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.”

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.

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.

At Men’s Centre North Shore in the mid-90s, we heard regular reports by a member who had been sentenced to supervised access on the basis of an uncoroberated accusation by his ex-wife.

The treatment he received was downright abusive, and seemed calculated to destroy any possibility of meaningful relationship with his daughter. The false belief that daddy was bad and dangerous was repeatedly re-inforced by the supervisor. She constantly interrupted conversations to abuse the father, and most normal father-daughter subjects were forbidden.

The visits were consistently so stressful and unpleasant that the child eventually refused to attend, and complete parental alienation was achieved. I am thinking Skeptik may have also met this particular father.

I would particularly like to invite comments from other men who have personally attended a NZ supervised access centre.

The Domestic Violence Act stipulation that children automatically get added to a Domestic Protection Order is the root of the problem in my view. There is no evidence that partner violence in the context of a relationship breakdown automatically places the children in increased danger.

No child should undergo forced separation from a parent at the hands of the State unless there is actual evidence that the child is unsafe. There must be proper judicial due process for establishing this, not just a rubber stamp. The process should take days, not months and years.

Until we reform this aspect of the law, the supply of new victims (both fathers and children) continue to provide unnecessary jobs for supervisors. I’m with the hardliners on this point – the current system is plain wrong and it needs fixing.

But, in the meantime, we are stuck with the fundamentally flawed and gender biased Family Court and the ideologically-based laws which support it. Even if the revolution were to succeed tomorrow, we can hardly solve the problem by lining up every Family Court collaborator against the wall and executing them!

Separating parents will continue to argue and manipulate and hit each other. Conflicts will still need to be resolved by outsiders in many situations. There will still be children who want to see their parents even though they actually are potentially dangerous, in which case supervision might be entirely appropriate.

So while we are waiting (and advocating for) major reform, isn’t it useful to work with the system and attempt to influence cultural change from within?

In addition to the two mentioned above, I have met a number of men working for the Family Court or its agencies who are in a position to make the environment around them marginally more male-friendly. I sure know who I would want to supervise my access if the choice was between Alan or a hairy man-hating lesbian!

Martin, I have given you much more leeway than I normally would, because I am aware there is no effective due process for making complaints or resolving disputes about supervised access.

But your efforts to circumvent moderation only succeeded because I wasn’t paying attention – be warned that I can and will ban you completely if you continue to suck up my time and energy by breaking the rules. I’m particularly annoyed with you for hi-jacking the excellent airline seating discussion. If the oppositional behaviour you are demonstrating on this site is the way you habitually deal with the world, I am not surprised that you have failed to achieve a satisfactory outcome with regard to your boys.

I think much of the abuse directed at Alan is over-the-top, and unfair, and I believe he genuinely has got men’s interest’s at heart. However, when any of us accept payments for professional services, we have to accept the possibility of dissatisfied clients. Ideally there is a professional mechanism for resolving complaints; where there is not then we become fair game i the public arena.

I think it is great that men like Alan engage in discussions on MENZ. I worry that many of the responses this site generates make it a hostile environment at times, but then I reflect that this is the nature of most un-moderated forums. But others are more likely to consider your point-of-view if you treat them with respect. Carrots work better than sticks, blah blah. Why can’t we all just, you know, get along?

Is there anything basically wrong with financially benefiting from working within an institution that is corrupted? I suggest not – if every male-friendly Family Court worker was to resign tomorrow the system would not collapse – it would just become a whole lot tougher for fathers. I say the more non-feminist workers the better!

In the interests of full disclosure I should note that my wife Felicity gets paid for expert witness work in sex abuses prosecutions, many of which would not occur if NZ laws were less influenced by feminist principles.

I don’t agree that organisations like UOF should always put men’s interests first, in the way that feminist organisations do for women. This “us against them” mentality which has been driving the gender wars is part of the problem, not the solution.

I strongly support the idea that laws and social services should operate “in the best interest of the child”, and I think that when they eventually do this, there will be little need for a Father’s Rights Movement.

I like to thing we are heading towards a Truth & Reconciliation commission rather than a firing squad!

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

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.

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

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:

“Several months ago, I was sitting on the train on the way home from work. A schoolgirl had been bullied by another girl, and was now sitting in the stairwell crying.

As the father of two daughters, I instinctively wanted to go and comfort her and make sure that she was alright. Looking around the carriage, I could see that many other men, who were obviously fathers, wanted to do the same.

However we knew we could not publicly follow our natural instinct that we had as fathers to protect children.

Much like those few remaining male primary school teachers who are afraid to close their classroom doors, we knew we couldn’t go near her, because of the reprehensible belief of a few that men in general are a danger to children”.

Last year I wrote a complaint to the Human Rights Commission where Air New Zealand came back with the answer that they would only be interested in dealing with me if I had been affected personally on one of their flights. Not much chance of that since I am not a male. The policy doesn’t affect women (yet).

Anyways, at present one man in the UK is suing British Airlines for discrimination while he was on a flight. I hope he wins.

Mr Fischer, a 33-year-old hedge fund manager, became aware of the policy while he was flying from Gatwick with his wife Stephanie, 30.

His wife, who was six months pregnant, had booked a window seat which she thought would be more spacious. Mr Fischer was in the middle seat between her and a 12-year-old boy.

Shortly after all passengers had sat down, having stowed their bags in the overhead lockers, a male steward asked Mr Fischer to change his seat.

Mr Fischer refused, explaining that his wife was pregnant, at which point the steward raised his voice, causing several passengers to turn round in alarm. He warned that the aircraft could not take off unless Mr Fischer obeyed.

Mr Fischer eventually moved seats but felt so humiliated by his treatment that he is taking the airline to court on the grounds of sex discrimination-He is paying all his own legal

If he wins at the hearing next month at Slough County Court, BA will have to change its policy.

He has promised to donate any compensation to the NSPCC.

One of the comments made was from another man, Rigger, from Western Australia, who experienced the same discrimination.

I normally disapprove of people who sue at the drop of a hat for being ‘offended’ but I truly hope that Mirko Fischer wins his case and drags the airline through the mire.

On boarding an internal flight in Australia just before Christmas I was settled into my window seat in a row of 3 seats. The adjacent seats were empty and a family boarded. They were having trouble finding seats together for the children. A steward was about to usher two of the children into the vacant seats next to me, then noticed me sitting there and changed his mind as if he’d realised that he was about to make a ‘mistake’ and horror of horrors seat the children next to A MAN !!!

The irony is that some of the worst cases of child abuse that have occurred in recent months have been committed by women. But that fact doesn’t suit the agenda here.

Wikipedia History is worth a read.

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.

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.