Monday, November 14, 2005

Today I am not the Moon...

Today I am not the Moon, I am a finger, pointing at the Moon.

The following (again, hevily excerpted) blog entry entitled 'learning about life' from Britt's Poetry speaks volumes about the status of men in our country, and it's effect upon the family, written from the point of view of a daughter of divorce.

Learning About Life

[...]

After mom and dad got a divorce, we were only allowed to see dad on the weekends. He moved into the new house that we had just bought. It was so cold that winter. Dad, my brother, and I all slept in one bed because dad didn’t have any furniture yet. Dad made us laugh, though, until we went home on Sunday night. He hugged us goodbye at the door and told us to have a good week. He would think about us. Tears trickled down my face. I didn’t try to hold them in anymore. I couldn’t look mom in the eye for a long time.

When I was fourteen years old, I watched my mom drink more than I had ever seen. One night as she started in on the large 32 pack of beer, we got into a fight.
[...]
She grabbed me, pinned me down on the bed, and in that moment I realized how valuable life really is. As soon as she let me up, I hitch-hiked to the next town and stayed the night at my boyfriend’s house. I never wanted to go home.

In my senior year of high school, I had made all the necessary arrangements to go to Eastern Illinois University. Shortly afterwards I was offered a full scholarship to a community college. I wrestled with both ideas, trying to figure out what to do. I asked dad. He said he was so proud of me and he would support me no matter what I decided. I asked mom. She said she just wanted me to know that she wouldn’t be handing me money all the time because I was going to be on my own now. I said thanks, mom.

One weekend of my freshman year of college at Eastern, I went home. I stopped by to see my mom and we talked for awhile. When I started to leave, she looked at me and smiled. “I miss you. You know you can come home anytime,” she said with tears in her eyes. I smiled back at her. I looked at the empty house and then down at the can of beer in her hand, shook my head, and walked away.

Her father is right to be proud. I can't add anything to what she has written.

Read it all.

-M

A Call To Arms

Men's News Daily hosts a great post by an 89-year old veteran; Maurice Conway, which I excerpt heavily below.


In WWII, I fought for democracy. Today, I fight for JUSTICE

I am an 89-year-old veteran of the Second World War who served in the war as a member of the British Royal Marines. In recognition of my service during the bombing of London, I received a citation from the Lord Mayor of London. Ten years after the war, in 1955, I moved from Britain to Canada, where I currently reside.

During the war effort, my comrades and I sacrificed our way of life, as we knew it then, in order to defend Great Britain and its allies (including Canada) from an evil that was sweeping over Europe. We fought to ensure freedom and democracy with the hope and expectation that the generations that followed us would have a better and more prosperous way of life. Many of my comrades gave their lives to this end. I am one of the few of my generation who still remain alive today. Although I may be old in body, I am young in mind and spirit, and I still believe in those same principles that my comrades and I fought for during the war.

Unfortunately, today, another very terrible evil is sweeping over our land. It is an evil that comes not from outside of our country but from within it. It comes not from people of other nations but from our own people right here at home. It is an evil that my comrades, if they were alive today, would fight along side of me just as valiantly as they fought against those who tried to enslave the free nations of the world and to take away our freedom and democracy back in 1939.

The evil of which I speak about now is our family justice system. It seems to have no mercy on children or their parents, especially good loving fathers who seem to be taking the brunt of the abuse by the justice system. Many of the fathers being destroyed today by Canada's Family Justice System are the sons and grandsons of the many brave men who fought and died for Great Britain and its allies during the war. Many of the fathers who died during the war did so, not only for the cause of Democracy and Freedom but also a desire to give their descendants a better and more secure way of life.

[...]

It is time that all, not just a few, stand up and do something to stop this needless destruction of children and families by our justice system. In many ways, what is being done to children and their families by our courts is no less horrific than some of the crimes committed by our enemies during the war. Families today are being led into courts to be financially and emotionally destroyed just as families were being led into the gas chambers during the war.

Read it All, and then ACT. Do not sit quietly by while our rights continue to be eroded. Don't let one more man be flushed down the drain of no-fault divorce into legalized slavery. Do something every week to create motion in our cause. Share your experience, speak to legislators, write to friends, newspapers and representatives. You owe it to yourself, you owe it to your families, and you owe it to the heroes who gave their lives to protect our way of life.

Don't sit and contemplate it - ACT.

Yours
-M

(Simulposted on Hate Male Post)

Sunday, November 13, 2005

E is for Elipses...

Well, last week's efforts have been quite successful, and next week has huge deliverables too, so again, I will be quieter than usual. I am eager to return to blogging, there is so much to do, and so much to say. It is difficult though to speak out, work at something resembling a career, learn to be a lawyer so as to be able to proceed pro-se, care for children, and handle all of the other responsibilities. Some Men's Rights Activists complain how quiet and sheep-like most men are and wonder where are their voices. I think it is a unique calling to speak out. Few have it, and few may be gifted for it. Obviously, the circumstances we live under drive us to it - but many men probably are busy bowing under the weight of the plinth that has been installed on their heads... Finding ways to speak out is not on their 'to-do' list. Likely speaking out is difficult too, because Divorce itself is to many, a sin, a crime against nature... ...and men are seen as always at fault in divorce. 'Somehow, Somehow, you didn't love enough, didn't care enough.' Add to that a media that finds little to respect in the plight of men, and what voices are out there get silenced.

Still there are bits of hope out there, that our government is realizing that men have a tough go of it in some arenas, and is trying to change things. Consider this story from the Chicago Sun Times via MensActivism.Org:

"President Bush's administration has threatened to sue Southern Illinois University, alleging its fellowship programs [including their Bridge and Proactive programs] for minority and female students violate federal civil rights laws by discriminating against whites, men and others... The University has engaged in a pattern or practice of intentional discrimination against whites, non-preferred minorities and males... The letter demands the university cease the fellowship programs, or the department's civil rights division will sue SIU by Nov. 18...

The Web site describing the Bridge program specifically says it is only open to members of underrepresented minority groups. Several white women who have "overcome hardship" have been awarded the Graduate Dean's Fellowship, even though women outnumber men at the university. White men need not apply, however. "I'll be upfront with you -- no white male will get this award,'' McNeil said.

It's About Time. ...and.... When women are in the majority, how can men be legitimately excluded?

Yours,
-M

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

S is for Suicide - Revisited

This blog entry is based on one composed for MIsForMalevolent on Thursday, August 18, 2005, but which needed revisiting due to the criticality of the subject matter. I have revised the original post quite a bit to make the points clearer, and added a lot of emphasis and even some math. Don't be scared. Just adding, subtracting, and multiplying. ...Take deep breaths... You'll be fine.

If you are moderately familiar with the topic at hand...

...which is the treatment of men by our society...

- you probably have wondered how men can survive the crushing depression that they must feel while struggling with a strongly biased legal system that is eager to enslave them.

Well, many men don’t survive it.

Suicide rates for men and boys are already much higher than those for women and girls – with 75% of all suicides being committed by men - over 22,000 men per year. (The rate is 80% in Canada, perhaps reflecting their system, which is often even more abusive of men. )

And suicide rates for divorced men are even higher than that - divorced and separated men are TWICE AS LIKELY to commit suicide as other men, per the study "Marital Status and Suicide in the National Longitudinal Mortality Study" by Augustine J. Kposowa, Ph.D., at the University of California at Riverside. CBS News covered the report in some detail here.

The study showed that being single versus being married made no difference in suicide rates.
- Simply 'being married' does not provide singificant mental health benefits relating to suicide.

Even more tellingly, for women marital status, married, single, separated or divorced, made NO STATISTICAL DIFFERENCE in suicide rates.
- So somehow, divorce affects men in a much more significant way than women. One wonders what that way could be...

Previous to this study, increased rates of suicide for men had been explained away by claiming that significant mental and physical health benefits were to be had from married life, and by 'congitive differences' between men and women - women purportedly spending more time 'processing' their problems and thinking more 'inclusively' than men, Well Dr. Kposowa's research has exposed that canard, (wait, let me speak plainly:) that misandrous, shovenist tripe for what it is.

Let's take a moment and really reveiw those numbers, which we will extrapolate using the published rough perecentages in the CBS news article:

Total Suicides: 30,000 per year
Men's Suicides: 22,500 per year
Women's Suicides: 7,500 per year
Divorced/Separated Men's Suicides: 14,850 per year.

Hmm. I wonder how many men committed suicide outside of a divorce/separation.
...Well, I know how to subtract, lets see...

Non Divorced/Separated Men's Suicides: 7,650 per year.
Wait... that's approximately equal to the number of suicides for women.

So it seems reasonable to guess, that if it were not for the way men are treated in divorce, those 14,850 men PER YEAR would still be alive.


One can only wonder what value the approximately 148,000 men killed by divorce over the last decade would have added to our country if they had not been driven to suicide by our country's misandry.

Imagine the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of children growing up over the last decade without fathers, brothers, sisters and parents bereft of their son or brother. Men who died for the crime of getting married to the wrong person.

The total loss is mind-numbing.

Dr. Kposowa's study; the first study that cared enough about men to look at the details of why men kill themselves; shows us that if you hear about a man committing sucide the odds are better than 2:1 that he is either a divorcee or going through a divorce.

Suicide is a dramatic and extreme way out of a very bad situation. -A way out that few would choose.

The significant increase (2:1) in suicides following a divorce for men is very significant.

These men are the canaries in the coal-mine of our family court system. They are literally dying to tell us something, and apparently that something is about... Divorce.

SO NOW COMES THE BIG QUESTION:

What is so terrible about divorce that men would kill themselves to escape it?

The answer is simple: Slavery. To quote Adrian Banks' article on suicide and divorce:

So what is the main cause of [divorced male] suicide? […] The answer to this question is not that difficult, but before someone can accept the truth of the main causes of suicide, one must first accept the truth that slavery is just as much an institution today as it has been throughout history. The more oppressive and cruel the enslavement, the more suicides there will be among the enslaved classes of society. Why do you think that, in pre civil war times, slaves were kept in the holes of ships and not allowed on the decks? Simple, it kept the slave trader's precious cargo of labor from jumping into the ocean. As Winston Churchill stated during World War II, "it is better to perish that to live as slaves." […] In a divorce situation today, there need not be any legitimate grounds thanks to no fault divorce. A man can be a hard working fellow who supports his family and loves his children, but if his wife decides to divorce him, there is nothing he can do.

Kposowa cites "financial obligations," in explaining the preponderance of divorcees amongst male suicides noting that "The courts in the United States are in a position now whereby money is given to the woman, or the man is forced to pay alimony, child support. The man is also asked, in some [perhaps most] cases, to vacate the house."


Kposowa also notes: "If a man loses custody of the children and the woman keeps those children, there are situations whereby she may not allow the man to see the children, and that causes some depression." -No kidding.

Suicidal divorced men are merely slaves leaping from the decks
– consider the facts:

  • Most marriages end in divorce – over 60% by my numbers.
  • 66% of these are initiated by the wife and few of them for abuse or any real fault. -No-fault divorces are initiated by women three times as often as by men.
  • The courts award physical custody to the man about 3% of the time – the odds are 40 to 1 against the man winning physical custody.
  • Truly shared custody is so rare that the courts don’t even know how to calculate support for it – their spreadsheets don’t support it. They have to fill out one for the father as primary, and one for the mother, and then average the two. - I believe that loss of access to one’s children and alienation are key factors in male suicide.
  • Women commonly interfere with the visitation rights of the ex husband. 75% of men complain of this behavior, and 40% of women admit it. If one assumes complaints are lower than the actual number of abuses, the numbers must be staggering.
  • Add the loss of the vast majority of the marital assets and the house, and everything that the man has worked for, financial contributions being where men are expected to excel, and what they are supposed to judge themselves by, and you have taken away a lot of the reasons that men have to live.
  • Add alimony and child support, all while not being allowed to co-parent your own children.
  • Add to all this the fact that the state’s machinery grinds very finely – loss of a job, ‘underemployment’, and bankruptcy are good enough reasons to lose almost any debt, but not alimony and child support, no, these continue unabated, plus penalties and legal fees.
  • And if our poor man is unlucky enough to lose his job, or become ‘underemployed’, then the legal system in many of our states, including NJ, will take 60-65% of his income, even unemployment, irregardless of what his spouse is earning. Imagine, a spouse with a $150,000 salary, collecting 65% of the income of a man scratching by on $405 per week unemployment, or a $40,000/year job. NJ would do it in a heartbeat. I bet they already have.

So divorced men have good reason to be casting themselves from the decks.

Having lost their wives, their children, their assets, and finally their ability to earn a living, and being relegated to permanent poverty, divorced men are killing themselves in record numbers - over 15,000 men per year, killed by divorce.

Our job is to support them, and encourage our government to notice, and care.

-M


(simulposted on Hate Male Post - oh, and it wasn't really posted at 9am, I just knew I would be OOT today.)

Related posts:
Why Alimony is Wrong
Other Ways Alimony is Like Slavery
Further Bankruptcy Rights Revoked for Men - Making Divorce Even More Like Debt Servitude
P is for Paternity - or how to catch yourself a slave
D is for Divorce - 'the financial haircut club for men'
D is for Dance of Death - a bit on Perry Manley and others

See The State of Fatherhood for more information
If you feel suicidal, the divorce info page on suicide might be a good place to look.
I also recommend looking at Swallowed by a Snake.