Battered Fathers

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Battered Fathers

by Barbara Kay, National PostPublished: Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Seven years ago, Ken Sandall's wife walked out on him with their two young children. At the time, Ken was making $2,250 a month. A judge ordered him to pay $2,000 a month in spousal and child support. (Crazy allocations like this happen a lot in family court. But nobody does anything about it, even though lives are ruined.) He slept in friends' basements and lived like a tramp, but he paid until he was forced to declare bankruptcy.
Ken was subjected to more humiliations, including false allegations of sexual impropriety with children. His further trials would make good reading, but so would all the other hundreds of stories I have on file about men who get a raw deal from angry women. Instead, I'd rather tell you what Ken went on to do after he got his life back together again.
Ken became a father's rights activist. From experience, he realized that the one thing men suddenly deprived of their homes and families need more than anything else is relief from the intense loneliness they face. Typically, they have no clue as to their legal rights or obligations and are ill-equipped to negotiate the women-friendly family law maelstrom into which they've been sucked.
Ten days ago, under Ken's direction, a new fathers rights support group -- "Ottawa Fathers" -- opened its doors for business. Ken had fairly humble expectations, but before the first day of business ended, he had fielded over 100 e-mails of interest, warm encouragement and petitions for assistance from the Ottawa area and beyond.
A core group of 20 has already formed. The first meeting of the group has been set for April 7. What makes
Ottawa Fathers different from other father support groups, which focus on information-sharing, is that it offers peer support -- they "walk the walk" of the family law journey on a case by case basis, as well as offering a temporary safe house for men who have been thrown out of their family home or who are escaping domestic abuse (yes, it happens more than either side likes to admit). They'll help with paperwork, accompany a man to court, seek a sympathetic lawyer and, in short, just -- you know --be there for them.
To my knowledge, this is the first Canadian initiative that is trying to duplicate for men services like shelters, counselling and paralegal guidance that are widely available for women, all generously funded by charities and government. Needless to say, Ken's group will depend entirely on private funds. No men's groups I know of receive a cent from government or charities.
A lot of the men Ken deals with are suicidal or victims of domestic abuse. About 800 men in Ontario kill themselves every year. Around half of them are at the time of their suicide involved in the family law system. If women were killing themselves in such numbers and had this factor in common, there would be a national outcry. But there seems to be little public interest in knowing why men feel so tortured during a process that is purportedly even-handed in its judgments. Of course it isn't, the suicides are proof of that, and still the beat goes on.
Last summer, as an experiment, I asked a male friend of mine to call up Ontario organizations listed by Health Canada as recognized bodies dealing with "family" needs, including help for victims of domestic violence. I also called some, pretending to have a brother with a battering female spouse. Neither of us could get to first base in terms of actual service. There was help on offer for abusing men, and for abused women. Nothing for male victims of abuse by women.
Several of these organizations were funded by government and by The United Way of Greater Toronto. I spoke to the director of allocations at United Way. They have no intention of researching or funding domestic abuse by women against men for the foreseeable future.
Ken Sandall's group is filling a gap that shouldn't be there. You can learn more about Ottawa Fathers atwww.ottawafathers.piczo.com.

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Feminists Have No Voice

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Feminists Have No Voice You almost never see a feminist column on an oped page, a feminist article in a magazine or newspaper, actual (not satirised) feminist ideas on TV or in the movies. Marilyn French

I think I am going mad.

I must have imagined all those articles and TV programmes.

Germaine Greer? Who's she?

Never really heard of her.

I only think that she exists.

She is a figment of my imagination.

... women are human beings who matter as much as men. That is all that feminism claims.

I can't stand it any longer.

I think I am going to die!

Why the Times of London prints the inane ramblings of this unbelievably stupid woman just defeats me.

In the above article Mzzzzzzzzz French, basically, bemoans the fact that women do most of the child-rearing and the nesting, and that men 'rule' the world. What she forgets to point out is that women prefer it this way, and that the men who 'rule' the world tend to exert their 'rule' mostly over the men!

Another of her complaints is that women do not get paid for the allegedly fabulous work that they do in the home.

But neither do the men!

And if western women would prefer to go out and earn some money, then no-one is standing in their way.

It's called 'choice'!

I think that Mzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz French thinks that women should be paid for doing housework.

Well, where would this lead us?

Hmm. Let's think.

OK. Let's pay them, say, £100 per week via the tax system.

QUESTION: Who is going to monitor the housework? If no-one monitors it, then women will just get paid for being women - and nothing else!

And so what would the men do? Well, for one thing, they would work less hard. After all, they would already have the services of a paid servant!

LOL!

And if we are going to monitor the housework, then we are talking about government snoopers coming to our homes - with the women being checked out to make sure that they have, for example, cleaned the windows properly.

Hmm. Maybe paying women for doing the housework is not such a bad idea after all.

LOL!

Death. Death. Sweet Death. Come not too close. And let us just parlay awhile.

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George Galloway vs Daniel Finkelstein

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George Galloway vs Daniel Finkelstein I thought you might like to see some clips from my Sky debate last night with George Galloway. He does not, in Corporal Jones's immortal phrase, like it up him. Daniel Finkelstein

Daniel Finkelstein uses his blog in the Times newspaper to present a biased series of clips designed to show George Galloway in a bad light - when he was taking part in a debate with him on Sky News.

But, as the comments below his piece show, it is Finkelstein who actually comes out worse in the very clips that he chose to publicise.

LOL!

I wish I had Galloway's verbal ability.

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Men Pay High Price For 'Equality'

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Men Pay High Price For 'Equality' Hundreds of thousands of men face salary cuts of up to £15,000 to fund increases for women staff.

Equal pay claims for up to 1.5 million public sector workers could cost the taxpayer more than £10 billion and mean that hundreds of thousands of men will lose up to 40 per cent of their salary.

Of course, this is not really about 'equality' at all. The fact of the matter is that men do jobs that are harder than are those done by women - e.g. see Women do not Deserve Equal Pay

Furthermore, there is not even the pretence that the jobs done by these women are of the same worth as are those done by men. The grounds for the alleged present discrimination in pay are, quite simply, that more women do such jobs which attract less pay! - e.g. Are Women Not Even Responsible For Their Work Choices?)

In other words, if an easy job with lesser pay tends to attract more women than men, then this, in and of itself, is sufficient grounds to argue that discrimination has taken place.

But if men were mostly to choose these easier jobs with lesser pay, then this argument could not be made.

This is not 'equality'. This is gross injustice.

And I can assure my readers that if it ever was the case that women, as a whole, earned more money than men, then it would be successfully argued by the feminists and their lackey boys in government that this was unfair on women because they had to pay more in taxes. And one can easily imagine that, thereafter, they would alter the tax rates for men and women so that women paid a lesser rate - e.g. see Equality Between Men And Women Is Not Achievable.

Finally, I hope that working men will soon wake up to the fact that their Trades Unions are mostly hand-in-glove with left-wing feminist-dominated governments, and that these Unions are doing very little to protect working men from the serious biases that they face not only in the workplace, but also in terms of the law as it bears on other matters; e.g. with regard to their families.

As such, working men would be far better off supporting the growing men's movement than wasting their time and their money supporting Trades Unions that no longer have any real interest in their well-being.

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Toxic Wives

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Toxic Wives Rich men, I believe, have finally cottoned on to the sinister side of the stay-at-home wife: Tara Winter Wilson

Many men of my age and acquaintance have become deeply bitter and disappointed about how their wives have changed since they hung up their working wardrobes.

"Can't you just divorce?" I asked.

"Are you kidding?" he replied. "I'd lose everything I've worked for, including my children, and I'd be paying her an indecent amount of money for life."

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