Timkins

Do you really believe men feel good about themselves when they say to women and the universe: “You will come to love and appreciate me when you have to do without me”? I believe these were the thoughts running through my father’s mind just before he put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

Men are making their happiness contingent on women, families and the legal system. This can only result in us blaming others for our sense of frustration and entrapment. Yet when a woman (or a man) points this out, the cry goes out “bias” or “discrimination”. This avoids the issue entirely - arguing is our last line of defence.

Men need to take responsibility for their own contentment, although this doesn't mean we can't stand together in our solitude. This is the only real choice. If we don’t, each individual man – of his own accord – condemns himself to never finding the freedom he craves.

We only find this truth hard to accept because we lack a reason for it being the case. Instead we blame, in preference to acknowledging we do not know why our creator would give us free will only in order for us to surrender it to him and those he sent to comfort us.

Regardless of the dilemma, what a man really offers the world remains unconditional, indefinable and always there to be shared if he opens his heart.

Mark

“It is a deplorable fact that children are routinely placed in contact with abusive parents, mostly male.
It is a unpardonable sin that in Australia today, children are abused and have been killed on court ordered contact. This is because the rhetoric coming out of the “father’s” side of the debate has the ears of the politicians, and dangerously uniformed speakers...”
So says Happy. The vast majority of children in our society are not at risk from their biological fathers. Most abuse of children is perpetrated by the mothers new partner or other family members. “(p)rofessionals may expect that non-biological parents are more likely to maltreat children in their care, and thus, injured children with a non-biological parent may be more likely to be diagnosed as being maltreated (Gelles & Harrop, 1991)."

It might be more helpful if you dealt with facts rather than personal prejudices. Fathers generally love their children and they have a right to play a part in their lives. Anyone listening to you would think that every man is a wife beater and child abuser.

Men may inflict the majority of physical violence, but women are no slouches when it comes to dishing out the emotional abuse. Some of the goings on in the family court are proof of this.

Happy makes much of the fact that men get a better deal when a matter is put before the court than if settled privately. Why would so many men settle? I would suggest they don’t have the funds, and there’s not much point because even if they win the court won’t enforce its own orders against a recalcitrant parent.

Hopefully one day Happy will stop viewing everything with the closed mind mentality of female/male, victim/perpetrator. Maybe s/he will realize that generally it is not in the best interests of a child to have no contact with their father, and that not all men are pigs.
What does it mean to be a man? It means many things, but an abuser of women and children is not one of them. No matter what Happy may think.

I do not think a man is an abuser or women and children. That is a child in the body of a grown up. I understand that I am referring to a narrow group when I am referring to the child abuse cases in family court.
It is however interesting to note that the independent think-tank Access Economics has revealed in their findings that Domestic Violence is the biggest health risk for Australian women.
Disturbing research released 16 June 2004 indicates that 'intimate partner violence constitutes almost nine per cent of the total disease burden in women up to the age of 45 years.

“This is a ground breaking study and the results are shocking,” Chief Executive Officer of the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth), Dr Rob Moodie said.
The study, The Health Costs of Violence: Measuring the Burden of Disease Caused by Intimate Partner Violence, found that this form of violence is responsible for more ill-health and premature death among Victorian women under the age of 45 than any other well known risk factors including high blood pressure, obesity and smoking.'

Even though there are some female perpetrators of domestic violence, it is high time that the real men of today stand united against the substantial group of abusers that are responsible for this epidemic of violence against women and often also their children.
The more you defend the abusers, claiming that the majority of the researchers are all wrong, the more you expose your own weakness in your masculinity.

Intempore
“You will come to love and appreciate me when you have to do without me”

Did I say that did I?

For those people who want to mock or malign males as a form of entertainment (http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/09/03/1062548898574.html?oneclick=true), or for commercial gain ( http://aca.ninemsn.com.au/stories/8.asp), or as a part of their politics (http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2003/0812roberts.html) then they can try the very real experiment of living without males, and see how long they last. That experiment would be a very real and practical form of education for them.

There must be concerns for boys and young men when the media or persons in academia so often negatively portray the male gender because this can seriously affect the self-esteem of males, and eventually it will affect many females also. For males, there has been everything from “all men are rapists” to men are now “lost and confused”, and I think it time that this type of generalised unsubstantiated nonsense about males is taken out of the media.

However, when it comes to Family Law matters the situation is very real indeed, and I would think that if the present divorce rate and Family Law system continues, then there is no logical reason for a man to get married and have children unless he wants to be emotionally and economically wrecked and loose nearly all contact with his children, and that will statistically happen on avg 12 yrs after the marriage.

Believing that this happens to only a very few men, or is likely to happen to some other male only, is just hiding ones head in the sand and if any man doubts it, then they can try the experiment of going through the Family Law system. (see http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/printpage/0,5942,12605581,00.html )

You can agree with every negative unsubstantiated statement made about males, and you can agree with such things as the current Family Law system, but don’t expect all other males to be doing the same.

Being a bloke myself, I have no interest in "maligning males", but this latest piece of warped logic from "Timkins" takes misogynist silliness to new levels. Even I can see the link between his disingenuous plea for those who question outdated male gender roles to live without male-created goods and services, and the obviously heartfelt post from "Intempore" (which "Timkins" dismisses offhandedly).

"Timkins" has attempted previously to take me to task for suggesting that those unfortunate men who are apparently obsessed with offloading responsibility for their own situations onto 'evil feminists' are "bitter and twisted". I'll leave it to objective readers who could be bothered wading through his voluminous obsessive posts to these forums to decide whether or not my assessment is substantiated.

As a twice-divorced man who has learnt through my experiences, I take issue with his statement above men who marry are likely "to be emotionally and economically wrecked and loose nearly all contact with his children". My exes areamong my best friends, I see my kids (and grandkids) as often as I like, and I am far from emotionally and/or economically wrecked.

The trick is to stop blaming others for our own failings, both at the level of the individual and collectively as men.

Happy – do I really have to defend myself against charges of supporting abusers? What gives you the idea that I think all research is wrong? I don’t deny the fact that some men abuse women and children. My point was that a child is most safe when it is with its biological mother and father, and that it’s generally in the best interests of a child to have regular contact with their father. Do you disagree with this? If so, why?

You’ve moved the whole debate from the treatment of men by the family court to one of violence against women, as if the latter justifies the former. It does not.

The difference happy, is that if mothers were being treated the same way by the family court I’d be just as concerned. Unfairness is unfairness, no matter who cops it.

If the condemnation of the appalling treatment meted out to men in the family court calls my masculinity into question; then you can call me Shirley.