Talk:Fathers' rights movement/Archive 5

message: I removed a statement to the effect that father's rights advocates favor forcing women to have abortions.  That's, in technical terms, retarded.  It's not even a fair characterization of the Men's rights movement but, while there are many valid issues around the way men have no reproductive rights none of them are related to father's rights.  I only removed the one, particularly egregious line, but father's rights is a subset of men's rights.  Reproductive rights aren't really part of father's rights except, tangentially, when it comes to child support and paying for children they didn't want, or having children they want adopted out without their consent (when women can legally adopt, abort or abandon children with no subsequent responsibility.)  Forcing women to have abortions as a tenet of even fringe father's rights groups is just ridiculous.  The rights of fathers really comes into play once children are born though (ie after most reproductive rights issues are moot.)--Cybermud (talk) 22:04, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I had a sneaking suspicion you might agree with this one. Quite incredible content to have here. Did you have a chance to look at the article's history to find out who has been adding such material? There are a lot of edits so it won't be easy but guidance ought to be issued. If you read the source given for the whole abortion argument thing not only does the single non notable person cited refuse to actually make the point suggested, the source itself also clearly states such a position it's not a widely held belief! An absolutely astonishing addition.--Shakehandsman (talk) 22:32, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I spoke to it at greater length above, but most of these sources find some radical FR activist and construct a straw man of the entire movement around him.  So one guy says I should be able to force women to have an abortion if I don't want to have the kid and that gets built up as the ideology of all fathers who won't "stop whining," "be a man" and stop raping and beating women long enough to support their kids... Assuming the one man that actually said that wasn't completely quoted out of context.--Cybermud (talk) 01:52, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: If you read the source you'll see he refused to say what people are trying to attribute to him. Of course he may have held that view and may have implied it, but to source the beliefs of an entire movement to one random person who wouldn't even confirm his position is incredible.--Shakehandsman (talk) 02:34, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

text: You are not reading the source correctly. Sherry F. Colb, a Professor at Rutgers Law School makes a general statement that "Some fathers' rights advocates feel so strongly about this reproductive inequity that they maintain that if either a man or a woman wants to terminate a pregnancy, against the wishes of the other partner, he or she should be able to do so." Newdow is simply used as an example of such an activist.  It is clear that "retarded" (as Cybermud puts it) or not, a reliable source has stated that some FRAs do favour insisting on women having abortions. It is quite reasonable to argue that it would be undue weight to mention to Colb's remark given that no other sources link such abortions with the FR movement; and the sentence in the article should certainly have had "some" in it to clearly indicate that this is a minority position among FRAs.  But stating that this being sourced to Newdow's opinion is simply incorrect.--Slp1 (talk) 02:59, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: In is ridiculous to shave so much weight of the article focusing on extremist minority opinions which not even one person will admit to. Even the one single source used states "It appears, however, that the belief in a man's right to compel a woman to have an abortion is not widely held". It goes on to say "Indeed, one of the very few areas in which pro-life and pro-choice activists would tend to agree, is this one: A man should not have the right to terminate the lives of his unborn offspring in utero." "Some" feminists want to kill men but such views aren't on the article about feminism. "Some" proportion of every group has criminal conviction etc and we don't add that do we? This article should be dealing with significant beliefs of the Fathers' Rights movement rather than ones no one has ever heard of. I strongly suggest you read up on Wikipedia:UNDUE#Undue_weight. If just want to write about a small number of criminal father's rights extremists with bizarre views then I suggest you create a different article pertaining to that topic.--Shakehandsman (talk) 03:34, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not just undue it's intellectually dishonest and maliciously pejorative and POV.  Should I go to the rape article and put a blurb in there there that says "some women have rape fantasies" in the section on victim impact?  It's incontrovertibly true and I can source that with reputable sources till the cows come home... or maybe I should go to mother and write mothers are 10 times more likely to commit infanticide.  It's undue, it's just  common sense inappropriate and, in any case, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, not off-hand comments in a news article.  Is it really so difficult to believe that the FRM might just have, as its primary goal, being able to play an active and equal role in the care and education of their children?  No, of course not, that's just a "rhetorical strategy to elicit an emotional response.."  Right.  They really want to keep kids so they can abuse them and manipulate the mothers.  It's a classic example of the fallacy of generalizing from the exception.  One father wants custody to harass the mother and joins the FRM therefore all members of the FRM are batterers seeking control of their ex.  Reason and logic dictate that such a conclusion is necessarily false, but then, reason and logic are masculine tools of the patriarchy that are used to oppress women and are, therefore, suspect.  "Some," btw, is the archetypal weasel word (as in "some fathers")--Cybermud (talk) 03:42, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough I did downplay the issue a bit there I suppose. Apologies for that.--Shakehandsman (talk) 03:47, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

text: I agree.  The removed language made it sound like men demanding the legal right to force women they impregnate to have abortions was an accepted idea within the FRM.  There is absolutely no reason why we should allow this article to present such fringe ideas.  As mentioned above, the same type of "stretches" would not be allowed in other articles, and there is no reason why we should allow them here.  And let's keep in mind that reliable sources are not the ONLY attribute necessary to insert language into an article.  If there is consensus amongst editors that an element of an article should be removed, then it must be removed, reliable sources notwithstanding.  Ebikeguy (talk) 04:02, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi Ebikeguy, some excellent points and it's really good to have another editor's opinion here. Would be great to hear your views on some of the other major problems too. Thanks for you input.--Shakehandsman (talk) 04:09, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Note as I've said here, that this section is now substantially different, particularly on that point.  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 20:29, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Abortions 

message: Just been glancing at the history of this piece to try to see what's gong on and came across an editor named user:Trish Wilson. Assuming it's not the biggest ever coincidence in history, it seems would appear she is a highly vocal and longstanding anti-fathers' rights activist. I note others make a big issue of editing by Fathers' Rights Groups (which I haven't' looked into to verify or otherwise) yet strangely no one has mentioned the other side of the coin. I haven't checked exactly what quantity of her material is problematic and she at least adds well sourced material but there's appears to be an complete lack of balance and just an attempt to add as much criticism and POV as possible. Given the amount of material she's written attacking Fathers' Rights Groups she's clearly quite knowledgeable on the subject and some input is probably quite valuable, but it's pretty clear she's got way beyond adding balance and her editing is obviously going to suffer from POV problems and it looks to me like a clear case of Wikipedia:Advocacy. Anyway I hope people find this information a useful balance to other comments and this may explain some of the tone of the article. She hasn't contributed for a while,  I've done a quick check and it should be noted that some of the problematic content was not in place when she left so there must be other problem editors too. A few quotes from Wilson:
*"members are not good fathers seeking support but rather angry men (and women who stand by them) seeking expanded male entitlement. Their private communications are diatribes against child support and in favor of controling women. Not even much lip service is paid to the father-child relationship."
*""Shared Parenting" is a political euphemism for "men's rights." "
*Glenn Sacks wrote the following about her: "For a decade feminist blogger Trish Wilson has specialized in tracking and attacking the fatherhood movement"http://www.glennsacks.com/enewsletters/enews_5_3_06.htm
Also I would add the on the NPOV noticboard Slp1 cites User:Anonymum as evidence of editors having concerns that this article is somehow biased towards fathers rights groups! Just to set the record straight the user in question is in fact permanently banned form Wikipedia due to disruptive editing, so lets take this claim with "a pinch of salt".--Shakehandsman (talk) 03:52, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, it didn't go unnoticed that Slp1 jumped over there to wax poetic about how "every so often" father's rights activists come over here trying to change the article.  Guess "advocacy" on this issue is a one-way street for him/her.--Cybermud (talk) 04:07, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Hold on a second, you've got no evidence that Slp1 knew that Trish Wilson was prominent anti-fathers' rights activist, unless you know more about this then of that then the Anonymum issue  is the only indiscretion.--Shakehandsman (talk) 04:15, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Slp1 has been an editor of this article for a very long time.  There have been a number of disputes about it, but when he/she went to discuss its edit history he characterized it as "father's rights activist come over from time to time."  I don't doubt that such is very much true, my point is that he only views it as activism or advocacy when it tries to make the article more favorable to the FRM and simply views it as "editing" when promoting the opposite POV (hence you and I are "activists" and the people who disagree with us are "editors."  I didn't mean to imply that he knew the history of Trish Wilson or anonymum.--Cybermud (talk) 04:38, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok it's good you clarified things, thanks. I do agree with all your other points entirely though. Slp1's userpage lists this article as one to which she has made "major contributions" too. There is still one other error in your text, Slp1 is in fact female not male as you suggest.--Shakehandsman (talk) 04:44, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: User:Trish Wilson has made a grand total of 134 edits to wikipedia.  Many were on this page and talk page.  None have occurred since November, 2007.  A cursory review of the edits suggest they are problematic due to the sources used - a lot of newspaper articles and the like.  The best reaction to this is to remove most news articles and replace, if possible, with scholarly books and journal articles.  What matters more than who made an edit, is if the sources added were reliable, accurately summarized, and given appropriate weight.  Rather than trying to figure this out exactly, may I suggest scanning the reference list for unreliable sources and removing them, and any text verified by them, if a substitute can't be found.  There have, however, been several series of sustained POV-pushes by User:Michael H 34 over the past couple years, which I have been witness to and had to deal with.  But ultimately this is irrelevant - if an POV-pushing editor uses good sources to accurately substanitate their edits, that's all that matters.  May I suggest removing the COI tag from the page, it's a gross over-reaction and there have been hundreds of edits in the meantime.  Instead, I would again suggest reviewing the sources to eliminate the lower-quality ones.  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 19:37, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with removing the COI tag.  It's overkill.  Trish is long gone and COI wouldn't really apply even if she weren't.  COI is when I cybermud edit the article cybermud.  Trish was extremely POV but she never really constituted a COI issue.--Cybermud (talk) 20:47, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree  with some of the arguments here. COI also covers one's competitors, and campaigning, see Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest#Campaigning. Given that Trish is a dedicated activist against fathers' rights organisations and a former NOW member the tag fits in with that regard, though of course POV is a bigger issue. Anyway, given recent changes to the article and the length of time that has passed I'm now happy to remove the tag. I've added some guidance on Trish's talk page just in case she decides to return. I also think it is important to understand the history of an article in order to appreciate the state it might be in today. --Shakehandsman (talk) 21:26, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I've read through the talk page of Trish Wilson, and it becomes quite clear in the very first post there as to who she is and her involvement in this issue.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Trish_Wilson#Father.27s_Rights--Shakehandsman (talk) 23:54, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anti fathers' rights campaigner editing this article 

message: Can we use WP:FLAT as a valid reason to delete references to fringe opinions in this article that do not represent the view of a majority or significant minority of Father's Rights advocates?Ebikeguy (talk) 19:12, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps. I certainly found the section on Wikipedia:FLAT#Dealing_With_Dedicated_Fringe_Advocates particularly informative here so thanks for that and recommend others read it.--Shakehandsman (talk) 19:22, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: How do you determine if a viewpoint is "fringe" versus "majority"?  Unlike the dimensions of the earth, which is a well-agreed upon fact as an oblate sphere, the opinions of FRM are contested, subject to interpretation, and based on human opinions.  I would suggest that, as always, the best solution is to rely on the most reliable sources - generally books by scholarly publishing houses and in particular peer-reviewed journals.  As I've said before - editor opinion is not an acceptable reason to remove a source.  What you believe to be "fringe" could be completely mainstream in my opinion - the only way to settle the disagreement is to verify the text with the appropriate reliable sources, giving due weight based on their number, quality and prominence.  The latter is not easy to do, but the only way to resolve disagreements is via the use of sources.  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 19:42, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: As Jimbo Wales states "If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents;". Therefore people either need to cite notable fathers' rights groups who promote such concept, otherwise we should delete the information. The material might belong in an article on fathers' rights extremists, though of course that's probably not going to be notable enough to be created.--Shakehandsman (talk) 19:57, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, and this is addressed using reliable sources.  So, the process would be - add only reliable sources to the page; remove unreliable sources; attribute weak sources.  I agree to all of these but the issue we must agree on is which sources are reliable?  I would argue that personal webpages are not; most news stories are not; self-published books (like Michael Flood's Xlibris article, used four times) are not.  Scholarly books are, as are peer-reviewed journals.  Criticisms of other scholarly books and articles are, and should definitely be included.  Webpages of individual organizations would be, in my opinion, weak sources and require a statement like "X organization states that..." rather than "the FRM states that..."  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 20:27, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[WP:FLAT]] Justification for Removing Fringe Opinions 

message: As written, this article contains ideas from a fringe segment of the father's rights movement regarding, among other things, men forcing women to have abortions.  This is a violation of WP:FRINGE, and these references should be removed.  An infobox above the WP:FRINGE article contains the language: "Fringe theory in a nutshell: To maintain a neutral point of view, an idea that is not broadly supported by scholarship in its field must not be given undue weight in an article about a mainstream idea."  Ebikeguy (talk) 19:17, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: My edit to that section may have resolved the issue.  It no longer says that men are advocating for forced abortions, but it does say that Fathers' rights movements have sought equal rights in terms of adoption, visitation in cases of unwed parents, prevention of abortion and the ability to provide input into the termination of a pregnancy, and the issue of forcing fatherhood on unwilling fathers (deal with via the term "financial abortion" with a comment from Kim Buchanan that pretty much says "yeah, be responsible for birth control then jackasses").  Is that acceptable?  I agree the previous discussion of "forced abortions" sourced to Sherry Colb's web article was inadequate.  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 19:49, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[WP:FRINGE]] Violations in This Article 

message: Am glad to see this edit [] by W L U.  The long discussion of the reciprocity of DV and validity of CTS was really a tangent of very little value to the FRM article (great content for Domestic violence or even Men's rights though.)  The key issue is false allegations (and allegations of false allegations) of DV as a tactic to gain an advantage during custody proceedings and the continuous expansion of DV to include emotional, psychological, intellectual and financial "abuse" as forms of "violence."--Cybermud (talk) 21:17, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Seconded, detailed debates about domestic violence belong elsewhere.--Shakehandsman (talk) 23:02, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks.  Note that the threshold is the reliability of the reference, not the opinion contained.  I wouldn't use most of those references anywhere else, bar the journal articles.  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 00:13, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Domestic Violence edits 

message: I'm addressing this because it was brought up elsewhere regarding this article, and this talk page is a more appropriate forum.
In my view, this article, like probably most articles about movements, should primarily state what the movement is about with an emphasis on how it is seen by those of its proponents who are generally recognized as such by many of its followers, complemented by third-party analyses and criticisms integrated into the general text, not in a separate section. Criticisms should not be the majority of the article, since other articles serve that role. Opposing movements effectively embody criticisms of each other and an article on each opposing movement being mostly about the respective movement with opposing criticisms being concise helps to produce neutrality in the combination of opposing articles.
Were the movement a single organization, or the article about a single organization, then what the organization is about should be drawn primarily from the organization's official sources accompanied by outside reliable analyses plus criticisms. I think religions offer an example of how giving priority to outsiders' descriptions over official ones can be misinformative. The most populous religion in the world, and thus every religion, is outnumbered by people with viewpoints that contradict the first religion's at least partly, and it would be very easy to get a description of any religion as being a bunch of misguided evildoers who should be rescued and deprogrammed or maybe simply killed. There is a problem that an official position could be words to the effect of "we're the wonderful people and that's all you need to know", but most major organizations in my experience do have informative and relatively self-distinguishing position statements that summarize what they're about, so that, in the case of religions, internal descriptions will reasonably and informatively distinguish between, say, Roman Catholicism, Hinduism, Islam, and Wicca.
Some organizations refuse to speak for themselves and even deny their own existence. As I recall, although I may be wrong about this, some members of the U.S. branch of La Cosa Nostra (more colloquially, the Mafia, in the U.S.) have argued that the organization is simply about "courage" and several other qualities we often commend; I think other members have argued that it is mainly a business that gives customers what they want and that it is not much different from legal aboveground businesses that break the law and get away with it because they're big. At the same time, the Mafia has traditionally denied its own existence, making getting its official statements essentially impossible or nearly so, at least in reliable, verifiable, and sourceable form. Because the Mafia chooses to hide itself and its purposes, there's probably not much choice other than accepting the publishing of descriptions from its opponents as the predominant description, although if neutral parties' descriptions exist then they should appear (I think there's been some scholarship to that effect), along with the criticisms they have so amply earned.
Wars are perhaps the most severe case of people on one side seeing its own side as the ultimate or penultimate embodiment of Good and the enemy as the ultimate or penultimate embodiment of Evil with little communication across the dividing line. It can take a while and a lot of deaths just to seriously begin to find common ground once war begins.
I'm profeminist, have participated in feminist work, and have heard definitions of opponents to the effect that they're the terrible people without the proponents' words. This is not useful, because then it's harder to understand why the good side is needed, or why it has to work so much. As a profeminist, I've read books by antifeminists and by people who couldn't care less about feminism but dwell on its subjects. I've also read and listened in fields such as alien abduction, remote viewing, auras on people, and UFOs and did so criticizing on narrow grounds because it's important to preserve the parts that are probably credible rather than use a broad brush to sweep out the babies with the bath water.
Even the worst of criminal defendants should have the right to state in their defense anything they want, subject to some limits such as against filibustering (if guilty the trial should end so they can start serving their sentence and if innocent the trial should end so they can walk). The main reason for letting them put forth any defense they want is that it might turn out that they're right. That's what juries, judges, and the listening public decide. The defendant takes the chance that their defense won't be believed, especially if they're caught lying. But, even if the chance that they're right is atomically small, society and not just the defendant benefits by society discovering that the defendant is right, when that's the case. And, when the defendant is guilty, i.e., wrong, knowing how they explain themself and by implication how they think when they do what they do is critical to determining our best response to the defendant and to like-minded people in the future. That's why I want Wikipedia articles to reflect what a movement is about from its own distinct and informative statements plus well-grounded, thoughtful, and informative third-party analyses plus criticisms, in about that order of priority.
I'm not planning to edit this article, don't have enough knowledge to do much editing here, and am not judging its current or recent states. This is more a view of certain drafting principles.
Nick Levinson (talk) 08:16, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  defining a movement according to who: one view 

message: Is it still necessary?  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 15:31, 29 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Absolutely, some real progress has been made and I commend the editors involved for that, but there are still many issues, some of them very obvious indeed. Busy at the moment, will write a list of issues later this evening unless others do so first.--Shakehandsman (talk) 17:28, 29 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Please do so, keep items short if possible 'cause long posts are always difficult to parse (so says the hypocrite...) WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 17:36, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

text: There's some changes I'd like to make ,as well as add references, but I'm travelling at the moment and don't have access to my books, so it probably won't be till late next week at the earliest.  That said, I'd be ok with taking off the tag in the meantime.  I don't like tags on articles that aren't tied to well-defined editorial issues.--Cybermud (talk) 18:20, 29 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remove NPOV tag? 

message: The citation to Flood's self-published Xlibris book is questionable per WP:RS.  If it's going to be used, it should be justified and consensus should be attained, either here or (probably better) the RS noticeboard.  I support a discussion, and based on that, possibly a removal.  The essential question seems to be if it meets the standard of WP:RS#SPS and WP:SPS.  Flood obviously has the qualifications, but it is questionable why a noted scholar on the topic would resort to self-publication rather than peer reviewed articles or scholarly press.  I would be much, much happier if the same text could be cited to a more reliable source.  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 01:51, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd be happy to post it at RSN, but I am pretty clear that Flood meets the criteria as a WP:SPS given his extensive publication record on the topic. The book is bit of a weird project, I will admit, since from chapter list, it looks like a lot of big names in the field contributed chapters to the book, so one wonders why it was released by a self publisher? However the book has been cited by several other scholars, in books and in scholarly journals, which means that others have found it a valuable and reliable source.  In this case, I really don't see it as controversial, as the (positive) information is clearly supported by other references,--Slp1 (talk) 02:43, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Meh, RSN turns it from a single page discussion to a community consensus issue, and I know you'll make a convincing case.  Xlibris may have been used because it's quicker than peer review, and Flood is a scholar publishing in his area of expertise.  My issue is more one of making the expertise explicit rather than challenging it on a substantive level.  I will also note that Flood's self-published work is used only once in a set of three citations (but the other two are news articles, making it a toss-up on which is more reliable.  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 03:36, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: RSN comments often state that reliability is often not an all or nothing thing, and depends of the content. Mainstream news media are generally good sources, but to my mind Flood and the news articles are clearly reliable sources for the fact that mainstream FR groups have issued press releases/given interviews condemning violence and intimidation. --Slp1 (talk) 03:48, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Xlibris citation