Hi MENZ Readers,
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
Is the mother in the article Shock at ‘subjecting children to unimaginable and horrific living conditions ‘acting outside her normal gender role??? Is this possible?? If so then males must be capable of it as well. This then makes it a non gender issue…period.
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.
Here’s an interesting article from Carey Roberts, a US “commentator on political correctness”. He describes how the Democrat (Obama’s) candidate lost the recent Massachusetts senate election because she previously discriminated against a male and tried to keep him, but not females convicted of the same offences, in prison for sexual convictions based on ridiculous evidence, similar to but even more ridiculous than our Peter Ellis case. The US public appears to be losing respect for male-bashing women, and that will increasingly happen in NZ too. Robers writes: “Prosecuting innocent men for crimes they didn’t commit is no longer the sure-fire formula to electoral success it once appeared to be.”
In 2005 airlines such as Air New Zealand and Qantas were found to have a policy that children and teenagers who are unaccompanied by parents or caregivers cannot sit next to men. Air New Zealand spokesman David Jamieson said the company had no intention of reviewing the policy and admitted that it had been in place for many years.British Airways also has the same policy which was revealed in 2001.
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:
(more…)
The Office of the Auditor-General is at the early stages of a performance audit of how well Inland Revenue manages child support debt. They are looking to get the views of people interacting with IRD about child support.
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 : [email protected]
BTW, belated Merry Xmas and Happy New Year to you all.
Firstly let me say that my thoughts are with the Haiti people. Such a scenario could easily happen here. Not only that but men always come off worse in such disasters. So there are 2 reasons beyond basic humanity for caring about Haiti.
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.
Please pass this on to all contacts.
Print it off and distribute it widely in public places.
We could also do with a New Zealand presence in Issue #3 !
Download and save MRm! magazine issue 2 [17.8 MB], then add .pdf to the filename so it will open.
A woman in the USA tried to sell her 2 yr old child in exchange for a gun.
“Nareau allegedly told the man that he would do a better job raising the child than she would — and that she couldn’t buy a gun because she was prohibited by law to buy one.”
I guess that is better than the many women in NZ that bash and abuse their children but never even get reported.
I haven’t been able to find any good descriptions of lobbying caughts, through appealing undesired judgements. If you know of some, please draw our attention to them.
There are many good examples of mothers and fathers lobbying the caughts, by challenging judgements through appeal. When done with a constructive strategy, then success can result.
Google: wikipedia lobbying
Lobbying
(more…)
Those who have experience or knowledge of Parental Alienation (PA) can do something that might cause this condition to be taken more seriously. The American Psychiatric Association is working on the next edition of the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This is the leading psychiatric diagnostic classification system used in many countries including NZ. Glen Sacks’ organisation Fathers & Families is making it easy to send letters to key DSM personnel providing additional evidence that PA needs to be recognized as a mental disorder similar to other “relational disorders” that have already been included in the DSM. If PA is included in the DSM that will put a stop to those who deny PA as a phenomenon and it will make it almost impossible for any Family Court to turn a blind eye to PA if diagnosed. I encourage people to go to the Fathers & Families page, scroll down to find and complete the online form and let them do the rest. The DSM is based on international research and evidence so correspondence from NZ will be as influential as any.
I was just wondering how common it is for a man who has been arrested for murder to be immediately released on bail to stay with friends and not have to report in until trial?
Woman-faces-murder-charge
Well, my prediction has come true (See //menz.org.nz/2009/peter-dunne’s-christmas-present/)
Child support is to get a shake-up in the New Year after revelations eligible parents owe more than $1.7 billion in payment
Have a read of the full text of this article and start planning what ACTION you are committed to make child tax reform an issue that wont go away.
Yes you can blog and write letters to ministers who do nothing to improve your slavery or you can get on the streets and take ACTION.
The matrix of Family Law will only get better when the members of Cabinet, those who decide the law changes, are forced to make positive change by the ACTION of the child tax slaves.
Its a new year and ACTION is comming : That could be stopping traffic on the Wellington Motorway, occupying IRD offices in Wellington, living in a tent city outside Dunnes home……. .
If you want change get ready for ACTION.
Regards
Scrap
You who have been removed by the Family Court from the sight of your children read the article below and see if you can identify some parallels.
The report said:
“Many of the children have emotional problems, which appear to get worse, not better, over time. A small number are walking powder kegs badly in need of high-quality interventions.
“There is evidence of significant physical sickness, too, and emerging major conduct disorders and mental health problems.”
Children suffered from “anger, nightmares, bed-wetting, low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, shame and attachment problems”. Younger children experienced emotional upset, while older children experienced anger, violence and bed-wetting and adolescents were involved in drugs and “sexualised behaviour”, the report found.
(more…)
The December 2009 issue of Journal of Primary Health Care (JPHC), which is edited by my wife Felicity Goodyear-Smith, has a men’s health focus.
In the editorial she writes:
The health of our men contributes greatly to the health of our nation. Overall men have a poorer health status than women and use our health services less frequently. They die earlier than women and more of their deaths are avoidable.
(more…)
While The Minister for Child Tax, Peter Dunne, plays an elf in the Johnsonville Christmas Parade I wonder what his Christmas present for those afflicted by Child Tax will be?
Consider this; if the changes the oligarchy of officials proposes for tinkering with the current Child Tax legislation are to be implemented in 2010 Dunne has to act by the 22 of December. Assuming Dunne wants to implement the officials latest attempt to patch the flaws in the Child Tax Act 1991, by the next financial year, he will need to have everything in place by 31 March. To achieve the tinkering for the next financial year he has to move by 22 December.
Of course my prediction could be wrong, but the tinkering means changing the code that runs the programs that produce the assessments and that all takes time. The patches would have to be in place for the financial year end, it would be an administrative nightmare to implement at any other time as assessments would change and under and over payment would be rife.
It would not surprise me if the changes were released just before Christmas as the “feel good” news of the Christmas period will drown out the news that a major piece of the matrix of Family Law is being tinkered with yet again. You can’t fix this legislation it’s fundamentally flawed!
PT 2: BRAINWASHED KIDS, CRAZY MOTHER AND THE FC.
before my husband and i enter the fc AGAIN we need all the advice and support from any of the fathers out there who have won custody of their child/ren or maybe in the process of. ARE THERE ANY ??
I am the step-mother of boy 11 and girl 13, our plight started in 2005 with supervised then unsupervised day contact only, then moving into fortnight contact and half of all the school holidays.shared care is not possible being that ex lives in another town.hubby and i have had to fight all the way just to get contact and maintain it. throughout this, the mother has made it increasingly difficult (to say the least) to maintain a relationship with the kids. the ongoing brainwashing, manipulation and parental alienation is mind-boggling. as a mother of 6 (and happily going through contact with my ex for 6yrs) also raised a “whangai” and two nephew’s im disgusted that this female uses her own children as pawns, to voice her issues and hang-ups she has towards my husband. hubby separated from his ex in 2002 she left with the kids to another town. my husband and i met in 2003, he had not seen his children, we had a child in 2005 and 6 months later finally supervised contact took place, another battle took place in court to move into unsupervised contact “day contact” and yes! another battle, to move toward fortnight contact and half the holidays, hubby and i won them all but was it a fight! fortnight contact started in 2006.
things went along swimingly for 6 months. feb 2007 hubby and i made it legal and married ex was furious and problems occurred. ex was shacked up with partner and had been since 2006 but vigorously denied it ??? dont know why, maybe it was because she was in receipt of dpb and boyfriend had own home (of which they were living in) and own business, not to mention she has legal aid. Nov 2008 ex wants contact to cease,another court battle affidavits flying all over the show, a year passes and finally we had a date, last week, we received the judges decision “we won” yayy… contact remains!!
umm no sorry- lawyer for children has been instructed by boy 11 to appeal decision…wtf
without sounding like something out of the days of our lives i’ll leave it there. hubby and i are seriously contemplating challenging the mother for custody of boy 11 in order for us to do this we will need all the help we can get- this is unfamiliar territory to us and although we are confident our lawyer will do all she can, we feel we need to know first hand accounts of what we will be getting ourselves into.
i am thinking our main argument to be “phycological damage caused by the mother to the child” also the children have never had the chance to form a strong relationship with their father, the mother being the main hindrance for it, we believe the longer boy 11 stays in her care, runs a risk of more damage being done to him mentally.
i must send a great big thankyou to “FATHERS OF NZ” without their advice, which i followed to the letter we would not of otherwise had a favorable outcome this time around. …thanks menz issue for making the link accessible.
An estimated crowd of more than 4000 packed Auckland’s Queen St yesterday to protest against the Government’s refusal to back a citizen-initiated referenda over the so-called anti-smacking law where 87% of people’s vote was ignored by the government.
It was a great atmosphere with drummers, parents with children, and placards.
Colin Craig, who funded the march which cost several hundred thousands of dollars said, “We’ve made a brilliant start and I’m waiting for the next step,”
The placards slogans said “Warning: Police State” and “We’ve been 2 Hell ‘n’ Clark” and the people chanted messages such as “John Key listen to me, we want democracy.”
Among the speakers was Act Party MP John Boscawen. “It’s a huge crowd, it’s fantastic,” he said.
He said Prime Minister John Key was “not listening to 1.4 million people”, and said he ignored them “at his peril”.
Former Green MP Sue Bradford, who drafted the original bill, said future New Zealand societies would look back in amazement at people marching for the right to hit their children.
She was not surprised by the turnout because of the money spent on it. But she said the money would have been better spent elsewhere.
A spokeswoman for Key said the law would be changed if it was not working. “We have seen no evidence it is criminalising good parents,” she said.
NZHerald
Does Self Represented Litigant Need Judge’s Permission to show his own documents to his McKenzie Friend?
In England, the familycaught is quite a lot more formal and restrictive on allowing families to solve problems at a reasonable cost. Most UK lawyers milk their clients much harder than most NZ lawyers. Some NZ lawyers equal the very worst of UK lawyers, when it comes to bleeding their own customer dry.
England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions
UK judges vary a great deal, in their willingness to allow self represented litigants to have a McKenzie Friend in court, to assist them. Similarly in NZ, judges vary considerably. Before contemplating any caught action, find out who the local “judges” are and what their idiosyncracies are and whether these are likely to affect your case.
The following judgement does bring out the issues quite well. It is sobering reading:
Neutral Citation Number: [2005] EWCA Civ 759
Case No: B4/2004/2341&2693, B4/2005/0341
(more…)
Journalist AN MUNRO over at stuff.co.nz has written an very sad and detailed article about Anthony Sherna killing his partner after suffering years of abuse and being sentenced to 14 years in jail.
For almost 20 years he submitted in order to keep the peace. When she demanded he change his surname to prove he loved her, he agreed.
When she insisted he not see his friends or family, he complied. When she taunted him by resuming an affair with a former boyfriend and suggested he ”grow some balls”, he swallowed the insults.
When she said he was too smelly to use the toilet at home, he restrained himself until he arrived at work. When she refused to let him sleep in their double bed, he dossed down in the spare room on a camp stretcher.
He was sole breadwinner but she rationed his cigarettes – just 12 each day – and controlled their money. Each week after withdrawing the housekeeping money he handed over the cash, his ATM card and receipts.
It is shocking that he was sentenced to prison when he is a domestic violence victim and she a controlling abuser. If it had been the other way around and he was a she, he would have gained sympathy and walked free.
She is what is known as a narcissist and over at mensnewsdaily, they have Dr. Tara J. Palmatier writing articles about this type of women and the abuse men go through. She writes:
(more…)
I wrote a post about the UK men’s movement and how men (mostly young men) are speaking up and starting to ask for rights. Men never had any rights. They were also oppressed in society as women were and the gender roles did them no more favours than it did women.
They are not asking for the world or for women to be discriminated against but instead are asking for equality. Something that feminism is based on.
This is in reply to one of the comments. I thought it more appropriate to make it a thread of it’s own rather than turn the comments about the UK men’s movement into a New Zealand thread.
The commenter said:
I want men who are accused rapists to be forced to take the stand and be asked questions to ascertain their characters just as the rape survivor is forced to.
(more…)
There’s an interesting rape case being followed on the Internet. It involves an alleged rapist named Kevin Driscoll and an alleged rape victim named Melissa Leahy-Rossow. It’s a very sad reality that many, many young men go through while the rape industry continuously pushes for males to have harsher treatment and women to have lighter treatment by police and the judiciary court system.
On January 23rd 2009 Kevin Driscoll and his friend were out having drinks at a bar where they met Melissa Leahy-Rossow and her acquaintance Dennis Baker. Kevin invited them to his house where other guests also joined them.
On the night in question Melissa Leahy-Rossow had sex with Dennis and Kevin, separately at Kevin’s house. There would have been a third man except Dennis wasn’t interested in having a threesome. Dennis reported that Melissa sought three-way sexual intercourse in the hot tub with both himself and another man who was present, but that he would not agree to this, and that Melissa became angry at his refusal. He also gave her a hooded sweatshirt to wear because she wasn’t interested in wearing her own clothes.
Kevin reports that when he went to bed Melissa was already in his bed and wanted to have sex with him and he consented. This sex was reported by Melissa to be long lasting and extremely brutal where bruises and bites were left on her body as a result. She also said she ran to the door and tried to get out but he wouldn’t let her.
She said this happened at around 1.30am and that after the rape Kevin drove her to her car. The actual reality is that Kevin and Melissa had sex in the bedroom at 1.30am with the guests still in the house and the last left a 4.30am and Kevin drove Melissa to her car at 7.30am where they chatted for a while and Kevin gave Melissa his phone number.
The reason a lot of information is known is because there were security cameras at Kevin’s home and at the bar where Melissa’s car was left but this was something the police were not aware of at the time they arrested Kevin.
(more…)
This is a sponsored post.
I can’t quite figure out why their client is prepared to pay for this, or even what we are being “sold” – perhaps the message is just too subtle for me?
Anyway, it seems harmless, and contributions to hosting costs for MENZ are always welcome.
(more…)
By Simon Collins
4:00 AM Thursday Nov 19, 2009
NZ Herald
A top judge has called for more mental health support for people involved in Family Court cases after finding 18 suspected suicides by people involved in the court in the 13 months to June.
Principal Family Court Judge Peter Boshier, in a speech to be delivered in Blenheim this morning, also proposes a new specialist agency to refer victims and offenders in domestic violence cases to counselling and to chase up offenders who drop out of programmes.
(more…)
UK males are speaking up well on the biased treatment through feminists and their supporters. They have become such a loud voice that the media has been attacked persistently and consistently by large numbers of them, forcing the media to open ‘Pandora’s box’ and speak up about the abuse males receive from females. The greatest attack has been around sexual false rape allegations from women.
In 2000 police and criminologists were developing a “lie-detector” test to help uncover false allegations of rape.
In the new test, a claimant’s statement is analysed and points are given from a list of set clues – people who have made up a rape allegation get a low score, while genuine complaints get a high score.
Using this technique in two studies, police officers and researchers had a success rate of between 72 and 100 per cent in identifying genuine rape victims from liars. All the cases were real-life examples selected because of the existence of strong evidence, such as closed-circuit television footage, to prove the defendants’ guilt or innocence.
The two pieces of research indicate that police officers who rely on their detective skills and intuition when examining a statement by an alleged rape victim are no better than a member of the public at identifying a genuine complainant from a false one.
(more…)
Often groups are asked by fathers if there are father’s supports groups they can be referred to. I thought I would make a list of what is available online and offline and will add as I find more.
I needed to find one myself for the Nelson area and came across DIY’s list and have added a few more. If you can add any groups preferably in New Zealand that will be well appreciated.
Auckland
North Shore Fathers
Thursdays 9:30 am: Fathers and Family, Wednesdays 7pm: Fathers and Male Supporters, Every 3rd Saturday of the month 2pm: Family Barbecue at: Birkdale Community House, 134 Birkdale Rd., North Shore City
Contact Craig Davis
Father and Child Mauri Ora Father’s Circle
Mauri Ora Father’s group every Wednesday 7-9pm, at the Onehunga Community Centre, (next to the library), 83 Church Street, Onehunga, Auckland. We hope to see new faces, plus any local father advocates keen to contribute to the new Auckland committee. Children are welcome although we do leave them with the TV and a tin of biscuits!
Contact Brendon Smith or phone 525 1690
East Auckland Refuge for Men and Families
Contact Paul Catton or phone 271 3020
(more…)