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The DesertLight Journal
Volume 2, Number 5
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March 6, 2002
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The bi-weekly e-zine of the International Men's Rights Movement. This is the first e-zine intended to focus primarily on the issues of domestic violence against men and divorce/child custody issues. We welcome news of groups, websites, and people in the men's rights movement worldwide. We encourage new writers and commentary.
For all the news all the time, visit our buds
<http://www.mensactivism.org> in the US
<http://www.angryharry.com> in the UK
or Men's News Daily <http://www.mensnewsdaily.com> anywhere.
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"A woman needs a man like a fish needs the river."
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IN THIS ISSUE:
·
JUST A LITTLE HOMEGROWN
·THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!
·DON'T APOLOGIZE FOR ME
·(LOTS OF)WEBSITE NEWS
·INTRODUCING THE HEART-MAN CHRONICLES
·ATTN OF THE LITERATI
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JUST A LITTLE HOMEGROWN
Protest the New Zealand way!
stopABUSE
Planned marches through NZ.
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First and fore most we the steering committee want to make it perfectly
clear that those associations and organisations that are involved in this
want a peaceful march. If we go out bashing Bureaucrats, Government, the X,
or anyone for that matter then we are no better than those that abuse too.
This would defeat the purpose of the march.
We are casting a sprat to catch a mackerel !!
The mackerel being ABUSE
FOR THE REST OF THE STORY, GO TO:
http://www.bigglesguy.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/nz.html
open FAMILY ORIENTATED MEN / Files / stopABUSE Or check the stopABUSE promo on the front page and enter the Introduction thru it. The first flyer is
there for you to distribute now.
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THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!
One Duncan Shields, of LBDUKScotland, that is. He's got some strong, well-considered words at the Guest Editorial Section, with a piece entitled, "Violence And Extreme Feminist Laws."
Check it out at:
http://www.desertlightjournal.homestead.com/guest.html
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DON'T APOLOGIZE FOR ME
By Don Hubin
I recently came across an article by Steven Schacht called "Teaching About Being an Oppressor" (http://www.nostatusquo.com/Schacht/teaching.html). To me, it reads like a long apology for being male and, therefore, an oppressor (by identity if not by overt action).
In this article, Schacht gives a list of male privileges. He cautions that "[b]ecause of my own partial and situated perspective, this list should obviously be considered far from exhaustive." Modestyeven intellectual modestyis a virtue, of course. One wonders, though, how Schacht can be so certain that his "partial and situated perspective" allows him to know that the list is accurate as far as it goes and that it should be considered "far from exhaustive". It sounds as if he thinks that his "partial and situated perspective" gives him absolutely certain knowledge that everything on his list is correct, and certainty that there are more things to add. It just makes him unable to add those things. This is a very selective sort of intellectual modesty.
There's lots on the list that is worth discussing. The tone, the one-sidedness, and the content of the "privileges" are worthy of further examination, I think. Here, though, is one that particularly caught the eye of this divorced father:
13. Should I decide to divorce my spouse, or have this decision forced upon me, if children are involved, I can count on her being the primary caretaker of them (unless I should desire otherwise), and to correspondingly experience an increase in my standard of living often with the full knowledge that hers will significantly drop.
We now know that the standard of living of divorced fathers does not rise as Mr. Schacht believes; and the standard of living of divorced mothers does not decline as Mr. Schacht believes. Looking at this paragraph, I don't primarily fault Mr. Schacht for being ignorant of the facts here; many people are. I don't even primarily fault him for writing with such arrogance when he is ignorant of the facts; ignorance and arrogance are often conjoined. What I find despicable is his assumption that it is a male privilege to count on one's ex-spouse "being the primary caretaker of" one's children. Having fought a long, expensive and hard battle to achieve something close to parity in being a caretaker of my children, I can tell you I do not consider it a privilege to be able to count on someone else being the "primary caretaker." I don't know any divorced fathers who do.
Schacht's calloused disregard for the plight of loving fathers who, without any wrongdoing, have been unwillingly removed from the lives of their children might be explained by his apparent belief that if men don't desire that their ex-wives be the primary caretaker of their children, they can easily prevent this from happening. Perhaps Schacht believes that any divorced father who wants to be a parent to his children can easily achieve this end. But excusing calloused insensitivity by appealing to absolute lunacy is a strange way to defend Schacht's position. And 'lunacy' is a kind word for the belief that divorced fathers can easily get custody of their children after divorce.
Schacht reveals much about himself in suggesting that it is a benefit to men not to have their children. Divorced fathers are ten times more likely to commit suicide than divorced mothers. Not coincidentally, divorced mothers are ten times more likely to get custody of their children than are divorced fathers. Only a man who either doesn't have children or isn't fully engaged with them as a loving father could see it as a benefit to have someone else raise his children. Only a man who isn't willing to listen to the anguished voices of loving fathers who have had their children taken from them could think that men, in general, saw this as a benefit.
Even more revealing are some of Schacht's recountings in another essay ("Why Men Should be Feminists" http://www.nostatusquo.com/Schacht/whyshould.html):
Perhaps not that surprising, given societal expectations of "successful" young men, once I reached my teenage years, my father¹s ways of being--and all the masculine privilege it had to offerseemed far more valuable and I increasingly started to reject the wisdom of my mother's voice. Correspondingly, during this time I undertook nearly every imaginable "stupid men trick" there is from playing hockey, to binge drinking, to driving a sports car (often far too fast and under the influence of alcohol and various other drugs), to starting fist fights with other men, to womanizing. This also meant that I increasingly spent more and more time in male-exclusive groups, and except for largely sexual purposes, sadly had little meaningful social interaction with women.
Being quite average in height and weight, but having an acumen that enabled me to almost always get in the last cutting remark, I surrounded myself with larger often older young men. I was often the "mouth" of masculinity in these groups whereas they often provided the muscle to backup whatever I might say. Frequently like a pack of wolves, almost always under the influence of alcohol and or/some other drug, we set out to see who could sleep with the most womenscoreand sought out other men to verbally and physical subordinate, all in the quest to prove our seeming superiority, our manhood. Little stood in our way as we sadly cut a swath of wanton destruction wherever we went. Moreover, even though I was arrested numerous times from an age of 14 to 21, my class privilege enabled me to hire a lawyer, and combined with a racist criminal justice outlook that white "boys will boys," meant that I was never really held accountable for my illegal and destructive actions.
I could see the disappointment in my mother¹s eyes each time she became aware of my most recent masculine exploit, but in some sick sense, it almost seemed to validate the appropriateness and increase the value of my destructive, often misogynist behaviors. Like some classic Freudian separation complex from one's mother, sadly much of what she stood for, and at one time I shared with her, seemingly became the exact opposite of who I then sought to be. At a point in my life when I was most engrossed in these various masculine rituals, 19, my mother died, and perhaps as if to punish her for doing this, I would unfortunately remain lost in a masculine daze for years to come.
Now if that's what Schacht thinks masculinity is all about, I'm against masculinity, too. But, of course, that's not what it's about. Masculinity was displayed in the selfless actions of the New York police officers and fire-fighters who willingly risked, and often forfeited, their lives to save others after the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center. Masculinity was displayed when Ghandi stood up to the British and when Martin Luther King, Jr. helped to lead the fight for civil rights. And masculinity was displayed by my father, and all the fathers like him, who work hard to provide for their children, play with their children, guide their children and love their children unselfishly.
I'm sorry that Schacht chose the masculine role models he did. He could have done much better, I think. But when will peopleespecially people who repeatedly note their "partial and situated knowledge"stop thinking that their experience is universal experience? Not all men are pigs. Some are, of course, and some who were should now regret their actions. Schacht may have much to apologize for; it sounds as if he does. But he shouldn't shift the blame to society. He was not a "victim" of masculine culture; he should take responsibility for his actions. (That's part of what being a man is about.) His apology should be a personal one. And most of all, he should stop apologizing on my behalf or on behalf of all men.
The claims that Schacht makes are, no doubt based on the study reported by Lenore Weitzman in The Divorce Revolution: The Unexpected Social and Economic Consequences for Women and Children in America (1985). Serious divorce researchers never accepted Weitzman's claims which she chose to publish without benefit of peer review. Suspicions of gross error were fueled by Weitzman's refusal to release her data to other researchersa practice that is expected in the social sciences. For an easily accessible refutation of Weitzman's claims, see Sanford Braver reported in Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths (1998), chapter 4.
See Braver's Divorced Dads, chapter 5. "[W]omen typically feel more satisfied with their divorce settlements for two reasons: because they are more likely to get the deal they want than men are, and because they feel they have greater influence over the settlement process than men do" (p. 100). Men overwhelmingly believed that the divorce settlement process was slanted against men and in favor of women. More surprisingly, women tended to agree.
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Don Hubin is the author of "Parental Rights and Due Process" (The Journal of Law and Family Studies 2(1999)123-150) is available on line at: http://www.cohums.ohio-state.edu/philo/people/faculty/hubin.1/Research/PRDP.PDF.
hubin.1@osu.edu
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(LOTS OF)WEBSITE NEWS
Hope, healing, and help at www.mskinnermusic.com great music & great resources. Three songs are available for your listening pleasure.
Michael Skinner
mikeskinner@mediaone.net
The Men's Centerbackground and fundraiser
The mission of The Men's Center.com is "... to assist men in finding male positive resources, information, and support. We seek to empower men to lead healthy, productive and fulfilling lives. This will ultimately be beneficial to all men, women and children. We are a non-profit educational service of The Men's Resource Network, Inc (MRN)" "MRN is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit corporation created to educate and inform the public about men's issues."
CURRENT MRN PROJECTS / SERVICES
1.TheMensCenter.com http://themenscenter.com
2.Free Web-sites for men's groups and organizations.
3.MENSIGHT Magazine http://themenscenter.com/mensight
4.The Florida Men's Gathering (11 years)
FUTURE PROJECTS / SERVICES (wish list)
1.A Men's Center Building with individual and group counseling.
2.Group Meeting Space.
3.A library and Book store
4.A National Men's Resource Hot-Line.
5.A shelter for battered men.
6.National and Local Men's conferences, workshops and seminars
7.A full service chat room.
8.Our own server with high speed internet access.
9.Grant non-profit affiliate status to men's groups that cannot afford to go through the whole 501(c)(3) process.
10.Hire a grant writer to seek funding.
I have been personally involved in men's issues for 12 years. In 1991 I started The Orlando Men's Council and an men's newsletter called Men! alive and well. In 1992 I started the annual Florida Men's Gathering. About 5 years ago I started a web-site called The Florida Men's Resource Center and that grew into TheMensCenter.com and MENSIGHT Magazine. Three years ago I created The Men's Resource Network, Inc. to provide a legal entity for the projects I was working on. All of this has been financed from a few donations and my own pocket. I am not complaining...this has been a labor of love. However, if we are to grow, we need help. That is why I came up with the idea for a web raffle/fund raiser. Please consider helping us expand. If you are interested, please go to http://themenscenter.com/Raffle.
Thank you,
Jim Bracewell, president,
The Men's Resource Network, Inc.
jbracewell@themenscenter.com
The DLJ website has also been updated! We've suspended the "Heart of the Matter" editorials temporarily, but we'll bring it back when yours truly has time to stop and express her opinion. Meanwhilewe've got more links added, the archives brought up-to-date, and yadayadayada. Nothing less than you'd expect. Check it out! And while you're looking around, vote for us for Arizona's Best Site, right on the front page.
http://www.desertlightjournal.homestead.com/
Chilling Effects Clearinghouse
A joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, and University of San Francisco law school clinics. Do you know your online rights? Have you received a letter asking you to remove information from a Web site or stop engaging in an activity? Are you concerned about liability for information that someone else posted to your online forum? If so, this site is for you.
http://www.chillingeffects.org/
For those of you planning to engage in a little activism there are some helpful hints on dealing with the media (and more!) from the Just Cause Law Collective.
http://www.lawcollective.org/handbooks/activist/html/media.htm
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INTRODUCING THE HEART-MAN CHRONICLES
With nothing less than the greatest pleasure, we would like to announce a new department, "The Heart-Man Chronicles," to the DLJ. This will be renewed occasionally, rather than monthly as the Guest Editorials are, and will feature men's own stories of life in the Third Millennium. To launch the feature, we have a lighthearted look at 'Black Operations: Letters to the Savages,' an account of facing the feminists on their own turf in cyberspace by Bernard Chapin. You may recognize Bernard as one of the cyberMan authors, who wrote "Napalm is the Scent of Justice."
Enjoy the Chronicles at:
http://www.desertlightjournal.homestead.com/chronicles.html
/=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= advertisement =-=-=\
This issue of the DesertLight Journal is brought to you by
cyberManbooks-"A New World of Words"
http://www.cyberManbooks.com
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ATTN OF THE LITERATI
Trudy W. Schuett has been appointed as a moderator of the FictionAddiction Delphi forum. If you've got questions or comments on writing or publishing, the is the place for you!
Visit the FictionAddiction Forum:
http://forums.delphiforums.com/fictionaddict
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"I have brought myself by long meditation to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and that nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment." --Benjamin Disraeli
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We leave you with the 'Zonie blessing--"May you always have a full tank of
gas and underwear that doesn't ride up!"
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Trudy W. Schuett
Publisher
<http://www.desertlightjournal.homestead.com/>
PO Box 1252 Yuma AZ 85366
This e-zine may be shared or forwarded provided the entire publication is sent.
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Commentary and contributed articles are not necessarily the opinion of the DesertLight
Journal. We strive to include all views in the emerging men's rights movement, and
therefore cannot be expected to agree with everything.
©2002 TWSchuett
All rights reserved
ISSN: 1538-3857- Library Of Congress, USA
