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

I am concerned at the angst showing in many recent posts on these pages. Some men are taking too long to climb out of their hurt and see all of the faces of the world surrounding us.

Are they taking responsibility for the hurts that they may have given?
12 Steps shows a good path, which includes righting the wrongs that you have done to others.
Wikipedia 12 Steps Programme
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Men have no reproductive rights. In fact they are punished and held in servitude for the reproductive choices of women. Think I am exaggerating? Think again.

Here is an American group raising awareness of this issue.

“The problems connected to unwanted pregnancies exist not because a guy has sex. Sex will always happen. The problems happen because American males simply are not aware of how dating, sex and our legal system work against them.”

This stuff should be part of the education we give boys. We could start by having volunteers give a lecture at voluntary senior classes in boys schools.

A gathering of academicians drawn from a range of disciplines will meet on April 7, 2010, at Wagner College, Staten Island, New York, to examine the declining state of the male, stemming from cataclysmic changes in today’s culture, environment and global economy. The live teleconferenced colloquium will be chaired by Lionel Tiger, PhD, Rutgers University Charles Darwin Professor of Anthropology. It will encompass a broad range of topics relevant to the study of boys and men in contemporary society ranging from their roles in the family and workforce, as well as their physical and emotional health, to the growing problem of misandry—the hatred of males, an unacknowledged but underlying socio-cultural, economic, political and legal phenomenon endangering the well-being of both genders.

The link is here.

The feminist reaction to all this has been unsurprising.

MP Peter Dunne from United Future political party opened the Wairarapa Men’s Health meeting very well, ..I thought. I particularly liked the way he addressed lots of areas where work is needed and included men’s issues spoken on men’s sites. I know some of his wording won’t go down well but I also know it’s good to see progress.

Here is part of his speech….

I want to spend a few minutes this morning touching on some of the more difficult realities faced by men in New Zealand – and perhaps it will be a sensitive issue in this room today, as much as it is in wider New Zealand.

We have a lot of angry men in this country.

They tend to be men who are very hurt, often coming out of relationship break-ups in which they feel they have been unfairly treated – particularly in areas such as custody of children and child support.

Chief Family Court Judge Peter Boshier last year – to his very real credit – addressed the tragedy that 18 people involved in Family Court proceedings had killed themselves in a 12-month period to June last year.

Add to that four homicides.
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Have you ever wondered why we don’t have men’s rights and yet we have women’s rights, children’s rights, animal’s rights, even rights for plants? You might say it’s because of feminism and you would be right to a large degree. It’s not helpful for men when there exists a man-hate movement. But could there be a bit more to it?

If you’ve ever wondered, like I have, you’ll enjoy this interesting 10 minute presentation by manwomanmyth.com with guest speakers Angry Harry, a well known and well respected Men’s Rights Advocate and Activist alongside Erin Pizzy, author and international speaker of domestic violence who made the world’s first women’s refuge and Stephen Fitzgerald, director of Mankind Men’s charity.

Family First NZ says that violence in our community and towards people of authority such as the police will increase as long as we downplay the significance and benefits of strong marriages and committed fathers.

“The response of governments, even today, has been more money and more laws. Yet this fails to deal with the root causes of what is happening. Fatherlessness is a major contributor to increasing rates of juvenile violence,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ.

“Scientific research is unanimous on a number of conclusions regarding family structure – that strong marriages increases the likelihood that fathers have good relationships with their children and lowers the risk of alcohol and substance abuse, domestic violence and child abuse,”

“Conversely, parental divorce or non-marriage appears to increase children’s risk of delinquent and criminal behaviour, amongst other factors. One only needs to observe proceedings at the Youth Court to see the effect of fatherlessness.”

“According to The Heritage Foundation, an influential US research institute, an analysis of social science literature over 30 years shows that the rise in violent crime parallels the rise in families abandoned by fathers. A state-bystate analysis indicated that a 10% increase in the percentage of children living in single-parent homes lead typically to a 17% increase in juvenile crime. The research found that criminal behaviour has its roots in habitual deprivation of parental love and affection going back to early infancy.”
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A leading men’s health organisation in Australia claims that the Minister for the Status of Women, Hon Gail Gago MLC, misled Parliament by maintaining that false statistics on the Government’s Don’t Cross the Line anti-violence campaign website are accurate, back in October 2009. The Minister defended the misleading statistics in Parliament, claiming that “the data on the Don’t Cross the Line website is sound.”

MHA (Men’s Health Australia) also lodged an official complaint with the Ombudsman after attempting for five months to draw the Minister’s attention to the major statistical errors on the website.

Spokesman for MHA Greg Andresen said, “The Facts and Stats page of the website is extremely misleading to the public. It clearly inflates statistics about domestic violence against women while understating statistics about domestic violence against men.”

Men’s Health Australia supports efforts to reduce family violence in the community but is concerned that the use of incorrect or misleading ‘statistics’ by Governments unfairly stigmatises men and boys as violent and abusive, while at the same time denies services to male victims of violence.

Another concern for MHA is that the Government’s approach is not in the interests of all children in families where there is abuse or violence because it selectively favours those children in families where violence is perpetrated by the father leaving out support for children who are abused by mothers.

Some of the campaign’s errors alleged by Men’s Health Australia include:
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Dear Wendy,

I read your article about father’s suicides, with quite a bit of pain.

While men’s suicide shows up grossly and obviously in national suicide statistics, I suspect that women’s suicides due to court traumatisation from removal of relationships with children is a faster growing problem.

The feeling of traumatisation due to injustice does cut very deep and isn’t so obvious to someone who has not experienced it directed in their direction. This is why I see the “judges” who do it regularly, as relationship vandals and slaughterers.

In my own personal experience, I know of several father suicides and no mother suicides.

However, when I think of traumatisation by caught process, I know a roughly similar number of women as men, who are so traumatised that their adult life is presently destroyed.

This leads me to conclude that as the caught processes harden up, we may soon be seeing similar numbers of women’s suicides as we presently see men’s.
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October is Domestic Violence month and one court case alone in West Virginia, USA, has given a shimmer of hope for men in this terrible time of gender discrimination against them. A group of men and women against discrimination (MAWAD) have taken the state’s family service board to court over discrimination laws. Not only are services being biased to men and boys when it comes to domestic violence but feminists are not allowing men or women to work in these services if they don’t believe in radical feminist ideology. They are being bullied by feminists who are retraining them in falsehoods and forced to practice things they know are not true. In this day and age of information there is no reason why feminist teaching should have any say what so ever in family affairs. We don’t follow ideologies any more and consider beliefs a personal thing. They don’t belong in the public arena.

The honorable Judge Stucky handed the Family Services Board of WV a resounding defeat, often citing gender bias and lack of science to their approach, quoting “a substantial chilling effect of suppressing their members expression of speech, thoughts and ideas relative to domestic violence by depriving them even of the opportunity to obtain certified services”. This often included preconceived untruths promulgated by the falsehoods of the domestic violence “experts” within these services. It also found that services “excluded Men and adolescent males from their statutory right to safety and security free from domestic violence for no other reason than their gender”.

http://wadvpress.org/?p=347
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Media release – Familes Commission

Non-resident fathers study suggests more support needed

21 July 2009

A group of separated fathers who experienced enormous grief and frustration when they were no longer able to live with their children have told researchers that community services do not provide the help they needed.

The study Pathways through Parental Separation [PDF, 557K], funded by the Families Commission Innovative Practice Fund, analysed discussions with 20 non-resident fathers to find strategies for supporting fathers through the process of separation.