I keep saying this: read this piece by Barbara Kay. I guess I’ll continue until Barbara Kay starts writing pieces I can’t agree with, but so far she hasn’t. So here’s another one; it’s a speech she gave recently at McGill University at a conference entitled The Impact of Feminism on Society. As usual, Kay nails it. Just for the record, I’ll state a couple of quibbles. First, Kay says that mothers get sole custody in 90% of divorce cases involving children. I don’t think that’s right; she probably means ‘primary custody.’ Second, I don’t think the character of Bridget Jones is a tramp, I think she’s a ditz. She desperately searches for a good man to whom she can commit and who can commit to her. That she’s almost a complete idiot would, in real life, tend to diminish her chances of success as Kay points out.
And the movie’s (I haven’t read the book) main misandric problem is its assumption that Jones is worth a man’s time, that, in some way, her difficulties in snaring a man reflect anything other than her own shortcomings. But a tramp? I think not. We humans aren’t merely storytellers; we’re also empirical scientists. And the two are often in conflict. For how long have men and fathers been trying to get people interested in the facts about, for one example, fatherhood, or about domestic violence for another? But the facts we bring to the “discussion” contradict the preferred narrative and are therefore mostly dismissed or simply not seen. Kay of course sees them quite clearly.
For overt misandry, one has only to survey the industry around domestic violence. You could be forgiven for thinking that domestic violence is a one-way street, for that is certainly the impression one has from the fact that there are innumerable tax-funded shelters for abused women, none for abused men, unlimited funds for campaigns to raise consciousness around abused women, none for abused men. There is not a single social services agency or charity in Canada advertising “family services’ that offers counseling, shelter or legal services for men who have been physically abused by women. When angry feminists adduce their mantra that only men are inherently violent and that women use violence only in self-defense, I bring up a theme that is forbidden to discussion in women”s shelters: how is it then that partner violence amongst lesbians is significantly higher than amongst heterosexual partnerships? How is it that children are far, far more likely to be physically abused by their mothers than their fathers? And when they are, how can we justify a woman”s right to take her children to a shelter to escape a violent husband when there is no shelter in the country that will accept a father with children fleeing an abusive mother?
Good questions all because the feminist narrative Kay describes has no answers to them. It has no answers because, according to it, facts we know to be true cannot be true. And that’s a problem for any narrative, any worldview. The stream of facts is like a steady drip of water on stone; each drop seems to simply fall away, but over time it is the rock that erodes. Kay’s take on family law and radical feminism’s attack on children’s relationships with their fathers contains some classics.
The family law system is now systemically colonized by radical feminists. Their goal is the incremental legal eclipse of men”s influence over women”s spheres of “identity’ interests, which includes children. To that end the custody issue has become a front line in the gender wars, supported by all feminist academics and institutional elites, by supine cabinet ministers and by feminist judges.
To illustrate with just a few examples: Supreme Court of Canada chief justice Beverley McLachlin: “We have to be pro-active in rearranging the Canadian family.’ Former justice minister Martin Cauchon: “Men have no rights, only responsibilities.’ Feminist psychologist Peter Jaffe, a social-context educator of family court judges: “[J]oint custody is an attempt of males to continue dominance over females.’ And most egregiously this from the National Association of Women and the Law: “Courts may treat parents unequally and deny them basic civil liberties and rights, as long as their motives are good’. Here we are truly in George Orwell country. In simple words this statement means “The end justifies the means’ and there is not a totalitarian regime in the world that does not espouse that exact excuse for their denial of rights to their citizens. In our courts the “good’ that motivates them is supposedly the child”s “best interests’ but in fact it is virtually always the mother”s happiness. This is not justice.
People’s sense of justice forms very early in life. Just a couple of weeks ago, I witnessed the response of a three-year-old who believed his dad had treated him unjustly (he was right). He was adamant (as only a three-year-old can be) and absolutely refused to back down; he endured censure and punishment because of his position. I mention this because men and women from all walks of life see the injustice of family courts and it is my belief that all the false concepts and false data peddled by radical feminists will never be their equal. Like my little three year old friend, they simply won’t accept injustice; ultimately, the abuse of fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, uncles, grandfathers and friends, by family court functionaries will not be tolerated. Martin Luther King said that the arc of history is long but it bends towards justice. I believe he was right and Barbara Kay is one of the many influential people who’s bending the arc.