FREE posting policy request
Mark Charalambous NE
>>Recognizing that FREE policy eschews confrontational actions, I
>>nonetheless feel that local groups who put on such activities should be
>>able to post them to the entire list.
<...text deleted...>
>>Presently, I fail to see how the personal observations of certain
>>individuals is more important than a protest announcement in Boston or
>>San Diego (October 13). It just doesn't compute.
In response to, Anthony Dauer says:
>Helps to maintain the community and provides a wider support network for
>each of us. Since we are more of a mobile society, knowing what others
>have gone through is good info and in some cases vital. I don't see how
>a protest announcement is more important to an individual who doesn't
>live even within the state of an announced rally. Tell me why, I am very
>open minded I might agree with you.
Thanks for being open minded; here's my answer-
When we encounter THE THING, we seek out others who are similarly
affected for purposes of 1) helping us deal emotionally and psychologically
with our situations, 2) help/guidance in doing something about the situation.
[If you don't understand what I mean by THE THING, you probably shouldn't
be reading this post]
One of the places we turn to is the Net.
As people with a whole lot of pain, we read posts by others who talk about
what they are going through. Sometimes what they have to say gives us
emotional strength. Sometimes it adds to our pain. Often we read things
that we can put to use in our individual cases.
When we read about a victory in court, or successful efforts (no matter how
small) regarding legislative action or other government policy forums, we
always feel good. Why? Because of the sense that people doing things are
having a positive effect and we get the feeling that things just might
improve.
We all agree that the overall goal is to fix the system. We all agree that
parents should not be estranged from their children, and that parents of
either sex should not be victimized wholesale by a divorce/domestic abuse/
custody industry.
I submit that what is most positive is the feeling that we are more than
individuals whining about our circumstances, but are part of a collective
effort that is going to become a political movement for social change.
As fathers in custody/divorce situation, we are victimized from all
sides. There is no recognition by our communities and society at large
that we are victims.
When a handful of members of one our local affiliates (CPF South Middlesex)
protested outside the Children's Visitation Center in Framingham (twice so
far!) this month, though I was not there (I have been at all the other CPF
protests), I can imagine what I would have felt at the sight of one of our
victimizers become discombobulated. One of the administrators came
outside to confront the picketers and launched into a verbal tirade
capping with how she was `going to get restraining ordera against them.'
That gives a feeling of satisfaction. Of EMPOWERMENT. And to people who
are for the most part completeley disempowered to the extent that in some
cases it is all they can do to stay out of jail, the feeling of empowerment
is a refreshing tonic that does miracles to the psyche. Try it, you'll like
it!
I believe that reading about protests will also impart a sensation of
empowerent to the readers. From empowerment all things will flow: healing,
return to emotional health, return of self-esteem, and eventually, even
justice.
The greatest failing of the fathers rights movement is its capitulation
of ideology and philosophy. We have allowed the enemies of fatherhood
to define all the issues that we are contesting. The issues as defined
by victim-feminism and now promulgated throughout the media and society
are:
Deadbeat dads
Violence against women
Child abuse perpetrated by fathers
We have allowed this to continue because we have not framed the issues from
our perspective. Here is the issues that we should be arguing:
Throw-away dads
False allegations of abuse by women to criminalize fathers and
in general as a legal tactic
Witchhunt (false alegations of sexual abuse)
Sexual discrimination against men in the courts.
What is the problem?
Throw-away dads.
Who suffers?
The entire society is paying a huge price for the experiment with
the single parent maternal household.
How is it accomplished?
False allegations of abuse that are rubberstamped by the legal system,
etc.
Who is doing it?
Victim feminists, and opportunists who stand to gain by the
enactment of policies advocated by victim-feminists (DAs, those who
profit in the public and private sector from child support awards
being as high as possible and targeted at men who work for a living,
politicians who pander to the female vote, the supervised visitation
industry, the battered womens industry, etc)
Why?
The motivation for the victim-feminists is the politics of gender
revenge: they are "paying men back."
What does it all mean?
A War on Fatherhood.
If we are not even willing to acknowledge that this IS a gender issue,
if we don't even have the courage to name the enemy (victim-feminists cum
lesbians who are twisting and perverting confused women who call on them for
help in legitimzing allegations of domestic abuse so they can assuage their
own guilt while reaping the rewards of a divorce judgment), we have no
business in this battle.
This is what THE THING does to the protaganists:
Men:
Good men are impoverished, criminalized, and turned into psychological
and emotional cripples. This is a tragedy.
Children:
The statistics on social pathology that results from children who
grow up in single-parent maternal households speaks for itself:
our children are being destroyed. This is a tragedy.
Women:
Many women who victimize men in the court system are being turned into
lesbians by the victim-feminist advocates who have infiltrated our
courts and the social services. This, too, is a deeply disturbing
tragedy.
I recognize, understand and respect the leaders of the movement like Annie
and Stuart, when they say they know when they are making progress in a
particular venue and that xxxx will screw things up. I'm not going to
second-guess people like that who have invested some much of their time
into this. They know what they are talking about. If Stuart says introducing
the Fathers Manifesto with 2,000 signatures to Congress would be a mistake
at this time, I take him at his word. When Annie says that FREE's recent
smatterings of successes in California would not be possible if FREE were
advocating public protests, I take her at her word.
However, we must recognize that every social/political struggle always
has a component of civil protest. It forms the backdrop from which those
fighting within the system can better advocate our positions. Don't you
think the legislative efforts of the Democrats for Civil Rights legislation
in the 60s was helped by the marches by Martin Luther King? And don't you
think that the credibility of Martin Luther King was in turn enhanced by
the radical actions of the Black Panthers?
To fight this fight, we will have to engage the enemy. We will have to
challenge the ethically bankrupt philosophy of victim-femisim and its
sycophants. This battle should not be left to reform-minded women within
the feminist movement. We, as men, have to step up to the plate too.
The ballpark figure mentioned these days is thirty years. Thirty years until
this system is fixed! At the rate it is going, painstaking work in the halls
of the legislatures, piecemeal case law wins, it _will_ take 30 years. I don't
know about you, but I'd like to see this thing fixed in my lifetime, I just
may not be around in 30 years. I'd like to get on with my life.
If this really becomes a bonafide movement of social/political change, WITH
protests and civil disobedience so that the media cannot ignore these issues,
we should realize substantial progress within 5 years.
If all local groups around the country started scheduled and coordinated
protests, we could hope for a nation-wide rally on Fathers Day 1997.
If you've been around this issue for any length of time, you know that the
feminist-dominated press like the Boston Globe are not going to report these
issues unless they have no choice. They can ignore 75 people on Fathers
Day. Can they ignore 150? If they can, can they ignore 150 people protesting
in front of their office? If they can, can they ignore a group of protestors
who march into their editorial officers and sit down in the publishers
office, refusing to leave until action is taken? I don't know, maybe that's
a stupid idea, but you get the idea...
Before we can walk, we have to crawl. A protest of even 10 or 20 people is
a start. That was the amount we had at the visitation center protests.
CPF has now had 5 protests. The next one is October 13th. Two other groups
in California will have protests that same day. Any others? Protests are
going to be a permanent fixture of the political landscape in Massachusetts
in the future. We're not going to quit, we're just getting started.
Our protests are going to be scheduled, tentatively three major protests
a year:
Protest against child support policies April 15
General protest against the treatment of fathers: Fathers Day weekend
Protest against the epidemic of false allegations of abuse
("Restrain-In"): (retsraining orders, domestic violence laws
and policies, etc): October
So, to answer your question, yes, I do believe postings of local protests
where fathers rights advocates are taking to the streets and fighting back
is more important than one individual's latest revelation regarding THE THING.
I think announcements of protests are in fact *critical* to the movement,
just as important as news of legislation. Legislators respond to public opinion
and money. We don't have the latter, ergo, we *have* to change public opinion.
That means we have to do public things, and it means we have to challenge
the victim-feminists.
>r/Anthony ... MHO
Thanks for listening, sorry for the long post,
Mark