I protest.

"Father's rights" and other lies.

After yesterday's correction, I read more of Trish Wilson's Blog and eventually made my way to her Women's Network website. I am in general a feminist (no arguments about whether men can be feminists, thanks), strongly support women's rights and understand very well indeed that the treatment of women has historically been abominable, to say the least. I don't go so far as some radical feminists who use made-up terms like "herstory" and who seem a bit strident to me, but I certainly recognize that we as a society have a long way to go in our quest to eliminate discrimination, whether that is on the basis of sex, religion or skin color.

With that in mind, you might imagine my reaction when I discovered this web page, which Trish links to at the bottom of the main page of the Women's Network site. The page consists of quotes from men in the so-called "father's rights" movement. Reading these quotes, one would think that feminism is responsible for every ill known to man, from athlete's foot to dandruff, from Stalinism to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany in the 1930's. These men (and I use the term very loosely) defend pedophilia and child molestation, advocate repealing the 19^th Amendment (women's suffrage), literally advocate the death of feminists and call any woman who might have the temerity to disagree with them a "slut" or a "feminazi," or worse. I just wonder what they would call me? Probably something like "a traitor to my sex." But better to be called a traitor than to be a traitor to my own humanity.

This is by no means the first time I have run into these idiots. I have in the past been a pretty prolific poster to Usenet, in particular to the soc.singles newsgroup. That newsgroup would get regular waves of this kind of idiot wandering in from other groups. I've also dealt from time to time with a few of the notables in other newsgroups. Fortunately, those dealings have been relatively few. I've never before run into such a large mass of such putrid, stinking ravings until following that link on Trish's site.

Why do I react with revulsion to those idiots and their ravings? Well, in general I think that anyone who is relatively healthy and mature would react pretty negatively to them. Their ravings have essentially no basis in fact and rely on ignorance, superstition, fear and hatred to spread. Assertions such as this, "True gender equality will exist when, and only when the verbal and psychological abuse women often inflict upon their husbands is regarded as EQUALLY SERIOUS as the physical abuse men inflict upon their wives" (Gary Clark, in alt.mens-rights), are simply and obviously ridiculous. (True, men are abused, even physically abused, but that abuse is more often at the hands of men than of women and the abuse that women suffer is much, much more common and severe. Even a cursory examination of the evidence shows this, so no one should be fooled for a second; that people are fooled shows that they want to be fooled and care nothing for the facts of the matter.)

Even so, my reaction is stronger and even more visceral than might normally be warranted. The reason for this is pretty simple, actually, and is the same reason that I think that Rick Santorum should not be a senator based on his recent remarks: I was molested as a child. Santorum said that what priests did to children was "consensual." These execrable fools go even further, if that is possible, and attempt to justify molestation, or at best "excuse" it. My experience was thirty-seven years ago and it still affects me deeply, as it will for the rest of my life. I have no contact with the person that did it but I do know that he is in a wheelchair, that his wife and child (who I am certain was also abused) have left him and I would be happy to see him die. The emotional destruction from molestation is incalculable. Only a monster could even try to justify or excuse it. A monster, or a person who saw no other person as being like himself.

As to my support of feminism itself and my nausea at the claims of these idiots, I have long recognized the simple fact that women can do pretty much anything that men can do. (Even pee standing up, although that can be a bit messy and I don't recommend it as a general practice.) My mother demonstrated to me early on that gender roles were relatively meaningless. She wasn't that great at parenting, unfortunately, but she never for a moment let the idea that something was a "man's job" get in her way. When I was in college I learned that psychologically and neurologically there are few differences between men and women and that those are even now very hotly debated. Individual variation within any group utterly overwhelms the variation between groups, whether those groups be men versus women, whites versus blacks, Asian versus European or any other. If the difference isn't strictly biological, for all practical purposes it doesn't exist.

The people (such as the so-called "father's rights" groups) who propound such differences do so only because they have a vested interest in doing so. They are trying to build themselves up by tearing others down, as if status and self respect were a zero-sum game. Further, these idiots blame all of their woes on the other group, in this case "feminists," rather than taking responsibility for the problems themselves and doing something about them. If your ex-wife gets sole custody, maybe you should consider that it might be because you're not such a good father instead of blaming it all on the "system" or on "feminazis." Being a good father can be damned difficult (particularly if, like me, you had no good role model and have to deal with the scars of a hellish childhood); it is oh-so-much easier to blame someone else for your own failures. Of course, the fact remains that your failures are still your failures, no matter whom you might decide to blame. I have been and will be a good father, no matter how difficult that might be. I will not excuse my behavior, I will not blame my difficulties on my piss-poor father or on my painful childhood. None of that matters, not to my wife and not to my child. All that matters is that I am a good father.

Taking responsibility for your own problems and shortcomings is hard, but it's the only way to be a decent father and a decent human being. Two things that these idiots are not.