What happened after meeting in Waitakere?
I am just putting this out there so others get a feel for what is going on and for the lesson that I have learnt and the support and how to get it and how you will not get it.
As we all know NZ is a small country and when you are considering moving in the political scene you become known and labelled pretty quickly. The same goes for the community trust scene.
Our meeting did come over strong to be anti feminist. That name/label ‘Anti-feminist’ is a very dangerous label and anyone with it is going to hit brick walls and the doors will shut fast one after another. This is what I am being told from a few good and worthwhile bigger palyers.
Most people are aware there needs to be change in NZ for males and women’s support is going to be a big asset. There are women already out there who deal with the violence on males and there are politicians and women in high places that are supportive. But it is not their job to make it work as they already have jobs that keep them busy full-time and in overtime with other commitments on projects.
It seems that some males here are barred from entering political offices (hehehe, that’s funny) and such and just the sheer mention of their name is enough to have you cut off at the knees. (so to speak) This is pretty much how it is in any business which does suck really. But it is a reality that has to be dealt with.
Anyhow, it seems that I personally have not cut myself out completely from the support of others but I am being looked at wearily and I can’t afford to make any mistakes.
So, basically, I am not going anti feminist because that is not going to achieve what I want.
However, I am aware that other groups who are anti feminist will still achieve what it is they are wanting. The two cannot combine unless it is sure there is control. These are the wise words that I have been given and I am not ignoring them.
However, there is a couple of males that I think CAN mellow out enough to work with prominent groups and politicians and the people so I am not cutting anyone out. Just so you know, we are making a committee as an arm of Auckland Single Parent’s Trust for fathers and their children. This has a 5 year plan to achieve a National Body for males and a Men’s Affairs in parliament.
Just putting this out there for anyone else who is wanting to learn from my lesson so as to make sure we achieve what we set out to do and don’t end up with wasting our time for the next so many years. I am aware many males may not agree with the way I do things and that is OK. But at least this way, we all understand.
Good stuff Julie,
yet the ground you have achieved should not be lost in the argument that two sides need to be defined. You have already worked past that principle by having the experience to write your letter and in this forum.
So, you are not cutting anyone off. Yet you should not determine one group to be pro and one group to be anti feminist, which would be to lose that ground, define two groups and set up a position of adversarial reform.
Once you are organised, just repeat the process, as you did previously. Draw the groups together in a community setting to air the common view. I’m up in Auckland on Saturday and Sunday. You should come around for a coffee at my mums. We can chat more stratergy if you want. I’ll be back up during early October and would be interested in being involved in some kind of mutual organising. I am sure we will able to figure out what it is that should be done and put it together.
Good on you!
Comment by Benjamin Easton — Thu 9th August 2007 @ 11:51 am
This sounds like a workable strategy Julie. How do interested fathers get involved?
I guess you’re hard at work getting all the details prepared to post on the singleparents.org.nz website, I’ll keep a lookout!
Comment by JohnP — Thu 9th August 2007 @ 12:06 pm
Plan the work and work the plan.
Your starting to get the idea Julie.
Well done
Regards
Scrap
Comment by Scrap_The_CSA — Thu 9th August 2007 @ 12:27 pm
John,
It will be up on the site later today. There is a bit of researching I need to do beforehand. Yes, we would like to find good people to help with this committee. The reason we are using Auckland Single Parents Trust is because it has been a professional legal entity for 3 years. That makes it easier to get money and we have been told we are going to need a lot of money for this and we are going for it with good support.
If anyone is interested please contact me on;
[email protected]
Comment by julie — Thu 9th August 2007 @ 12:35 pm
Julie,
when I came down to Wellington I had to abandon an event I was organising of a debate bwteen fathers’ groups and lawyers. The event was penciled in with the debaters, a lawyer Stuart Cummings as the coordinator and I had the venue Hoani Waititi Marae tentatively organised. Media were interested. I am still in Wellington, planning to take 1.5 months travelling the North Island collecting signatures for a petition to be presented to the Council of Chiefs, on October 28th.
By coming up to Auckland and away from Wellington for such a long period I am able to be responsible to what I would organise. If you are in west Auckland, able to assist to organise, we could bring this debate off. It would be timely and valuable. We could fill the hall easily. Would you be interested?
Comment by Benjamin Easton — Thu 9th August 2007 @ 12:45 pm
If you do not maintain a totally non responsive approach to being politely and inventively told that there is no more than the intention to listen, then the door will be slammed in your face. Always nice knowing you have got a choice isn’t it.
Comment by Bevan Berg — Thu 9th August 2007 @ 12:46 pm
Bevan,
The way I read it is that not all of us with men’s interests at heart should claim to be antifeminist.
Feminist politicians have little to gain from us, so they won’t negotiate. We need to give them an incentive to negotiate, even if it makes us extremely unpopular.
Men who call themselves antifeminists have the task of legitimising the word, but they will never be thanked for it, nor will they be negotiated with.
That job will fall to the more ‘moderate’ voices that distinguish themselves by not using the militant language. Both groups need each other. The moderates don’t get spoken to unless the militants agitate. The militant’s agitation amounts to nothing if it doesn’t translate into political power.
This was how the feminist view infiltrated so many Western governments. All the current crop of leaders had their formative years in the 1960’s and ’70s, when militant feminism was the force du jour. They all soaked it up, consciously or otherwise. Now they’re reflecting this early influence onto the rest of us through law, politcs, media and academia.
Yet I’ve never heard Helen Clark, Michael Cullen and the other principal proponents of feminism ever refer to themselves as feminists. They are the moderates who chose to avoid the label.
Comment by Rob Case — Thu 9th August 2007 @ 1:12 pm
Feminist politicians have every thing to gain from us. Their continued positions of power and privilege, and a massive additional revenue collection called child support. They only engage the overtly reasonable and the gullible. Their continued control of the country will only ever result in increasing social and economic disorder, corruption, and courts of compliance. It may be intelligent mugabiism, but it is still political thuggery, and not democracy. Democracy isn’t a one day every three years political party peice.
Comment by Bevan Berg — Thu 9th August 2007 @ 1:49 pm
Bevan,
Rob has given wise words to you. The problem that you have faced in the past is that you protest. You speak out about the unjustice and sadly your protest and words become yesterdays news pretty soon.
Now you take a step to get a political party together which is great. But even then you can’t make something out of just changing a law. Look to all the laws that change. Something was in place for it to change. The No Smacking Bill had been planned for 4 years. There is a way to make it happen instead of just throwing the law out there and wishing for the best. Groups were already getting prepared. Millions of dollars was already invested into the community. TV programs and such were introduced at the same time. Nothing that goes on in parliament is done without the people behind the scenes earning $400 an hour plus putting it together.
All that is needed to make this work is; for something to be available as the vehicle to make it happen. I know John said that Man Alive is not moving into North Shore but I know what is going on. I know what is happening behind the scenes. You DO need this. You just don’t know it yet.
This has to be teamwork.
You as a male can get away with being angry and anti feminism because that is what is expected of men who are in the position as a father seperated and wanting his children. Women are expected to use their children as a weapon. No one is dumb to behaviour and no one is anit males for the way they behave.
I am not a male so I cannot go into this being anti feminist because I don’t have the excuse you do. Infact, I will be considered more insane than the radical feminists. We CAN’T go back in time. That doesn’t happen because people will always evolve. The feminists are not threatened by anti feminists. They have already fufilled their plans which cannot be undone for 100’s of years withouth massive radical support.
It is time to build your own empire. Where do males fit in today? That is what you have to figure out. But then again you can join the many MRA sites out there and spend a couple of years hoping and saying that the “Sky is falling down” (chicken little)
Comment by julie — Thu 9th August 2007 @ 2:49 pm
There is a direct difference between protesting and being proactive with action. Being proactive requires event planning with effect. To debate the issue to determine which group overall controls power and its relativity to and disaffected group describes the game that gets played out over conntrol. Rob describes this. The building of empires and cooperation from within any particular community comes from strong communities and not from them separating to achieve strenght. The commonality exploited when various communities who are damaged come togehter to challenge that problem identifies the overall strength of the group. That means that teh group isn’t fighting amongst themselves, because they recognise the problem and their individual behaviours have nothing to do with its solution.
Julie puts into place a practice. That practice is focused. That focus rallies a group to challenge a common problem fromt he perspective of the user base. It sets an example.
Yet, if teh problem here is seen as feminism, the collective attitude can be broken, where it in its end is not the common denominator. Julie identifies if this is her point, that she cannot be anti feminist. She cannot she is a woman. There is no value in challenging herself. She can only challenge the behaviour from women that she sees wounds men, which is detrimental to her gender.
Men, on teh other hand are disadvantaged because they cannot directly attack women. So to do would be to disaffect the relationship they seek to engage.
So the commonality isn’t described. It hasn’t yet been identified. The debate continues without a cohesive end. Yet logically, what is the commonality? It is function. We all have to be healthy and secure and for the adverse conditions we are not. We cannot work together effectively because on the issue of gender the position is diverse. So that rules out adult functionality which includes terms like feminist and or masculist.
So we arrive at the function (human) being common. It’s commonality is children. As adults we have a duty to protect children, yet we debate the issue from an adult perspective and cannot agreee on the terms to define unity. So surely, the first principle to recognise our commonality is to recognise our responsibility and our responsibility is to children.
Shouldn’t this be how we get organised?
Comment by Benjamin Easton — Thu 9th August 2007 @ 4:06 pm
Great to hear Julie. I put my hand up to support as far as I can. As a beneficiary that is not very far. Tell me what I can do from here.
Alastair
Comment by Alastair — Thu 9th August 2007 @ 4:17 pm
Hi Alistair,
It would be great to have you on board and you don’t need to be close by to be on the committee. However, you do need to pass the criteria with the Charities Commission. We will be dealing with a lot of money. But it is no biggie.
I will e-mail you off line.
Comment by julie — Thu 9th August 2007 @ 5:08 pm
Ben, I see what you are writing as confusing some of the basics. Woman – adult female. Man – adult male. Feminism — is the realm of thought, and political ideology (that has now abandoned the rule of law.), and sssshhh, you can only talk politics if you don’t mention the “F” word. Don’t tell me you fell for that one.
Comment by Bevan Berg — Thu 9th August 2007 @ 5:14 pm
Bevan,
You know that I don’t know what you know and you know that I haven’t been involved for very long. (lots of Knows, lol)
So, I think you want me to learn and I think you want me to help and most importantly, you are being extremely kind to let me have the time to catch up with you.
I can’t understand why you challenge me unless it is for other readers.
Comment by julie — Thu 9th August 2007 @ 5:37 pm
If you mean fathers as the F word, yes I agree. If you get a chance under this principle research Colin James where he wrote about this, and I suggest my challenge. The title was something along the lines The F and C words.
If directly, you mean where I say Julie is a woman so cannot effectively challenge feminism because she is a woman this is entirely logical and doesn’t bare an argument for progress.
In the House today, Bill English asked from a series of questions, a good principle behind what he wanted to get across, yet unsuccessfully, I thought in the end. It was principled to this premise you dismiss.
Interpret a word, like “publish” like “sex”, like “emergency”, like “feminism” or wider even into a concept like “good faith”. like “reasonable doubt” and balance of probability”.
And then create an argument around those words. This is easy enough to do.
So my point goes astray. We will only get to unity if we combine to protect the interests of children. Other “isms” will distract us. We can deal with these broader issues for taking into our control the more specific demand, which is protecting the child to their inheritable right of association with fatherhood.
Comment by Benjamin Easton — Thu 9th August 2007 @ 5:42 pm
Julie, if you are going to caricature me, I would have preferred something along the lines of a distressed anteater, which could not eat terminates fast enough to stop the foundations crumbling, or even the head dozer, who said off with you fragils, but Chicken Little, have a heart.
Comment by Bevan Berg — Thu 9th August 2007 @ 5:52 pm
“F” was for feminism.
Comment by Bevan Berg — Thu 9th August 2007 @ 5:55 pm
It’s like watching the merry go round at the fair Julie. It stops and some people get off and some people get on, but when it starts up again its still playing the same tune,
and as they go round in circles you can watch the people being taken for a ride.
Comment by Bevan Berg — Thu 9th August 2007 @ 6:39 pm
I agree. Avoid being seen as anti-feminism and anti-gay. This is bad strategy when fund raising and trying to work with the system.
Personally I also think you will get much further if you focus on the fatherless children and relate issues rather than on men. People don’t care about men. People do care about children.
Also by be focused and expressing things in child focused terms, it makes anyone opposing you seem to be anti-child and generally extremest.
Comment by Dave — Thu 9th August 2007 @ 7:01 pm
lol Bevan, #16
Chicken Little is a cool li’il character. And funny enough, “The sky really is falling.” hehe
Comment by julie — Thu 9th August 2007 @ 7:54 pm
No we can’t say anything about feminists and gays, what are they protected species. So they can have any opinion they want and you can’t say anything. Yeah right.
Comment by Bevan Berg — Thu 9th August 2007 @ 9:21 pm
Personally I have a lot to say about feminists. However I am not asking anyone for funding or trying to setup a government ministry.
Comment by Dave — Thu 9th August 2007 @ 10:37 pm
Dave is right Bevan – as are you, as am I and Julie is establishing a practice that will allow her to exercise influence in the mainstream acceptable terms of communication.
BTW, I don’t need a Ministry prepresenting my affairs. Being a bloke, I am human, like the rest of us. I’m not interested in this kind of segregation, where the practices of the individual genders (or race to stretch the longer bow) can be accomodated and respected without the necessities of some government funded agency challenging/ matketing to; everyone else to say they are a poor and neglected sector of society. We should just get on with the business recognising, respecting and honouring our differences, integrating those variations into societal function, exploiting those that for their enhancement over the deficit of their opposites should be executed in the interests of all.
Presently, (as immediately pending) as we get closer now to open debates on homosexuality and its demonstrable justification in freedom to eliminate the protected securities of the child to associations with their genetic and biological imprint; the avoidance from debate assuming that the COC is justifiably a right for lesbian women as natural to their bodies is likely to work against their demanding want from the past: If MW, hadn’t of manipulated parliamentary privelege to override every societal protection of constiutional law, and SM wasn’t protected to tell the world that we’re decent UN folk down here in NZ, when quite openly we are not then the events may have been different.
Sort of makes me think and be suspicious that we are all being cruelly manipulated in some way or another – necessary as host for the revolution that has to be demanded if there is ever to be a collective justification in the nation. Sort of like John Howard enacting his want not anticipating a Hone Harawira jumping around on his back door and then having to figure his way out of what is an most extraordinarily embarrassing discovery.
And that’s the point.
There are no more excuses to be negotiated. There is no more fiction. All we have left is fact. So don’t be shy boys.
Comment by Benjamin Easton — Fri 10th August 2007 @ 9:58 am
I cannot see how I wrote prepresenting, although I wish I had the intelligence so to have done. It is either a mistake on my part, which is extraordinary given the location of teh relevant keys, or an interference of advanced technology.
Comment by Benjamin Easton — Fri 10th August 2007 @ 10:00 am