a national register of the most violent offenders to be set up so new partners can be warned about dangerous men.

Preventing Violence in the Home director Jane Drumm told a child abuse conference in Manukau yesterday that the safety of women and children should override the privacy of offenders.

My letter today to the “Get Organized” Campaign. I will direct the letter to all of the sponsors of this campaign.

“While I congratulate your efforts to reduce domestic violence, I note that your information entitled “The Numbers” is biased and sexist. You give information about how many women are killed by their (ex) partners but no information about violence against men. You will find that, although the number of murdered men by intimate partners is lower at about one quarter of the female rate, it is still significant. Further, men are much more often than women the victims of murder and other violence in society generally. To ignore the victimization of men either at the hands of women or the small proportion of other men who would commit such violence, is typical of male-denigration in the feminist era.

Would you publish information only about pakeha victimization by Maori violent offenders? No, because that would be blatantely racist. However, the imbalance between Maori and Pakeha violent crime is greater than the imbalance between male and female domestic violence.

When state-sanctioned forms of domestic violence are counted (e.g. evicting men from their homes in only the clothes on their back purely on the basis of a woman’s unsubstantiated allegations under the DVA, denying children adequate relationships with their fathers), then the imbalance between male and female domestic violence becomes even smaller.

It is time for domestic violence campaigns and services to become honest and to stop ignoring almost half the problem.”

FYI, my other email today:

Dear Morning Report Team

Your article this morning entitled “Campaign to Legalize Prostitution in the UK” was disappointing. The interviewer blithely accepted everything the interviewees claimed and treated an important issue as if covering a light-hearted school play.

When interviewee “Shirley” referred to a Nevada brothel she had visited as a “prison”, no challenging question ensued such as “Were the prostitutes there free to stay or leave?”.

When Shirley claimed NZ brothels were better for protecting the women, no question ensued about protection for the clients. A little further exploration would have highlighted the fact that although NZ legislation includes rudimentary provisions to protect the physical health of clients, to protect the reputation of particular streets or areas in the community and to limit the type of advertising brothels can undertake, there is no requirement for NZ prostitutes to operate according to a code of ethics and barely any attention is paid to the needs and safety of the consumer. That’s because the NZ legislation was based on feminist priorities and beliefs that prostitutes are exploited victims forced into their meagre $150 to $500-an-hour trade through patriarchy.

When Shirley then claimed that the NZ system was safer for the community and clients, no question ensued to require her to explain how that could be so.

In New Zealand, health and helping practitioners are legally required to observe a raft of ethical practice rules in order to protect their clients from them. However, in the case of prostitutes (who earn as much as most professionals, who become aware through their service of intimate personal information about their clients and who are unlikely to be motivated by the pro-social aims typical in most helping professionals), no such protection for clients is in place. Prostitutes were legalized (which I support) and given relatively open slather to push their particular vice in society (which I don’t support). Why did NZ not take the opportunity to impose some ethical rules on prostitutes, for example to protect marriages and families, to discourage extortion, to ensure that prostitution was made fully accountable according to consumer protection laws, to establish a user-friendly and confidential complaint process regarding inadequate or unethical services, and so forth?

It would have been interesting to hear the same good journalism on this topic evident in most other articles in your otherwise excellent show. Unfortunately, it seems that the P.C. (politically conformist) line is usually taken with any issues of relevance to feminists and their propaganda.

Hans Laven

FYI, my email today to the Auckland Women’s Health Council:

Dear Auckland Women’s Health Council

Your representative Linda Williams stated today in an interview on “Nine to Noon”, National Radio, that it would be “sexist” to immunize only girls against cervical cancer and that if girls were to be immunized then so should boys because they carried the virus associated with cervical cancer. She then raised many concerns about the risks of implementing vaccinations without enough knowledge about possible side effects, and the incomplete long-term follow-up data in the research used to advocate a roll-out of this vaccine.

Ms Williams acknowledged that boys do not suffer from cervical cancer, and admitted in a somewhat fudging manner that no research had been completed on the effect of the vaccine on boys. (more…)

FYI, my email to ALAC today. I also sent an email to National Radio expressing disappointment that in its interviews about all kinds of aspects of these ads, nothing was said about their glaring sexism.

Dear ALAC,

I am not bothered by the shocking nature of your latest television advertisements, and I commend your aims. However, I am deeply concerned about the anti-male sexism your advertisements are spreading.

In the latest series of ads, the two featuring males as leading characters both involve harm being done by the men to others, while the one featuring a woman involves her putting herself into a vulnerable position and then being violently sexually assaulted by a male. My recollection of your previous series of tv ads was that they showed males embarrassing and letting down other people, while the one featuring a woman only showed her feeling embarrassed about her own drinking. The underlying misinformation throughout your advertisements is that only men do harm to others and women are victims. (more…)

In 19th-century diplomatic Latin, the original sentence was in statu quo res erant ante bellum “in the state in which things were before the war”. This gave rise to the shorter form status quo ante bellum “the state in which (it was) before the war”, indicating the withdrawal of enemy troops and restoration of power to prewar leadership, as well as other variations, such as status quo itself.

Arguing to preserve the status quo is usually done in the context of opposing a large, often radical change. The term frequently refers to the status of a large issue, such as the current culture or social climate of an entire society or nation. Status quo can also refer to the social status in the workplace or peer group school.

Politicians sometimes refer to a status quo. Often there is a policy of deliberate ambiguity, referring to the status quo rather than formalizing the status. An example of political ambiguity is the political status of Taiwan. Clark Kerr is reported to have said, “The status quo is the only solution that cannot be vetoed,” meaning that the status quo cannot simply be decided against; action must be taken if it is to change.

Sometimes specific institutions are founded to actively maintain the status quo. The United Nations, for example, was intended to help solidify the peaceful international status quo that immediately followed World War II.

 Now how many of us fathers have been let down by the “Status Quo”?

In my particular case, I was told that because of the amount of time he has been in his Mothers Care since we seperated (about a year now, the same amount of time its been going though court….) even after his Mother illegaly took day to day care, and makes it difficult to arrange contact, and can’t afford to pay her rent every week, that my chances of getting full day to day care is next to none because of the Status Quo.

 This apears to me to be where the Court system is letting people down, especialy our Children, sure in the short term leaving the child in the “Status Quo” might be a good option, but we need to be looking at long term solutions.  One parent  (the parent with current day to day care) might be an ok parent, where the child isn’t going to be in harms way, but might not get the care and attention needed to thrive, or have the best finacial means, but the other parent, might be able to provide the care and attention and the finacial means to provide the best possible situation in life, but because of the “Status Quo” the child might be left in the ok parents care.

Media statement

For immediate release

Tuesday, 8 April 2008

The government is looking at ways of improving the child support scheme to make it more responsive to factors such as the complexities of shared care, the income levels of both parents and the costs of raising children, Revenue Minister Peter Dunne said today.

“These are the most commonly identified areas of concern of the many people who write to me and to other MPs about their child support problems,” Mr Dunne said. (more…)

FYI, below is my email to National Radio this morning regarding articles on Sunday morning news broadcasts covering the huge coolstore explosion and fire in Hamilton. I note that the Herald’s article on the web made it clear that all the injured were men and even repeatedly used the term “firemen”, but the Waikato Times failed at any point to indicate that either the injured or dead were men.

In my opinion, men deserve to be recognized and honoured for their martyrdom in many of the roles they provide in our society. Instead, National Radio’s printed web article mentioned only that the Fire Service was ensuring support for the families of the dead and injured “firefighters” (In itself this is excellent, but in the absence of any respect for the firemen’s dangerous work, this comment merely increased the disrespect shown to those firemen.)

“…My concern is that the news article about injured firefighters did not refer to their male gender. This is part of a general tendency to refer only to “workers” when men are killed or injured, but when a woman is killed, injured or subjected to crime in almost any context her gender will be emphasized.

Men comprise around 100% of all workplace deaths and a large majority of serious workplace accidents, but such facts are rarely acknowledged. Yet National Radio seems keen to publicize every public comment bemoaning the gap between average earnings of men and women (with little analysis of the various reasons behind that gap, and rarely any mention of the high personal price men pay for their slightly higher average earnings). By using gender-nonspecific terms such as “firefighters” when it is men who are injured, National Radio is devaluing men and their contribution to society. This covertly promotes feminist anti-male mythology that has become established in our society.

Hans Laven
Tauranga