From: jsw@cray.com (Jon S. Wood)
Subject: FEMINISM STINKS
Reply-To: jsw@cray.com
Organization: Cray Research, Inc.
Date: 6 Jan 93 12:48:47 CST

In article XewXwB1w165w@oneb2.almanac.bc.ca, lisa@oneb2.almanac.bc.ca () writes:
>sga@cray.com (Steven G. Anderson) writes:

>> Why was I given custody and my ex was given
>> half of my income?  Where was the concern for the standard of living of my
>> son?
>>
>  More deleted.
>
>Steven,
>
>You have my sincerest sympathies.  I also feel a great deal of empathy wrt your
>personal situation.
>
>Please explain  how such an incredibly unfair order could have been made, that
>you have to pay spousal support of any amount, nevermind HALF of your income,
>to your non-custodial ex?  Why isn't she paying YOU (for child support)?
>
>Lisa:-)
>
>             

 Lisa, read it all. Just maybe you'll get an idea what is happening, 
what is projected and what is to come. It will also explain 
why, maybe.

 To those who proclaim they are feminist, here is why I believe
you are not only misguided, but also stupid.


I
  Minnesota is a state that criminalizes men commencing with
the divorce decree finalization or at the time he becomes the
Respondant upon being 'served' papers.

    Orders for Protection can be ordered. They do not require a 
    criminal complaint filed, a police report or a district attorney.

    Read in the excerpt below about OFPs and tell me this isn't
    the "atom bomb" of joint custody litigation dropped on men.
    Child abuse is another bomb. It is easier to stomach a 
    lie about personal abuse than it is about child abuse for
    Petitioners (women).

 
    NOTE: The OFP is generally a pre-divorce move suggested by
          a Plaintiffs attorney in order to place all ACES and 
          face cards in their hand prior to any Respondant move
          suggesting shared or full custody.
 
          On 1/5/93, the Mn Supreme Court ruled that OFPs are
          constitutional because the person who requested 
          a State Supreme Court ruling on OFPs was already 
          divorced, thus making a descision moot. 

    NOTE: It is a common belief of activist feminist groups
          that an OFP has a protectionist quality for the
          alleged victim or "about to be" victim as perceived
          by the victim. 

    NOTE: Feminists now claim that OFPs are giving victims a 
          false sense of security and are currently suggesting that
          "at-home" monitoring devices be placed on offenders, people
          served with OFPs.

    NOTE: Skeptics and the logically minded would suggest that
          a piece of paper has no crime prevention value, it would
          even make one suggest that OFPs escalate an already
          volatile situation. Control is the operative word here.
          An OFP gives someone a sense of complete control over
          another human being. Draconian child support measures, 
          judges routinely ordering 'sole' custody awards, 
          child support guidelines that insure a Custodial Parents
          standard of living, feminists groups arguing it
          is a 'child's best interest' concern, property and home
          awarded to the custodial parent and then to top it all off,
          fathers are granted visitation rights, (the same visitation
          rights awarded a St. Paul women in Shakopee Prison for murdering
          one of her children), is it any wonder to the intellectually
          and morally superior academic elite that the perceived
          desire that invented the OFP is born of a family court system
          that criminalizes men, enslaves them to 18 or more years
          of inservitude, removes him from his property but not his
          mortgaged obligation, requires some to provide her maintenance,
          garnishes his wages automatically (criminal fines aren't
          withdrawn from people's pay, a warrent is issued, the author-
          ities don't even chase them down!), it incarcerates him for
          losing his standard of living through ecomomic factors beyond
          his control? This near total control of working men's lives
          just might cause a backlash
          

    NOTE: It is also common amongst pop psychologists that all
          declared victims are "adult children of (name your ill)";
          or are screwed up individuals themselves do to someone
          close to them, i.e. brother, father, grandfather.
          This academic elite myth perpetuated by feminists 
          creates victims so that a system of extreme discrimination
          as practiced in family courts can be applied against
          an imaginary enemy; husbands, brothers and fathers or
          an real enemy created by themselves.


II  Minnesota routinely awards sole physical custody to women.
    The feminist logic as clearly shown in the Minnesota Supreme
    Court Task Force for Gender Fairness in the Courts, "Final Report",
    states it is in the best interest of the children to remain
    in a "sole custody" situation. 

   The following excerpt is from a task force headed by Supreme
Court Rosalie "Feminazi" Wahl. The group was predominantly feminist
facists as demonstrated by part of the report copied here.



  Excerpts from the Final Report:

                     JOINT CUSTODY

 Mn law contains a rebuttable presumption in favor of joint legal custody
where at least one of the parents has requrested it. (Minn. Stat. 518.17. 
subd. 2. (1988)). There is no corresponding statuatory presumption favoring
joint physical custody, although the court may impose a joint arrangement
if doing so would serve the child's best interests. 
 According to data from the Rettig study, joint legal custody was awarded
in 49.6% of the divorces granted in Mn in 1986. Joint physical custody was
awarded 6.1% of the time. In cases in which the custody issue was liti-
gated, joint legal custody was awarded 62.5% of the time; joint physical 
custody was court-imposed 8.3% of the cases. The Task Force found that some
judges are too willing to impose joint custody in situations where the
parents cannot agree and there is no evidence that joint custody would
be in the children's best interests.
 Data from the judges' survey indicate that judges view court-imposed,
as apposed to stipulated, joint custody as an acceptable option. Over
half of the judges surveyed-both male and female-agreed that joint legal
custody is sometimes appropriate where there is parental resistance.
A number of judges, however, indicated on the survey that they were 
concerned about the use of joint custody as a panacea and worried about 
its long-term effects on children.
 Family law practitioners also expressed concern about the value of
joint custody orders. They say them being used more as a means of 
placating the parent who would not otherwise have obtained custody, 
usually the father, than as a way to advance the best interests of
children:
    The most predominant and overriding example (of gender bias]
    is the ordering of joint legal custody where the parties get
    along like oil and water. (female attorney, Twin Cities)

    I do not encourage joint legal custody (although it ultimately is
    almost always settled on) as I find a great deal of post-decree
    litigation. Husbands tend to use this as a means of punishing
    their ex-wives. (Male attorney, Twin Cities).

 Other lawyers observed the tendency of some fathers seeking joint
custody to use it as a means of securing economic leverage over mothers
in divorce:
   Custody disputes are used as ways to get around the support obli
   gation and as "bargaining chips" in dissolution litigation. (Twin
   Cities lawyer's meeting)

 These commentators also noted that this strategy is frequently 
successful; women will often accept less child support or property
than they are entitled to because they do not want to subject their
children to the pain of a custody trial. One participant in the 
Twin Cities lawyers' meeting suggeste that "lawyers need to establish
that it is unethical conduct to assert a custody claim in order to
gain a financial advantage in the litigation." 

 Family law judges and attorneys have good reason to be concerned.
The current scholarly literature indicates that, especially where
court imposed, joint custody-whether joint legal, physical, or
both-may not be in the best interest of children, or their mothers,
and should used with gread caution. 
 
 Martha Fineman, Professor of Law and Dirrector of the Family Policy
Program of the Institute for Legal Studies at the University of
Wisconsin, argues that court imposed joint custody is unfair to
mothers in that it has been advocated by fathers' rights grould as a 
solution to the historic failure of non-custodial parents-usually
fathers-to pay child support:

   Join custody...empowers fathers as a group without requiring
   any demonstration of responsibility...in no other area does the
   law reward those who have failed in their duties as an incentive
   for them to change their behavior. 21

      Fineman, Dominant Discourse, Professional Language, and Legal
               Change in Child Custody Decisionmaking, 101 Harv. L
               Rev. 727, 759 (1988)

 Professor Carol Bruch of the Martin Luther King, Jr. School of Law
at the University of California at Davis, comments that, "although
proponents of joint custody argue that joint custody enhances both
paternal involvement and paternal financial support, research 
results do not as yet support these claims." She notes the "growing
consensus in the research literature that disapproves of joint
custody orders that are entered into over the objection of one
parent." 22

    Bruch, And How are the Children? The Effects of Ideology and 
           Mediation on Child CUstody Law and Children's Well-being
           in the United States, 2 Int'l. J.L. & Fam. 106, 19 (1988)

 And a longitudinal study of families involved in long running 
custody disputes, performed under the auspicies of the Center for
the Family in Transition, has found significant emotional behavioral
problems in children who spend time with both disputing parents.
The authors caution against encouraging or mandating joint custody
where the parent's are in conflict.  23

   Paper presented by Janet R. Johnston Ph.D., Research Director for the
         Center for the Family in Transition, to the 45th Annual Meeting
         of the American Orthopsychiatric Association (Mar. 30, 1988).


 
                    Findings

1. Some judges make stereotypical assumptions about proper roles for
   women and men that disadvantage both fathers and mothers in 
   custody determinations.

2. Custody mediators and custody evaluators are subject to the 
   same gender-based stereotypes that affect judges.

3. Some judges continue to order custody mediation in situations
   where there has been domestic abuse in spite of state law 
   prohibiting mandatory mediation in these cases.

4. Fathers sometimes use the threat of joint custody to obtain an
   economic advantage over mothers.

5. Judges are sometimes too willing to order joint custody where there
   is no evidence that it is in the best interests of the children
   to do so.

6. When the court fails to make custody descisions promptly the
   children suffer harm.

                  Recommendations

1. Judicial education programs in family law must sensitize the
   bench to issues of bias in custody determinisation; judges must
   recognize that fathers can be good custodians of small children
   and that mothers with careers can be good parents.

2. Judicial eduation programs in family law should educate judges
   about the need to make custody decisions promptly.

3. Custody mediation should not be ordered where domestic abuse 
   has been documented by means of sworn statements, an OFP, or
   arrest records.

4. Counties using court services for custody evaluations should 
   provide regourous training and evaluation to ensure that social
   workers are sensitive to issues of bias in their investigation
   and reporting.

5. The office of the state court administrator should develop a 
   standardized format to be used thoughout the state in custody
   evaluations and reports.

6. Where other eveidence about custody is presented to the court, 
   the court must carefully consider it along with any recommendation
   from a court services worker or private evaluator.

7. Judicial education programs in family law should examin the 
   effects ofjoint custody orders.

8. Judges should use great caution in deciding to order joint 
   custody, it should be imposed over the objection of one of 
   the parents only where the court makes specific findings which
   identify the reasons why such an order is in the children's best
   interests.

 

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