New at Reason

Julian Sanchez | November 22, 2005

Cathy Young curls up with a bucket of popcorn to veg out to some misandrist public television.

Comments

|11.22.05 @ 8:53AM|#

The filmmakers contend that their only concern was the well-being of children. Yet if the film contributes to a climate in which fathers who seek custody are tagged as suspected abusers, it could endanger children as well. PBS should rectify this bias by presenting programs with a different point of view.

Huh? So, if I can complete my documentary entitled "Women Are Evil Bitches And Should Never Have Anything To Do With Their Offspring" that would "rectify the bias"?

Dave W.|11.22.05 @ 9:02AM|#

Now that is some down and dirty, adversarial journalism. The kind politicians used to face. Good stuff and good practice.

|11.22.05 @ 9:24AM|#

The cynic in me wonders what the relevance of accused (not convicted) abusers getting at least partial custody might be. People say lots of shit in divorces.

|11.22.05 @ 9:35AM|#

"People say lots of shit in divorces."

Especially when there is what is known as the "tactical custody strike", also known as a protection from abuse order, like we have in PA. As soon as the divorce action starts, the participants race to the courthouse to file a PFA against each other, so that you can get temporary custody. And, well, men don't fair well in those kinds of cross-claims, because the way a judge makes the news is if he doesn't grant one to a women claiming abuse and something happens later.

So, once you win your "tactical custody strike," you get a ton of benefits. First and foremost is temporary custody - which figures heavily into permanent custody, as you don't like to disrupt established lifestyles for the children. Next, you usually get to keep possession of the marital residence, while the defendant has to scramble to move into some rathole (come up with the deposit, first and last month's rent on a moment's notice). Plus you can get the local children in youth crawling up the defendant's rectum, forcing him to miss work to keep up with all the mandated meetings and investigatory functions. Not to mention all the little inconveniences that you get to subject the defendant to, like confiscation of anything you deem to be a weapon.

It's such a surefire thing that brings so many benefits, it really is no wonder that it is abused so often. And the best one was the decision where the court ordered the sheriff to confiscate the guns from the defendant's father's house (the father wasn't even a party to the action!) because the plaintiff was afraid. Due process and the 2nd amendment, swept away in one decree!

|11.22.05 @ 10:11AM|#

People say lots of shit in divorces.

Tell me about it. Along with my parent's obvious incompatibility (he's a control freak, she's an idiot), mother had run up a rather large dept and thought a divorce (Wisconsin is a joint property state, giving her half the house, half my father's pension, etc.) would clear it up nicely. During the trial, mother became quite the story teller, weaving tall tales of child abuse that my sister and I do not recall. My dad may be a jerk, but beyond the occasional spanking when he did something stupid, he never laid a hand on me or my sis out of anger.

In the end, it was a draw. Dad lost the house, and had to buy his mother's half from her despite the fact that she didn't contribute a cent for its payment. We were stuck for half a year in an apartment while the divorce hearing took place. However, she didn't get the alimony she was looking for and a lot of the debt she racked up was incurred AFTER she filed for divorce, so Dad didn't need to pay it. She now lives with her mother in a house she can't afford on her postal worker salary. She's been through bankruptcy twice since the split.

And the best one was the decision where the court ordered the sheriff to confiscate the guns from the defendant's father's house (the father wasn't even a party to the action!) because the plaintiff was afraid. Due process and the 2nd amendment, swept away in one decree!

When one of my uncles was going through his divorce over a decade ago*, his ex's lawyer tried to use his gun collection against him. You see, it was evidence that he was violent and abusive, despite the fact he had never touched her.

When the court granted him custody of their kids, the lawyer stood up, waved a list of my uncles firearms, and shouted "How can you grant him custody. He's got 40 guns!" The judge had to remind her that gun ownership was legal in Washington state and my uncle had no criminal record.

*My then-aunt had decided that she was a lesbian after two kids and 20-years of marriage. Of course, while it bugged my uber-Catholic uncle and father, her sexual orientation didn't bother me. What DID bother me is the deceitful tactics she and her lawyer used during the divorce proceedings.

Hakluyt|11.22.05 @ 11:20AM|#

Just wait until the Ghost of Human Kindness gets to those kids. :)

|11.22.05 @ 12:25PM|#

So, if I can complete my documentary entitled "Women Are Evil Bitches And Should Never Have Anything To Do With Their Offspring" that would "rectify the bias"?

I suspect that by "a different point of view," Cathy meant one closer to reality than the film reviewed or your extreme opposite.

clarityiniowa|11.22.05 @ 12:37PM|#

I am an NPR/PBS junkie, but I do find that certain features like this tend to be skewed or slanted to make them more sensational. I suspect this is a deliberate ploy to increase viewership and ratings, since they don't air "Desperate Housewives."

A more substantive, although probably less tantalizing take on this subject would have been to simply profile cases where custody was returned to allegedly abusive parents of either gender.

|11.22.05 @ 12:50PM|#

You're missing PBS's main argument, which is -- President Bush is a man. Therefore, all men are bad.

Jeff P.|11.22.05 @ 1:30PM|#

Off topic, but check this out: Mothers against Munchausen Syndrome allegations:
http://www.msbp.com/

clarityiniowa|11.22.05 @ 1:32PM|#

You're missing PBS's main argument, which is -- President Bush is a man. Therefore, all men are bad.

No, that would be my wife's argument. ;-)

|11.22.05 @ 1:51PM|#

"Off topic, but check this out: Mothers against Munchausen Syndrome allegations:"

Haven't look at the link, but was involved in a case with such an allegation. Scary thing about a Munchausen's diagnosis is that it is a diagnosis by exclusion - essentially the docs all say "we don't know what's happening, so mom (or in rare cases, dad or other relative) must be doing something to the child".

Now, I don't doubt that it is a valid diagnosis in some cases, but, man - there is absolutely no way to defend it when it is alleged. No judge is going to take the chance that the state's docs are wrong - you're going to lose your kid.

|11.22.05 @ 3:22PM|#

Back in the 1970s a main subject of Radical Feminist discussion was sadomasochism, including selective readings of the works of De Sade himself. The plot template of the De Sadian narrative shows up not only in a RadFem volume decrying reports of sadomasochistic relations among feminist lesbians
(AGAINST SADOMASOCHISM: A Radical Feminist Analysis , 1982), but more importantly in Catharine MacKinnon's "Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination," 1979, which was the source of the original EEOC sexual harassment regulation promulgated in 1980. MacKinnon's argument was that heterosexual men's relations with women were generally of a dominance/dominated sort, which in sexual terms seems to imply a sadomasochistic relationship.

Significant in these texts is the generalization that to "be a heterosexual male" is equal to "being a sadist." It matters not what statistical evidence you produce one way or another--the ideological predisposition of RadFems in general is toward the assumption that males are in some sense "naturally" sexual sadists.

|11.22.05 @ 3:59PM|#

AGAINST SADOMASOCHISM: A Radical Feminist Analysis , 1982

Hey! I think I read this! Or at least skimmed it. Many years ago I found it in the UM-St. Louis library.

If it's the same book I remember, it was actually written by a group of lesbians who had previously participated in S&M, then decided it was unhealthy and anti-woman and now wanted it proscribed. I remember skimming through it, and the recurring thought that kept running through my mind was, "Oh sure, now that they've had their fun, now it's gotta be illegal ..." Reformed sinners are the worst.

|11.22.05 @ 4:11PM|#

"MacKinnon's argument was that heterosexual men's relations with women were generally of a dominance/dominated sort, which in sexual terms seems to imply a sadomasochistic relationship"

Well my lesbian sister (MBA, undergrad in Women's Studies) would tell you that MacKinnon -- up until the day she died -- should have a ball-gag in her mouth, and more often than not, probably did.

|11.22.05 @ 4:33PM|#

"MacKinnon's argument was that heterosexual men's relations with women were generally of a dominance/dominated sort, which in sexual terms seems to imply a sadomasochistic relationship"

Whenever I hear comments like that I always feel embarrassed for the person making them--MacKinnon in this case--for inadvertently revealing way too much embarrassing personal stuff.

It's like if one of R. Kelly's girlfriends grew up to be a feminist professor who wrote all these angry term papers complaining that "heterosexual men's relationship with women seems to involve males urinating on their underaged girlfriends;" after I'm done cringing, I get indignant and then think "Speak for yourself, sicko."

|11.22.05 @ 5:03PM|#

Hey Jennifer,


How'd you get the quote to show up in italics? I've looked around the site a bit and haven't found the info needed.


- Heather

Dave W.|11.22.05 @ 5:35PM|#

In one thread the threat father's beatings scared you out of any sense of right and wrong. But in this thread the beatings weren't so bad. I think you are more influenced in your thinking by the memory of the fear of the beatings than memory of the beatings themselves.

fyodor|11.22.05 @ 5:46PM|#

Heather,

Use before your quote

and after it.

fyodor|11.22.05 @ 5:48PM|#

Damn, it didn't show up but just made me italicized, I was afraid of that.

I'll try it again.

Use "" before, and then the same thing with a "/" before the "i" after.

fyodor|11.22.05 @ 5:49PM|#

I give up.

|11.22.05 @ 5:50PM|#

Heather, use [i] before your quote, and [/i] after it. Only replace the brackets with "less than" and "greater than" signs.

For bold, do the same thing but replace the "i" with a "b."

|11.22.05 @ 5:58PM|#

Heather, use [i] before your quote, and [/i] after it. Only replace the brackets with "less than" and "greater than" signs.

Thanks?

|11.22.05 @ 5:59PM|#

Yes! Thanks!

jadagul|11.22.05 @ 5:59PM|#

Okay, since I'm a total showoff, and just to be clear:

<i>This statement would be in italics.</i>

<b>This statement would be in bold.</b>

&lt; becomes < and &gt; becomes >
And &amp; becomes &

|11.22.05 @ 6:15PM|#

Jadagul, if you really want to impress us females in the herd, you'll tell us how to include a working link in a post.

|11.22.05 @ 7:34PM|#

Well, simply put <a href="http://sitetolinkto.com/pagetolinkto.html"> at the start of the link text and </a> at the end of the link text.

Also, the posting software will automatically terminate any italics and bold tags at the end of each paragraph, if you didn't close them yourself.

Finally, if you're pasting from Word or Outlook, it is a good idea to remove each of the apostrophes and quotation marks and type them back in in the Comments: box with the key to the right of the semicolon. Word and Outloook will use one of the "smart" quotes, which look prettier, but are not mapped correctly. If you want the spell check features of Word, you can download the Google Toolbar by clicking the "more »" link and clicking toolbar at the bottom of that page. It provides quite a handy spell check feature.

Now, we just have to find a way to get it to break really LLLOOOOOONNNNNGGG URLs up so that they don't screw up the formatting for everyone else on the thread. And by "we," I mean Tim Cavanaugh or one of his employees.

|11.22.05 @ 8:44PM|#

Heather: "MacKinnon -- up until the day she died . . ."

I believe that reports of the death of Catharine MacKinnon are seriously exaggerated.

|11.22.05 @ 9:27PM|#

thinking of Andrea Dworkin, perhaps?

|11.22.05 @ 9:43PM|#

By the way, I'm going to go accuse my boyfriend of being an evil oppressive misogynistic pig who needs to stop sadomasochistically dominating me (we ARE a heterosexual couple, after all), but I'm torn: should I tell him this while he's giving me my foot rub, or wait until he's finished with the laundry?

Jadagul|11.23.05 @ 3:05AM|#

Damnit, missed my chance! Now I must be condemned to languish forever in unimpressive obscurity, failing to have obsessively reloaded this page after commenting, as per usual practice. Woe is me, woe is me...

Shawn Smith, I assume you mean "a way to break up the long URLs of people who don't do it themselves"? If you're worried about your own, you either encase them in a hyperlink or use tinyurl, which is a pretty cool tool and allows you to add it to your bookmarks toolbar.

Jadagul|11.23.05 @ 3:22AM|#

Incidentally, Jennifer (or anyone else), next time you come up with a question check out this site. Pretty extensive instructions/reference; it's where I learned most of this stuff.

Oh, and I'd definitely confront your boyfriend as soon as possible, were I you. After all, we both know that women need to stay at home, be domestic, and serve their men in order to be happy; his desires to do laundry for you and give you a foot rub are clearly more sadistic attempts to deprive you of your rightful place in life and make you miserable.

|11.23.05 @ 11:19AM|#

Jadagul,

You're right. Thank you for the clarification, as I'm not too concerned about my own links. I post so infrequently that even if I did screw up, it would only affect a few threads. I think the last malformatting I saw was a couple hundred ">" characters together as one word.

Now, if we could just convince Tim that the <s> or <strike> or <del> elements were ok to keep on our posts.

|11.23.05 @ 11:58AM|#

Heather: "MacKinnon -- up until the day she died . . ."

I believe that reports of the death of Catharine MacKinnon are seriously exaggerated.

Comment by: Michael McCanles at November 22, 2005 08:44 PM
---
thinking of Andrea Dworkin, perhaps?

Comment by: sheila at November 22, 2005 09:27 PM

They're not the same person?

|11.24.05 @ 2:10AM|#

Sorry for being a little late. Just got back from a lame bar.

To the entire Reason staff:
Thanks for the great mag and website. Everytime I get on the Internet this is the very first site I visit. Keep it up and I have a safe & happy Thanksgiving.

To all the Hit & Runners:
Thanks for interesting and humerous posts.
Have a safe & happy Thanksgiving everybody.

|11.24.05 @ 2:17AM|#

Sorry, wrong thread.