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	Empowering Men: fighting feminist lies
Sex, Lies & Feminism by Peter Zohrab Chapter 6: The "Male Justice System" Lie

1999 Version

 

1. Introduction: Women Can Do Anything

This popular slogan1 was meant as a claim that women could do anything (any job) that men could. In practice, it has been a dogma that had to be proved true by creating a double standard, where necessary. Thus, in professional sports, golf has separate men's and women's tees. In professional tennis, the women play "best of three sets" and the men play "best of five sets" -- for virtually the same prize money. And in the police force, men have to be able to perform a physical test each year in less time than the women are allowed to do it in.

But "Women Can Do Anything" takes on another meaning, if we look at it in the legal sphere. Feminists tend to take the attitude that men have to put up with whatever amount of verbal harassment (a.k.a. nagging) or bitchiness that their partners/wives may throw at them -- they are never justified in hitting her in frustration or retaliation. On the other hand, if a woman has been hit or raped by her partner/husband, then she is considered to be perfectly justified in cutting off his penis (the Bobbitt case), or even in killing him -- as far as Feminists and the Feminist-intimidated judicial system are concerned.

In the prologue to his book "Good Will Toward Men", Jack Kammer talks about the word "misogyny" (hatred of women), and its opposite, "misandry" (hatred of men). He has an illuminating explanation for why "misandry" is a very rare word, unlike "misogyny".

His explanation is that misogyny is socially unacceptable (in Western societies nowadays), whereas misandry is socially acceptable. In fact, misandry is compulsory in Feminist circles. There is little need to use a word which describes a state of mind that everyone takes for granted !

The legal system is based on the same misandric philosophy -- the philosophy of hating men. The legal system is principally about punishing men for doing the kinds of things that more men than women do. If there is any crime that more women than men commit (like procuring abortions, i.e. paid assassinations), then the tendency in western societies is to decriminalise it. At the same time, penalties for rape (a mainly male crime) are increasing, and the definition of "rape" is tending to get broader.

 

2. Women in the Courts

Countries such as the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have experienced a series of reports from Feminist-inspired and Feminist-dominated commissions and task forces2 to inquire into the way that the courts treat women. The first of these was "The First Year Report of the New Jersey Supreme Court Task Force on Women in the Courts -- June 1984".

If you don't examine these reports critically, and in detail, it is easy to be fooled into thinking that they are objective inquiries by cool-headed, incorruptible legal types. In fact, they are biased, flawed, and nothing more than one-sided Feminist propaganda applied to the Law.

First of all, their titles give away their bias: the New Jersey one was on Women in the Courts, and the New Zealand one was a study on "Women's Access to Justice". Men just don't come into it, as far as the titles are concerned. The title "Women's Access to Justice" is equivalent to an assertion that men have no significant problems with access to justice. Any doubts I might have had on this bias were more than dispelled when I sent in a submission and received an acknowledgement -- but nothing more.

Months later, while I was still half-waiting for the report to come out, I found out that a study along similar lines had been completed by a totally different body from the one whose call for submissions I had answered. Since the organisers of the second study had presumably managed to limit their submissions to ones along the lines that they wanted to follow, they were able to bring out the kind of report that they wanted to write originally, get their friends in the media to publicise it, and then pressure the Justice system to give in to their demands.

The New Jersey task force assumed that women would be more aware than men were of bias against women in the Courts. Maybe that is true. But why, then, was the task force composed of twice as many women as men ? Surely, by their own reasoning, that would guarantee that it would be relatively unaware of bias against men in the Courts ? If it found more bias against women than against men, that was surely because that was what they were looking for, and because the composition of the task force was biased against finding anything different.

The New Jersey study relegated the issue of gender bias against defendants in criminal cases to sections of a mere 7 pages in the 49-page report. Though evidence was found of gender bias in sentencing, it was only against men -- and so the female-dominated Task Force decided that further study was needed before any action needed to be taken.

Moreover, the Task Force (on page 137) cited statistics which showed that bias in favour of women was just as prevalent in courtrooms as bias against women. Even the Task Force's assumption that women were more aware of bias against women than men were does not excuse it for virtually ignoring this point. Yet the Report mentioned only ways that bias against women could be diminished -- no mention was made of any possible measures to diminish bias in favour of women (i.e. against men).

 

3. Politics and the Law

In practice, in western countries, crime is defined by parliamentary legislation as whatever men do that women and/or the rich and powerful do not like. Chivalrous male judges act on the basis of this stereotype.

"In custody cases, they find it inconceivable that a man should want to look after his children, still less that he should be able to. In murder cases they frequently assume that any woman driven to murder must have been in some way out of her mind, since she could surely not have committed so vile an act of her own, independent volition. This, interestingly, is a belief which is shared by women's activists, who steadfastly contend that no woman ever attacks, still less murders, her partner without prolonged and overwhelming provocation." (Thomas 1993, page 126)

What is crime ? One Criminology textbook gives the following answer:

"Every society has a system of rules promulgated by the dominant or ruling groups for regulating the behavior of its members.... Where these are formal rules or regulations promulgated by those exercising political authority, and where violations are made punishable in the name of the state or government, violations are considered crimes." (Haskell and Yablonsky 1974 "Criminology: Crime and Criminality" Chicago: Rand McNally; page 3).

If this is a correct definition of crime, then anyone who wanted to get some objective evidence as to which are the "dominant or ruling groups", and which groups are oppressed in a given society need do no more than look at the crime statistics. One would expect that the dominant/ruling groups would prohibit few of their own members' activities and many of the activities that oppressed groups tended to engage in. This would result in a higher crime rate among the oppressed groups than among the ruling/dominant groups.

Certainly, racial groups which are commonly considered to be oppressed (African-Americans in the USA and Canada, Maoris in New Zealand, Aborigines in Australia, and so on) do have a higher crime rate than the majority racial group. Since Feminists assert vigorously that women are an oppressed minority (and, of course, that men are not), you would expect that the female crime rate would be much higher than the male crime rate.

This, of course, is not the case. The much higher male crime rate seems to indicate that men, not women, are oppressed. And, one might add, they are also a numerical minority, which women are not. It always seemed to me a bit implausible to lump women, who are a majority, in with the genuine ethnic and social minorities. If we assume that it is men who are the oppressed sex, then at least the Rainbow Coalition of oppressed minorities can consist entirely of genuine minorities, at last !

However, it remains true that the decision-makers are mainly male, in most societies. How can the ruling/dominant group be oppressing itself ? Tradition provides part of the answer. Rulers see themselves, to some extent correctly, as ruling on behalf of the whole population, rather than purely for their own benefit. Any group that does not have the vote, or seems powerless in some other respect, tends to be treated with some degree of paternalistic protectiveness.

As far as the relationship between men and women is concerned, so long as men have/had a monopoly on the levers of power, they do/did not feel that women were competing with them -- women are/were not a threat to them. So laws are/were drafted and enforced in a way that targeted male criminals, and treated women with kid gloves.

Another part of the answer is that, in democratic societies, the rulers are very responsive to the power of pressure-groups. Once a social group has achieved the breakthrough of getting Society as a whole to agree that it is oppressed, its pressure-groups aquire enormous moral power over these rulers. Moral power is converted by the media into political power. A high percentage of media reports in the West concern the moral claims of some group or other. And, as the following quote shows, the media has an anti-male bias:

"This thesis has found a significant disparity between the coverage of male and female victims of violence and rates of male and female victimization.... this coverage contributes to causing disproportionate amounts of fear in women and men, ignores violence which might particularly affect men, and fails to recognize that men and women can both be victimizers and victims. In terms of public policy, this encourages a singular focus on women as victims in studies, media campaigns, and the funding of projects and shelters, among other things.

The main consequence is that violence against men has been ignored, despite statistics showing that men are at least as likely as women to be victims of violence." (J.W. Boyce: "Manufacturing Concern: Worthy and Unworthy Victims -- Headline Coverage of Male and Female Victims of Violence in Canadian Daily Newspapers, 1989 to 1992, pp 31-32)

Historically, many societies have been changing from the earlier, paternalistic scenario to the modern, pressure-group scenario. Either way, it is important not to underestimate the "power behind the throne". Groups that do not actually grip the levers of power may nevertheless be pulling the strings of the puppet who pulls the levers.

As more and more women get into influential positions, two things happen:

1. They become subject to the same pressures that were felt by their male predecessors, and so their actual decisions (in many cases) do not differ very much from those of the males. This is the reason why Feminists claim that women who do "make it" sell out to the male system. They haven't sold out, and there is no male system.

2. The other thing that happens is that women become the competitors of men. This means that paternalistic and chivalrous protection towards women will not be so commonly offered by those males who are still in power. It may also lead to the gradual breakdown of traditional society, as the formerly cooperative and complementary roles of men and women become more unisex and stand-alone.

The alternative thesis, the Feminist thesis, must be that women are indeed oppressed, even though it is men who have the higher crime rate and arrest rate. When you look at all the other disadvantages that men have in Society, it seems unlikely that the Feminists can define the word "oppressed" in any way that would make their thesis stick. Feminists have only got away with their false claims because men have been too gutless and too brain-dead to stand up to them.

 

4. Gender and Injustice

Haskell and Yablonsky (1974) has an illuminating section on sex differences in criminality. According to the statistics they cite, 85% of those arrested in the USA in 1972 were male. Men outnumbered women in arrests for every offence except "prostitution and commercialized vice", and "runaways". The imprisonment-rate is even more heavily biased against men than the arrest-rate is: In 1968-1971 in the USA, only 3% of the prison population was female.

The authors ascribe these sex-differences largely to the differences between male and female roles in society. Men tend to have to carry out those tasks that are dangerous, or involve heavy physical work, or violence. Crimes often involve at least some of these factors. Men, too, have traditionally been the breadwinners, and this has made it more likely that they, rather than women, would get involved in criminal activity.

However, in the early 1970's the female arrest-rate for serious offences in the USA started to rise sharply. The authors ascribe this to the homogenization of male and female roles in Society brought about by Feminism. In particular, the increasing pressure on women to become breadwinners made it more likely that some women would enter into criminal activity.

Nevertheless, the female arrest-rate has remained much lower than the male arrest-rate, and the authors attribute that fact to nine separate causes:

1. Female roles are more clearly defined. Daughters can commonly observe their mothers carrying out their traditional, womanly duties in the home. Sons can often observe their fathers only in their off-duty hours, so they don't get such a clear occupational role-model from their fathers as their sisters do from their mothers.

2. Females are more closely supervised in the parental home. Parents tend to restrict the movements of their daughters more than they restrict those of their sons. They also tend to vet their daughters' friends (especially boyfriends) more than they do their sons' associates.

3. Females receive greater protection. Parents and other family members are more likely to assume financial and other responsibility for a female than for a male, in time of need or difficulty. There are also more social agencies of various kinds that cater to the needs of the solitary female than agencies that cater to solitary males.

4. Unskilled females have more career-options. Unskilled men are more likely to be on the socio-economic scrap-heap than are unskilled women. Unskilled women can be socio-ecomically valued as housewives -- no matter how good or bad they are at cooking, child-care etc.. In countries such as the USA, they are also much more likely to be able to land jobs in well-off households (as nannies, cooks, etc.) than men are.

5. Male roles are more active.

   For example, nearly fifteen times as many men as women are arrested for driving while intoxicated. In our culture when a man and a woman are together in an automobile, the man is expected to drive. If both are drunk, the man is more likely to be behind the wheel and is therefore more likely to be arrested for drunken driving. He is also the one more likely to be caught in possession of drugs, although both might be using them. Also, in a dispute with others involving physical encounter, the male is likely to strike the blows. Thus, although the female may verbally provoke the fight, the male is arrested for assault and battery.(Haskell and Yablonsky 1974, 249).

   I have read lots of books on Feminism, and I have yet to see any Feminist complaining of these negative effects of sexism on men ! However, it is possible that these scenarios are also being altered to some extent, as a result of the influence of Feminism on male-female relationships.

6. Men are likely to be chivalrous. Men sometimes "take the rap" for crimes that women have actually committed, or helped their man to commit.

7. The public perceives men and women differently. A woman can get away with doing or saying something that a man would be arrested for. It is socially "OK" for women to complain to the police about behaviour in a man that a man could hardly complain to the police about it if he experienced it in a woman. If he did that, he would be regarded as cowardly or unmanly. This is the problem that Masculists have -- it is OK for Feminists to nag on about male defects, but if Masculists complain about what women do or don't do, then they tend to acquire an image problem !

8. The police react differently to men and women. A man walking the streets at night tends to be regarded by the police as a possible criminal. A woman doing the same thing tends to be regarded as someone who is in need of protection. Since there are few men's rights groups, you don't hear of anyone complaining that this shows that the police are sexist. Contrast this with the parallel situation of the police reacting differently to different races. In such scenarios, pressure-groups are quick to issue accusations of racism.

9. A large number of crimes committed by women goes undetected or unreported. The authors cite research which highlights the following types of crimes:

   a) Thefts by women in department stores are not often prosecuted -- even when they are discovered.

   b) False accusations are often not discovered, because they are believed, and can lead to wrongful convictions of innocent parties. Even when they are not believed, they are often not prosecuted. The police give the excuse for this inaction that they do not want to discourage complainants from coming forward.

   c) Thefts by female servants. When discovered, these are usually punished by dismissal, rather than by a complaint leading to police action.

   d) Thefts by prostitutes of property belonging to clients. Men are usually too ashamed to report these offences to the police.

   e) Blackmail. Women are often in a position to be able to blackmail men, and the men are too ashamed to go to the police.

   f) Sexual molestation of young children by women is likely to go undetected.

   g) Illegal abortion, where this applies to mothers. The authors cite the estimated figure of 200,000 per year in the USA, prior to the liberalisation of the law.

   h) Murder using poison, perpetrated by housewives on family members, or by nurses and cooks on clients. This is likely to be undetected and unpunished.

   i) Infanticide. Women can kill children through malnutrition, with little risk of detection.

Farrell (1993) documents very thoroughly the way the American justice system discriminates against men. I am sure his critical remarks are generally true of other western countries, as well -- though the details of the statistics may vary from one to the other. I recommend his book -- if only for the sake of Chapters 11 and 12, which are very convincing on the legal double-standard issue.

For example, he says that a man who commits murder in the USA is twenty times more likely than a woman to get the death penalty. A woman has to kill another woman, or children, for her to get the death penalty in that country. Killing a mere man is not a serious enough crime there for a woman to be executed.

In New Zealand in 1991, 17% of non-traffic convictions involved women offenders. But women make up only 6% of the prison population, which means that women convicted of offenses against the law are sentenced to imprisonment less often, or for shorter periods, than men are, on average.

Like African-Americans in North America, Maoris in are conventionally considered to be discriminated against -- if any ethnic group is discriminated against. For example, Table 5.2 "Gender, Ethnicity, and Age of Young People Involved in Cases Which Were Finalised in 1995, by Outcome of Prosecutions"3 includes the following data (with my added percentages in brackets):

 

Ethnicity	Proved	Not Proved	Total
European	419 (35.8%)	751	1170
Maori	810 (37.9%)	1326	2136
Pacific Peoples	138 (34.4%)	263	401
Other	19 (33.9%)	37	56
TOTAL	1386	2377	3763

 

The percentages (omitted above) in the original table are concerned with comparing the figures vertically down the page -- i.e. one ethnic group with another. My percentages (above), on the other hand, compare the figures horizontally across the page -- in other words, I am more concerned with the proportions of cases brought which were proved (for each ethnic group). Here you will see that prosecuted Maoris at 37.9% have a 4% greater conviction-rate than do the "Others", which must be mainly Asians.

Now let's look at another section of that same table:

 

Gender	Proved	Not Proved	Total
Male	1246 (38.3%)	2006	3252
Female	188 (30%)	436	624
TOTAL	1434	2442	3876

 

Here we can see that prosecuted males at 38.3% have an 8.3% greater conviction-rate than do females. So, if Maoris are considered oppressed, then males must be considered twice as oppressed -- at least as far as young people in the courts system are concerned.

Dr. Greg Newbold, a Sociologist, was quoted in the media 4 as follows:

Violent women were far more likely to be treated leniently by the courts. They were seldom given custodial sentences, even for serious offending, and when they went to jail, they tended to get shorter sentences.

And women's violence was grossly underreported, he said. Women were just as likely -- if not more likely -- to assault their partners, but domestic violence by women was rarely reported....

He cited the case of Raewyn Bell, sentenced in the High Court at Wellington to a non-custodial sentence for sexually molesting a nine-year-old girl who she was babysitting.

Bell's lawyer said she was disturbed after repeated miscarriages and problems during menopause.

'Men unfortunately can't draw on that sort of cop-out, but women do and they are believed,' said Dr. Newbold.

The Feminist research industry has been hard at work finding excuses for female crime -- miscarriages, menopause, Pre-Menstrual Tension, Battered Woman Syndrome ... the list will no doubt keep on growing. If there was a Masculist research industry, it could probably look at testosterone levels, chromosome disorders, and defective genes as excuses for male crimes.

 

5. Divorce and Custody Law

Family law has been changed under Feminist influence, so that a woman can come into a marriage with nothing, and come out of it a few years later with half her husband's assets, plus (in most cases) custody of the children ! A real rip-off, from the husband's point of view, but a really great deal, from the wife's ! Plus she has social welfare payments to look forward to as a safety-net. The husband has only child-support payments to look forward to -- no matter whether he gets access to his children or not.

The legal armoury of the divorcing wife has been greatly strengthened. It is fashionable for her to make unproven allegations of child abuse or domestic violence against her husband, and these suffice for her to get custody of the children. As a bonus, she can also put her husband in jail, if she can make these allegations stick.

Child abuse allegations are often believed on the basis of very flimsy evidence. The Plunket Society's baby book warns parents that children often lie -- yet expert witnesses in ch1ld sex abuse trials often claim that children NEVER lie ! Domestic violence may be the result of prolonged verbal abuse or harassment that does not constitute a crime, if a woman commits it. Police and welfare agencies are less willing to take seriously accusations that women have committed child abuse or domestic violence.

 

6. The Causes of Crime

One of the striking features of the black ghettoes of America's cities is the high proportion of solo mothers there. It is a truism that solo mothers have trouble controlling their teenage sons. And it is precisely these ghettoes that have the lowest educational levels, the most poverty, the most crime, the most drug abuse, the most alienation from the police and the Establishment as a whole -- as well as the greatest propensity to produce riots.

Feminism alone cannot be blamed for the decline of the two-parent family, but it is certainly partly responsible for it. It is a question of societal goals: if the main aim is materialistic, then bringing up children takes second place. In that context, it makes sense for women to consider not marrying and/or to delay or avoid having children, and for both parents to work.

However, if the main societal aim is to bring up each succeeding generation in a stable and secure environment, then the parents have to make sacrifices. Unless there are communal or extended-family child-care options, one parent (usually the mother) has to stay home, being a housewife has to be restored to its previous high status as an occupation, divorce has to be socially stigmatized, and the employed parent (usually the father) has to be legally liable for the upkeep of the non-employed partner and children.

Feminism destroys families. So it is both sad and ironical that the International Year of the Family should follow right on the heels of New Zealand's Women's Suffrage Centenary. Last year the Government was celebrating Feminism, and this year the world is celebrating the institution that Feminism has done a lot to destroy.

Feminism has brought about an increase in separations and divorces. These, in turn, lead to one-parent families. And every teacher knows that it is the children of solo parents who create most of the discipline problems in class.

These children can't help it -- they are upset and unsettled by their parents' split-up. Solo mothers are also less capable of providing the discipline and role model that growing boys need.

As we all know, the past few decades have seen an increase in crime, as well as an increase in Feminist influence, and an increase in separations, and divorces. This is not a coincidence. There is masses of research that shows the link between single-parent households and crime. In 1986, for example, former White House staffer Bruce Chapman published data that showed that only 47% of inmates in US correctional facilities had been raised in two-parent families. The figure for the population as a whole was 77%.

Statistics New Zealand, for example, recently released figures showing that there were 9193 divorces in 1993, compared with 9114 the previous year. The divorce rate rose from 12.3 per 1000 marriages in 1992 to 12.4 per 1000 in 1993. These increases are small, but they confirm an upward trend that has become evident in recent years. New Zealand's divorce rate is still lower than that of the international pace-setter, the USA. This may explain the growing strength of the Men's and Fathers' movement in the United States, in particular.

The New Zealand Marriage Guidance Council's chief executive has been quoted as saying that divorces were only the tip of the iceberg. Breakdowns in de facto relationships occurred without being officially recorded.

The chief executive, Jacky Renouf, was also quoted as saying that the two main causes of divorce were a breakdown in communication, and expectations that were either too high or unattainable. That sounds very plausible.

Unfortunately, that plausibility is only on the surface. Family Guidance workers no doubt find that couples who no longer communicate end up getting divorced. That is because what marriage guidance counsellors try to do is to get couples to communicate about the issues that divide them. If they fail to get them to communicate, then the couples go back to the situation which led them to seek marriage guidance in the first place: a marriage that is on the rocks.

Likewise with the too high or unattainable expectations. A marriage is a relationship, and a relationship consists of mutual expectations. Marriage guidance counsellors either try to change people's behaviour to meet their spouse's expectations, or to make the expectations more realistic. If they fail to make any of these changes, then the couples are back where they started.

But none of this is new. None of this explains why divorce has been, and still is on the increase. None of this explains why more couples are experiencing a breakdown in communication than they did in the past. None of this explains why expectations match reality less well than they did in the past.

Available and safe contraception, together with labour-saving devices in the home, has made it possible for women to undertake paid employment during marriage. What men have usually thought of as a deadly rat-race is now the fashionable life-style that married women must aim to enjoy. Feminism has caused employers to accept women workers in increasing numbers. Feminism has also brainwashed many women into feeling guilty if they do not work outside the home after getting married.

Feminism has also brought about other changes. The tax system has been changed, so that families are no longer taxed as units. This means that a working couple with two low incomes may well pay less tax than a single-income family with the same total gross income. This discriminates against women who choose to stay at home and look after their children.

Feminism has also brought up the issue of housework as a constant background irritation in marriages. If the wife didn't work, then it wouldn't be an issue. But Feminism has taught women that it is better to get a job outside the home than to do a good job of looking after your children.

Once they are working, women don't always see why they should also do the lion's share of the housework -- and I can see their point. On the other hand, maybe the husband would prefer her to stay home and do the housework and childcare. Why should he then shoulder extra burdens created by his wife's selfish or materialistic decision ?

A relationship works best if it is based on complementarity. It does not work well if it is based on competition. A marriage of two people of similar personalities does not work as well as one where the personalities of the spouses complement each other.

Likewise with roles. The best thing about the old-fashioned philosophy that "A woman's place is in the home" was that husband and wife had distinct, well-defined, and complementary roles in the socio-economic system of the family. If both are working, then they are to some extent competitors. Of course, complementarity also results if the wife works and the husband is a househusband.

Having a job of her own makes it more likely that the wife will feel like leaving her husband. Every relationship goes through stresses and strains. The social and legal climate helps to determine how much a couple will put up with before they separate or divorce.

 

 

7. Conclusion

Radical Feminists have, according to Thomas (1993), grossly distorted the facts relating to crime. Statistics relating to male sex crimes have been wildly inflated. In addition, the ways in which women hurt their fellow human beings have been totally ignored by Feminists.

Sexist, anti-male offences such as "Assault on a Female" must be removed from the statute-books in countries where they exist.

A thorough review of judicial penalties should be instituted, so that (after a transitional period of 20 years or so) the number of men and women in prison, and the amounts they pay in fines become equalised.

 

2002 Version

CHAPTER 8
THE MALE JUSTICE SYSTEM LIE

There's an old joke that reflects how many men experience divorce:

"We divided everything equally – she got the house, I got the mortgage, she got the car, I got the payments, she got the kid, I got the child support payments."

 

Introduction: Women Can Do Anything

The Feminist slogan "Women Can Do Anything" takes on a sinister meaning in the legal context. Feminists tend to believe a man should have to put up with whatever amount of abuse (verbal, emotional or physical) his partner or wife may throw at him – retaliation is never justified, provocation is never an excuse. Any retaliation from an abused woman, on the other hand, is justified in their view. Is she sexually frustrated? It's okay to cut off his penis (the Bobbitt case). Was she battered? Then it's okay to kill the bastard (Jennifer Patri case). As far as Feminists and the Feminist-intimidated judicial system are concerned, "women can do (just about) anything."

In the prologue to his book Good Will Toward Men, Jack Kammer talks about the word "misogyny" (hatred of women), and its male counterpart, "misandry" (hatred of men). Why is "misandry" so rarely used even though "misogyny" is a part of our everyday language? Anything remotely resembling misogyny is socially unacceptable (in western societies) whereas misandry is socially acceptable. In fact, misandry is compulsory in Feminist circles. There is little need to use a word which describes a state of mind everyone takes for granted!

Our legal systems are based on this same man-hating principle – they are principally about protecting women from men. If there is any crime more women than men commit (such as abortion or infanticide), the tendency in western societies is to decriminalise it. At the same time as the penalties for procuring abortions (a mainly female crime) are decreasing, the penalties for rape (a mainly male crime) are increasing, and the definition of "rape" is getting broader, but only when it pertains to women victims.

 

Women in the Courts

Feminist-inspired and Feminist-dominated commissions and task forces have been inquiring into the way the courts treat women in countries such as the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The first of these was "The First Year Report of the New Jersey Supreme Court Task Force on Women in the Courts – June 1984." Subsequent reports in various American states and in other countries based themselves on this seemingly valid model and precedent. But was it really valid?

It is considered routine in western countries to study how the Law impacts only one particular segment of society. The flaw with such one-sided studies is, they tend to focus on just the problems of the one group, and are biased to find precisely and only what they are looking for. Consequently, the study's results ignore groups not regarded as "victims," and the assumptions latent in the original proposal for the study are almost inevitably confirmed at the end of what is in fact a loaded and biased process. In addition, such studies ignore the trade-offs that may exist, compensating those who are disadvantaged in one way by treating them as a privileged group in another way.

What that means in today's political climate is that such studies are designed to conclude that women are victims, and it is all but inconceivable that a government commission would sponsor a study on men's access to justice. The underlying and unexamined assumption is that women are disadvantaged by the justice system, and their goal is to remedy that for women, only. Indeed, the title "Women's Access to Justice" is practically equivalent to an assertion men have no significant problems with access to justice. And that is a biased and untruthful view.

Ex-parte protection orders are a draconian, anti-male procedure. This procedure enables a hearing to take place, at which a man can be barred from future contact with his ex-partner and children, without his being present or even represented at the hearing - on the basis that his partner merely feels that he might be a danger to her ! This is a gross breach of natural justice. For more detail on this issue, see http://blackribboncampaign.altervista.org/femfasci.html.

As Robert Hughes argues in his book, "Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America," pressure-groups have distort the politics of western democracies. Academics, followed by university-indoctrinated left-liberal journalists, latch onto some group as being "disadvantaged" or "oppressed," and then other Establishment systems (usually the Legislature and bureaucracies) start studying the "problems" of these groups in isolation. Certainly such groups may have justifiable grievances, but they simply presume that groups such as men do not; hence, they do not give men an equal hearing. This basic assumption is what makes Feminism an ideology. People are just kidding themselves if they see Feminism as a rational philosophy, ranged against irrational religious types – in debates over family values, abortion, or Fathers' rights. The Feminist ideology is just as faith-based as any religion.

The titles of these legal studies betray their bias: the New Jersey one was on "Women in the Courts," and the New Zealand one was a Law Commission study on "Women's Access to Justice." Men just don't come into it, as far as the titles are concerned. The fact is, such studies do deal with men -- implicit or explicit comparisons with men occur inevitably in such studies -- but they do not deal with men from the male point of view. Better titles would have been "Men and Women in the Courts" or "Men's and Women's Access to Justice". Then there would have been more chance of the issues being addressed fairly.

Someone might then ask if I would be against a study on the effect of sleep deprivation on truck drivers, for example – the point being that sometimes you just have to do studies on particular groups. Of course, I would have to agree that studies such as these might have to be undertaken. But such studies do not come out of thin air – they come about because someone has convinced someone else that there is a problem of some sort that needs to be investigated.

In the case of the study on the effect of sleep deprivation on truck drivers, the problem obviously is that there is prima facie evidence (from the police and land transport safety agencies) that truck drivers are under pressure to drive long distances without taking sufficient time off for sleep, and that this results in relatively many accidents, involving relatively high costs in terms of injury, death, and material damage. Truck drivers are a special case, because only they -- and perhaps airline pilots – are in this sort of situation. So a study is deemed necessary to see if a cause-and-effect relationship can be established, and to see what measures should be taken, if any.

In the case of "women's access to justice", someone would have had to convince someone else in authority that there was a problem that needed to be investigated, so that a solution could be proposed. But here the prima facie evidence consisted primarily of the fact that there are more male lawyers and judges than there are female ones, and Feminists simply assume routinely that groups consisting mainly of men act in a way that favours men's interests over those of women. This assumption is made over and over again by Feminists in books, in the media and elsewhere. However, this assumption is false, and in fact it is a dumb assumption, as I argue in my chapter on the Frontman Fallacy.

Any doubts I might have had about this bias were more than dispelled when, some years ago, I submitted a request to the New Zealand Law Commission, along with my critical submission on their study on women's access to justice. As their office had commissioned the study on women's access to justice and there were no equivalent studies for men, I asked them to commission the New Zealand Men's Rights Association to conduct a study of men's access to justice.1

Although they acknowledged my request, months later, while I was still waiting for their decision, I discovered a study along similar lines to theirs had already been conducted by a totally different (and less prestigious) body. Since the organisers of the second study had presumably managed to limit their submissions to ones along the lines they wanted to follow, they were able to bring out the kind of report they wanted to write originally, get their friends in the media to publicise it, and then pressure the Justice system to give in to their demands.

However, when the Law Commission itself eventually published the report on that study (which excluded my organisation's contribution to the study), it was in the name of the Feminist who carried out the study, rather than of the Law Commission itself. The significance of this was not lost on Feminists, who were outraged by this blow to the study's credibility. One even wrote a letter to the Dominion newspaper (August 16, 1999) complaining about this "unprecedented move." Clearly, our submission, together with those of other men, had provided strong enough arguments for non-Feminist factions within the Law Commission to be able to stand up to the Feminists.

 

Men have power, women have problems

The New Jersey task force assumed women would be more aware than men of bias against women in the Courts. Maybe that is true. But why, then, was the task force composed of twice as many women as men? From the start, they were more sensitive to bias against women. This bias in the membership of the task force virtually guaranteed that that is all they would find, because it was the only result they were looking for, and the predominantly female membership was biased against finding anything to the contrary.

The New Jersey study relegated the issue of gender bias against defendants in criminal cases to sections of a mere 7 pages in the 49-page report. Why? Could it have been because, ironically, the only evidence of gender bias in sentencing they found was of bias against men? Is this why the female-dominated task force decided further study was needed before any action needed to be taken on that issue?

Moreover, they cited statistics showing that bias in favour of women was just as prevalent in courtrooms as bias against women. (page 137) Even their assumption that women were more aware of bias against women than men does not excuse it for virtually ignoring this. Yet the report recommended only measures to diminish bias against women, and said nothing about reducing any bias that favoured women.

 

Gender Politics and the Law

In practice, western countries define crime as whatever men do that women and/or the rich and powerful do not like. If the laws were written by the poor, it is unlikely all current property crimes would have severe penalties. Not having many possessions, some poor people almost consider petty theft a self-help method of redistributing wealth in the interests of social justice. Similarly, the virtual decriminalisation of abortion in western countries reflects the power women have to abolish laws they find inconvenient – and it suits the upper- and upper-middle class men who want to have sex without becoming fathers, as well. Chivalrous male judges, too, often act on the basis of DUAM stereotypes:

"In custody cases, they find it inconceivable that a man should want to look after his children, still less that he should be able to. In murder cases they frequently assume that any woman driven to murder must have been in some way out of her mind, since she could surely not have committed so vile an act of her own, independent volition. This, interestingly, is a belief which is shared by women's activists, who steadfastly contend that no woman ever attacks, still less murders, her partner without prolonged and overwhelming provocation." (Thomas 1993, page 126).

A pro-male judicial system would make it a crime for a woman to wear revealing clothing and yet reject men who make passes at them. Western anti-male judicial systems subject men to the sexual harassment of women wearing revealing clothing – with the men subject to dismissal and/or prosecution if they are stimulated into making a pass! Women who wear revealing clothing are sending come-on signals and should either be required to accept all passes, or prohibited from complaining when men respond. No one is forcing them to wear revealing clothing, and such clothing, in the context of current western laws and regulations on rape and sexual harassment, amounts to severe oppression of men:

It's criminal
So what, precisely, is crime? One Criminology textbook gives the following answer:

"Every society has a system of rules promulgated by the dominant or ruling groups for regulating the behavior of its members.... Where these are formal rules or regulations promulgated by those exercising political authority, and where violations are made punishable in the name of the state or government, violations are considered crimes." (Haskell and Yablonsky, 1974, Criminology: Crime and Criminality, Chicago: Rand McNally; page 3).

If this is a correct definition of crime, then to determine which are the "dominant or ruling groups" and which groups are oppressed in a given society, all we need do is look at the crime statistics. One would expect the dominant/ruling groups would prohibit few of their own members' activities but many of the activities oppressed groups tend to engage in. This would result in a higher crime rate among the oppressed groups than among the ruling/dominant groups.

Certainly, racial/ethnic groups which are often considered by the Politically Correct to be oppressed (African-Americans in the USA and Canada, Maoris in New Zealand, Aborigines in Australia, and so on) do have a higher crime rate than the majority racial group. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss the reasons for this higher crime-rate.2 Nor am I necessarily taking the stance here these racial groups are either oppressed or evil. My point is simply that the victim coalition, which has so effectively influenced the media, academics, voters and politicians, is based on a weak theoretical foundation where women are concerned. Since Feminists vigorously assert women are an oppressed minority (and, therefore, that men are not), the female crime rate should be much higher than the male crime rate.

This, of course, is not the case. The much higher male crime rate seems to indicate that men, not women, are oppressed. Moreover, unlike women, men comprise a numerical minority. In the US, for example, female voters have even outnumbered male voters in general elections for several years. Until 1991, the Feminists did not make a big deal of that. When it came to electing Clinton, however, they pulled out the stops, talked about women's political clout at the polls, and got their man elected. In this context, it is implausible to lump women in with genuine ethnic and social minorities. If we make the contrary assumption that men are the oppressed sex, then the victim coalition would consist entirely of genuine minorities, at last!

Despite the anti-male bias in Justice, however, all is not well in the Feminist camp: with greater frequency the courts are treating women to equal justice, and the Feminists don't like it:

"What we have now is something that some of my colleagues have called 'equality with a vengeance.' There is a debate amongst some feminist scholars as to whether we should continue to push toward equalization because, particularly in the area of criminal justice, equalization has hurt women." (Barbara E. Bloom, assistant professor, San Jose Sate University, Women in Prison, magazine, September/October 1998)

From Ms. magazine to Glamour magazine, Feminists are up in arms about how the rate at which women are being incarcerated is growing faster than the rate for men. This is a common strategy, which they use whenever the absolute numbers of some victim-statistic are much higher for men than women. "Yes, but the increase in the rate of new cases is higher for women than men!" they cry. The Feminists in New Zealand have the Government spending money to prevent women from smoking because women are smoking in increasing numbers. The DUAM makes it impossible for any government to target men, as such, for help – help is either directed at both sexes, or just at women (or at a group of ethnic women, such as Maori women, in the case of smoking). The best that men can hope for is help that is targeted at male members of a minority ethnic group – such as research into prostate cancer among Polynesians.

Nonetheless, it remains true most decision-makers in most societies are male. So how can the ruling/dominant group oppress itself? Tradition provides part of the answer. Rulers see themselves, to some extent correctly, as ruling on behalf of the whole population rather than purely for their own benefit. So they treat any group that does not have the vote, or seems powerless in some other respect, with some degree of paternalistic protectiveness. Hence, when society recognized men as the legal head of the family, they did not feel women were competing with them, so male legislators drafted and enforced laws that targeted male criminals and treated women with kid gloves. If Feminists were sincere about wanting equallity with men, they would campaign for the abolition of such laws – but they aren't, so they don't !

 

Pressure group politics

Another reason, however, is that in democratic societies officials are very responsive to pressure-groups. Once a social group has achieved the breakthrough of getting society as a whole to agree that it is oppressed, it acquires enormous moral power over the ruling elite. Moral power is converted by the media into political power. A high percentage of media reports in the West concern the moral claims of some group or other. And, as J.W. Boyce notes, the media has an anti-male bias:

This thesis has found a significant disparity between the coverage of male and female victims of violence and rates of male and female victimization.... this coverage contributes to causing disproportionate amounts of fear in women and men, ignores violence which might particularly affect men, and fails to recognize that men and women can both be victimizers and victims. In terms of public policy, this encourages a singular focus on women as victims in studies, media campaigns, and the funding of projects and shelters, among other things. The main consequence is that violence against men has been ignored, despite statistics showing that men are at least as likely as women to be victims of violence. (J.W. Boyce, Manufacturing Concern: Worthy and Unworthy Victims – Headline Coverage of Male and Female Victims of Violence in Canadian Daily Newspapers, 1989 to 1992, pp 31-32)

During the past two-to-three hundred years, many societies have evolved from the ancient paternalistic model to the democratic pressure-group model. Either way, it is important not to underestimate the "power behind the throne." Groups that do not actually grip the levers of power may nevertheless pull the strings tied to the hands gripping the levers. And women in positions of power are no more immune to this than men.

As more women attain positions of influence, two things happen. First, they become subject to the same pressures their male peers feel, and so their actual decisions (in many cases) differ little from men's. This is the reason why Feminists claim women who do "make it" sell out to the male system. They haven't sold out, and there is no male system. Second, women compete with men. Hence, fewer men are either present in positions of power or willing to offer the paternalistic and chivalrous protection toward women they used to. (It may also lead to the gradual breakdown of traditional society, as the formerly cooperative and complementary roles of men and women wither and die.)

The alternative thesis of the Feminists is that women are indeed oppressed, even though it is men who have the higher arrest rate. When you look at all the other social disadvantages men have, it seems unlikely the Feminists could define the "oppressed" in a way that would justify their claim. Thus far, they have gotten away with it only because men have been too fond of women to stand up to them. How could these lovely creatures possibly be the enemy, after all? If you dare to contradict a woman, surely you can't be a real man ?! It is difficult for any man to attack women, and the Feminists, now that they run the show, have made the most of this. If you criticise Feminists, they accuse you of being anti-woman and a misogynist.

. For example, a man who had been told that I was "anti-women" defended the notion of military conscription for men only on the grounds that it was the "male role" to defend the nation. He was, however, far too frightened of his Feminist wife to suggest that women should have any similarly restrictive role, like staying at home and looking after the children! This is the typical Male Feminist's anti-male double-standard, which dominates gender politics and the law.

Either both men and women should have separate, restrictive roles, or neither should. Women and children would be better off if men stopped trying to be so chivalrous, and started acting in the interests of justice for all, rather than the narrow interests of only one segment of society.

 

Gender and Injustice

The deceit underlying Feminist claims becomes even more obvious when we examine the statistics of judicial gender inequity. According to the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics (www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/crimoff.htm), as of July 11, 1999, the lifetime chances of a person going to prison are higher for:

1. men (9%) than for women (1.1%)

2. blacks (16.2%) and Hispanics (9.4%) than for whites (2.5%)

It is noticeable that the above disparity between men and women is even greater than between blacks and whites. Why? If the higher incarceration rate for blacks indicates racial oppression, then what of the higher rate for men?

As long ago as 1974, experts ascribed these differences largely to the differences between male and female roles in society. Haskell and Yablonsky (1974) have an illuminating section on sex differences in criminality. They stated that 85 percent of those arrested in the USA in 1972 were male. Men outnumbered women in arrests for every offence except "prostitution and commercialized vice," and "runaways." The imprisonment-rate is even more heavily biased against men than the arrest-rate is: In 1968-1971 in the USA, only 3 percent of the prison population was female.

According to Haskell and Yablonsky, men tend to have to carry out those tasks that are dangerous, or involve heavy physical work, or violence. Crimes often involve at least some of these factors. Men, too, have traditionally been the breadwinners, and this has made it more likely that they, rather than women, would get involved in criminal activity. In the early 1970's, however, the female arrest-rate for serious offences in the USA started rising sharply. The authors ascribe this to the homogenization of male and female roles in society brought about by Feminism. In particular, the increasing pressure on women to become breadwinners made it more likely that some women would enter into criminal activity.

Nevertheless, the female arrest-rate has remained much lower than the male arrest-rate, and the authors attribute that fact to nine separate causes:

1. Female roles are more clearly defined. Daughters can commonly observe their mothers carrying out their traditional, womanly duties in the home. Sons can often observe their fathers only in their off-duty hours, so they don't get such a clear occupational role-model from their fathers as their sisters do from their mothers.

2. Females are more closely supervised in two-parent home. Parents tend to restrict the movements of their daughters more than they restrict those of their sons. They also tend to vet their daughters' friends (especially boyfriends) more than they do their sons' associates.

3. Females receive greater protection. Parents and other family members are more likely to assume financial and other responsibility for a female than a male in time of need or difficulty. There are also more social agencies of various kinds that cater to the needs of solitary females than solitary males.

4. Unskilled females have more career-options. Unskilled men are more likely to be on the socio-economic scrap-heap than are unskilled women. Unskilled women can be socio- economically valued as housewives – no matter how good or bad they are at cooking, child-care etc.. In countries such as the USA, they are also much more likely to be able to land jobs in well-off households (as nannies, cooks, etc.) than men are.

5. Male roles are more active: "(N)early fifteen times as many men as women are arrested for driving while intoxicated. In our culture when a man and a woman are together in an automobile, the man is expected to drive. If both are drunk, the man is more likely to be behind the wheel and is therefore more likely to be arrested for drunken driving. He is also the one more likely to be caught in possession of drugs, although both might be using them" (Haskell & Yablonsky 1974, 249).

6. Men are likely to be chivalrous and sometimes "take the rap" for crimes women committed, or helped their man to commit.

7. The public perceives men and women differently. A woman can get away with doing or saying something for which the police would arrest a man. Moreover, a woman can have a man arrested because he "makes her afraid" but if a man attempted to have a woman arrested for the same cause the police and the public would regard him as cowardly and unmanly, a wimp and a whiner, a loser undeserving of respect or love.

8. The police react differently to men and women. A man walking the streets at night is a possible criminal. A woman doing the same thing, on the other hand, is a possible victim. Since there are few men's rights groups, you don't hear of anyone complaining how this is a sexist double standard. Contrast this with the parallel situation of the police reacting differently to different races. In such scenarios, pressure-groups are quick to issue accusations of racism.

9. A large number of crimes committed by women goes undetected or unreported. The authors cite research which highlights the following types of crimes:

• Thefts by women in department stores are seldom prosecuted – even when discovered.

• False accusations are rarely discovered, frequently believed, and sometimes lead to wrongful convictions of innocent parties. Worse still, even when disbelieved or discovered in the lie, as Ken Pangborn notes, they suffer no penalty: "False allegations of child abuse, domestic violence, marital rape and others have become staples within modern American divorces. In many of the cases the abuses are real. But in some of them they are not." (Ken Pangborn, Founder, The A Team). The police excuse their inaction on the basis that they do not want to discourage complainants from coming forward.

• Thefts by female servants. When discovered, these are usually punished by dismissal rather than by a complaint leading to police action.

• Thefts by prostitutes of property belonging to clients. Men are usually too ashamed to report these offences to the police.

• Blackmail. When women blackmail them, their male victims are usually too ashamed to go to the police.

• Sexual molestation of young children by women is likely to go undetected.

• Illegal abortion, where this applies to mothers. The authors cite the estimated figure of 200,000 per year in the USA prior to the liberalisation of the law.

• Murder using poison, perpetrated by housewives on family members, or by nurses and cooks on clients. This is likely to be undetected and unpunished.

• Infanticide. Women can kill children through malnutrition with little risk of detection.

 

Discriminating justice

Farrell (1993) very thoroughly documents the way the American justice system discriminates against men. For example, a man who commits murder in the USA is twenty times more likely than a woman to get the death penalty. A woman has to kill another woman or a child before she might run any real risk of getting the death penalty. Evidently, murdering a man is not serious enough to warrant execution.

On January 30th 2000, the New Zealand Labour Party Government's Minister of Justice announced that women would be made equally liable as men to criminal charges for indecent assault and other sexual crimes (the Dominion newspaper, 31 January 2000). That is the kind of "equality" that men would like to see ! I then wrote to the Minister of Women's Affairs, asking her why her Ministry, whose mission statement includes the goal of "Equity", hadn't suggested this change many years ago - but she didn't answer my question !

The justice system of every western country is biased against males. For example, the webpage http://www.justice.govt.nz/publications/global-publications/s/sentencing-in-new-zealand-a-statistical-analysis/documents/sentencing_1999.pdf contains an official government statistical study which shows that being a male in itself increases the likelihood of receiving a severe sentence for a given crime.

In New Zealand in 1991, 17 percent of non-traffic convictions involved women offenders, yet women comprise only 6 percent of the prison population, indicating the courts sentence female offenders to imprisonment far less often, or for much shorter periods, than men. Were these variances applied to race, they would lead us to suspect that racism plays a role.

As Dr. Greg Newbold, a sociologist, noted, "Violent women were far more likely to be treated leniently by the courts. They were seldom given custodial sentences, even for serious offending, and when they went to jail, they tended to get shorter sentences. And women's violence was grossly underreported. Women were just as likely – if not more likely – to assault their partners, but domestic violence by women was rarely reported."3

As an example he cited the case of Raewyn Bell, sentenced in the High Court at Wellington to a non-custodial sentence for sexually molesting a nine-year-old girl whom she was babysitting. Bell's lawyer said she was disturbed after repeated miscarriages and problems during menopause. The kind of cop-out, Dr. Newbold said, men can't use, "but women do and they are believed."

The Feminist research industry has been hard at work finding excuses for female crime – miscarriages, menopause, Pre-Menstrual Tension, Battered Woman Syndrome ... the list will no doubt keep on growing. If there was a Masculist research industry, it could probably look at testosterone levels, chromosome disorders, and defective genes as excuses for male crimes.

 

Divorce and Custody Law

Family law has changed under Feminist influence. A woman can come into a marriage with nothing, and come out of it a few years later with half her husband's assets plus (in most cases) custody of the children! A real rip-off from a man's point of view, but a really great deal from a woman's. Plus she has social welfare payments to look forward to as a safety-net. The husband has only child-support payments to look forward to whether he gets access to his children or not. Some fathers in New Zealand have been talking of withholding their child-support payments if they don't get adequate access to their children.

The legal armoury of the divorcing wife is formidable. It is fashionable for her to make unproved allegations of child abuse or domestic violence against her husband, and these suffice for her to get custody of the children. As a sick bonus, notes fathers' rights advocate Frank Zepezauer, she can also put her husband in jail if she can make these allegations stick.

Child abuse allegations are often believed on the basis of very flimsy evidence. The Plunket Society's baby book warns parents that children often lie – yet "expert" (i.e. Feminist) witnesses in ch1ld sex abuse trials often claim that children never lie! And it often seems the courts and welfare agencies are more willing to believe wild accusations of male malfeasance than that a woman committed child abuse or domestic violence.

In New Zealand, Family Courts are closed to the public and to the media, so it is very hard to prove the existence of anti-male bias in the Family Court system. However, one day in 2001, Television New Zealand was given special permission to film and broadcast a day in the life of Judge Adams, who was presumably especially selected by the Establishment as a model judge. Here is the letter I wrote to the Principal Family Court Judge about that programme:

"Re: Television programme shows Bias in Family Court

I am writing in relation to the television programme The Family Court: Behind Closed Doors (TV1, 19 March 2001). It had the appearance of a public relations exercise on behalf of the Family Court system – and I do not condemn it for that. It is good to get both sides of the story, and it is right and proper for the Establishment to hope and expect that Society will have trust in its institutions..

However, given that it propounded the Establishment view, the programme left no defence against any accusations of actual bias that it demonstrably revealed. In other words, one would not be able to say that the programme selectively included incidents which demonstrated bias, since it was clearly designed to demonstrate the Family Court's lack of bias (e.g.. against men and fathers).

 

General points

There seems to be a feeling in the judicial Establishment that people (fathers, in particular) do not understand the Family Court, and that once they can be made to understand it better, much of their hostility towards it will disappear. This is a misconception, and seems to be the reason why pains were taken to portray Judge Adams as a "pretty ordinary Kiwi". I personally do not want judges to be "ordinary", as theirs is not an ordinary job – and, fortunately, Judge Adams seemed to have more than ordinary intelligence. He also appeared to be well-meaning, and (whether by accident or design) he was shown to become emotionally involved in his cases – which is perhaps inevitable. Of course, where you have emotional involvement, you also inevitably have bias.

The programme also showed him to be a particular type of "ordinary Kiwi" – very politically correct:

• He claimed not to have anything against Gay custody of children per se;

• He was shown ironing his own shirts (perhaps his female partner worked full-time, or maybe he just did it anyway ?);

• He works in an area that was described as ethnically diverse, and, in one case, he scarcely seemed to need the pretext that a couple was living apart at the time of their child's birth as justification for giving priority to the mother's Muslim dietary practices over the father's mainstream Kiwi dietary practices.

I am not arguing against his views or practices – just pointing out that he appears to be a particular kind of person, and that people who resemble him in these respects,or who have "bonus-points" in the form of exotic ethnicity or sexual orientation, might confidently expect to do better in his court than people who don't. In particular, men who have non-Feminist views on child-rearing, housework, working mothers, etc. -- especially if these views were unsupported by any exotic cultural background -- might expect to be treated less favourably, in his court. Judge Baragwanath, of the Law Commission, for example, is on record with derogatory remarks about men with "old-fashioned" views on such issues.

The mere fact that cameras were in the court is likely to have had some effect on the actions of the participants – particularly on those of the Judge, who was, in a sense, on trial himself, on behalf of the system he works in. He must have had in mind who was watching him, and who would most likely be criticising him, and I suggest that he would have thought of:

• Feminists

• Christians

• Minority Religions

• Men's and Fathers' Groups;

• Gays;

• Ethnic Minorities

as people whose sensitivities had to be taken into account.

 

Access

The most general issue is that "old-fashioned", patriarchal, macho police, lawyers, psychologists, and judges converge with their Feminist and politically correct colleagues in their shared purblindness to the feelings of men.

In one access case, the issue of the (mainly legal, I expect) costs incurred by the father in getting access to his child was seemingly ignored by Judge Adams – presumably because the Law does not provide a means of taking this into account. But, stunningly, Judge Adams seems to have also simply ignored the breaches of court orders that were committed by the mother, when the breaches were obviously detrimental to the best interests of the child (if access to both parents is deemed to be in the best interests of children), and should have counted against the mother's continued custody. All this time, it was obvious from his face that the father was suffering, and had been suffering, intense grief and pain – but this counts for nothing in the New Zealand "justice" system in general, and in Judge Adams' court in particular. I will return to this issue with regard to a domestic violence case.

The Judge relies on Psychologists and Counsel for the Child to guide his decisions, but these people are not true experts, are not accountable, and are probably anti-male in the majority of cases. To avoid bias, the Counsel for the Child and the Psychologist should not be appointed by the Court alone, because courts are female-dominated. If I, for example, walk into the Lower Hutt District Court, I am confronted by a sea of women, and the hostility is almost palpable, at times, since I have a track-record on standing up to Feminist bullying. And we have Psychologists because we think we need them – not because they have been proved by any reasonable measure to actually know what they are doing. In addition, Psychology, as a field, is heavily influenced by anti-male Feminist propaganda.

Similarly, the Counsel for the Child can only guess at what is in the best interests of the child – no one can possibly know enough about all the relevant factors in a particular case (let alone predict the future) in order to give a verdict as to which is the best arrangement for a child in such cases. For example, in one access case, the Counsel for the Child said that the father had to move closer to the mother if he wanted more access to his child. Why couldn't it be the mother who had to move closer to the father ? No reason was given. The Family Court (and especially the Counsel for the Child) are supposed to be primarily about the best interests of the child. This was one apparent example of the way that the "best interests of the child" is in fact just used as a Trojan horse for the best interests of the mother. Fathers groups say this all the time, and here we have a Family Court public relations programme which appears to show just that.

After this case, Judge Adams was shown saying to the camera that one might see his decision as gender-biased against the father, but that he believed that he would be able to pick up any pattern of gender bias in his judgements, if it existed. This must surely be one of the most ludicrous statements in the history of law-enforcement ! Why does Judge Adams think that Appeals courts exist, if not to protect Society from Judges' very human inability to control or monitor their own biases and incompetencies ? Any decision made by Judge Adams that men's/fathers' groups might consider to be gender-biased would not be considered biased by Judge Adams, because he would consider that it was based on factors/excuses that the men's/fathers' groups did not take into account sufficiently.

 

Custody

There was one custody case shown, where the father was granted temporary custody, over the mother's objections. But this was only after the mother herself told the child to go and stay with the father because of a discipline problem. Then the mother had become worried that the child was staying there too long ! It seems that the mother had demonstrated that she could not discipline the child herself, and that this (together with the fact that the child had started school in his new location) is why the notion of giving even temporary custody to the father was even contemplated by Judge Adams.

 

Domestic Violence

The most striking instance of anti-male bias was in the Domestic Violence case. The bias started in the introduction to the filmed segment, when Judge Adams explained how sickened he was by the Domestic Violence that he came across. Of course, for the words "Domestic Violence", read "Male Violence," since all the propaganda is about male violence. The academic research is unanimous that women commit just as much – in fact, recently it has been more – Domestic Violence as/than men do, except for studies where the survey questions are doctored to produce a different result (as was done in the New Zealand National Survey of Crime Victims 1996).
See: http://www.landwave.com/family/and http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm

The Domestic Violence case was one where a Polynesian man was representing himself in court – presumably because he couldn't afford a lawyer. He was objecting to having to go on an "Anger Management" course – where anti-male Male Feminists would attempt to teach him that he was to blame for anything reprehensible that occurred between himself and any female in his vicinity. In the end, being an ordinary, individual, rather than a lawyer, he was not able to withstand the anti-male pressure that was applied to him by Judge Adams,, and was forced to agree to go on the course.

After listening to the man's opening statement, Judge Adams summarised his affidavit as saying that the man had had to put up with a lot himself as well (from his ex-girlfriend). Then the Judge said, "I guess that implies that you got out of control." That is an example of gross anti-male bias on the part of Judge Adams. The point of the man's testimony was that his ex-girlfriend had been guilty of psychological and/or physical abuse, and therefore either they should both be punished or neither of them should be. For the Judge to simply refuse to consider the possibility that the woman also should be equally liable to be punished for her actions is gross sexist bias that should disqualify him from further work in the Judiciary.

The Lesbians who call the shots on Domestic Violence propaganda on TV One and other anti-male propaganda-houses don't see men as people – just as the enemy. Enemies don't have feelings. A man is simply not a human being once the words "Domestic Violence" have been mentioned -- just as an unborn child, visible from an ultrasound scan, is not a human being, once its mother has unilaterally decided to end its life.

I myself have been assaulted, and threatened with assault by females in the workplace. These females have never suffered any negative consequences as a result of their behaviour, as far as I am aware. When I attempted to raise the issue of one of these women having been promoted, along with another provably anti-male woman, I received no reply from the Head of Human Resources, and when I placed the issue on the agenda of a union branch meeting, the Secretary shifted it down the order-paper to a spot below "General Business", in order to make sure that it was not discussed.

I have seen a woman slap her boyfriend hard on the head in broad daylight in Central Wellington, and the two carry on as if nothing had happened – indeed, as far as the enforcement of the Law is concerned, nothing had happened. You can only commit punishable assault on an adult male if you are yourself male, or grievous bodily harm results.

The girlfriend in the Family Court case in question had lain with a male friend, in the dark, on the bed of the daughter of her boyfriend, and claimed, when he discovered them, that they had been "just talking." Later, she taunted her boyfriend about it. That is clearly severe psychological abuse by her of her boyfriend, causing him intense suffering.

The man also raised the possibility that she had done it on purpose, in order to provoke him into doing something that she could use to get sole custody of the child and restrict him to supervised access to his child. (She could have been advised to try this tactic by a Women's Refuge or Feminist lawyer – or just by her friendly neighbourhood Lesbian Feminist. )

At that point, Judge Adams said, "Can you explain to me how that is relevant to the issue that I have to look at today." That shows that Judge Adams has absolutely no conception of

• psychological abuse, as per the Domestic Violence Act 1995, which Feminist propagandists such as Professor Lenore Walker routinely say is worse than physical abuse (but of course, they are talking only about women victims);

• the equality of men and women under the law, as per the Bill of Rights Act.

This is against the background that Judge Adams admitted that both parties may deserve blame – but he only punished the man, by humiliating him in two ways:

• forcing him to attend an Anger Management course;

• forcing him to be supervised when having access to his child.

Family Court judges routinely believe unsubstantiated allegations of child abuse or Domestic Violence levelled at men by women, but Judge Adams simply ignored this man's accusation of premeditated psychological abuse of the most sinister kind, and the psychological effect of this incident on the poor man. For Judge Adams, this man – indeed, any man – did not have feelings that could be hurt.

Judge Adams is therefore incompetent. Since he was chosen to represent the entire Family Court system on television, we can safely assume that most of the other Family Court judges are even more anti-male – especially as many of them, such Judge Jill Moss, were chosen from the ranks of openly pro-women Family Court lawyers.. See: fcrtbias.html"

Meanwhile, Feminists are actively spreading their misandristic message into the Third World under the guise of liberating women from oppression. Consequently, Family Law is now oppressing men in more and more countries – forcing them to commit acts of desperation. Domestic violence can result from the prolonged verbal abuse and harassment committed by a woman, though the courts will recognize it as such only when committed by a man. Yet, by turning a blind eye to what we might call the "tormented husband syndrome," the courts sometimes invite explosive acts of desperation.

For example, Wellington's Dominion newspaper of April 6th, 1999, reported that a man was suspected of placing explosives on the main Beijing-Guangzhou railway because his wife had divorced him. Like most separated fathers in western countries, he had lost custody of his child. We must recognize such a desperate act for what it is – a political crime, born of an unfair system. A collapse of humanity in the face of a one-sidedly anti-male judicial system.

 

The Causes of Crime

One of the striking features of the black ghettoes of America's cities is the high proportion of single mothers. This ties in with the fact that 41% of Maori children live in one-parent families.4 It is a matter of widely recognized fact that single mothers have trouble controlling their teenage sons. And it is precisely these ghettoes that have the lowest educational levels, the most poverty, the most crime, the most drug abuse, the most alienation from the police and the Establishment as a whole – as well as the greatest propensity to produce riots.

Feminism alone cannot be blamed for the decline of the two-parent family, but it certainly shares responsibility for it. And we have to decide what we want to do about it. If our goals as a society (wherever we may live) are materialistic, then bringing up children takes second place. In that context, it makes sense for women to consider not marrying, delay or avoid having children, and for both parents to work.

However, if our over-riding intention is to bring up each succeeding generation in a stable and secure environment, then parents have to make sacrifices. Unless there are communal or extended-family child-care options, one parent (usually the mother) has to stay home. We have to restore the station of housewife to its previous high status, we need to socially stigmatize divorce, and the employed parent (usually the father) has to be legally liable for the upkeep of the non-employed partner and children.

Feminism destroys families. Feminism invited an increase in separations and divorces. These, in turn, led to single-parent families. And every teacher knows it is the children of single parents who create most of the discipline problems in class. These children can't help it – they are upset and unsettled by their parents' split-up. Single mothers are also less capable of providing the discipline and role model growing boys need.

As we all know, the past few decades have seen an increase in Feminist influence, with a concomittant increase in separations and divorce. There is also lots of research demonstrating the link between single-parent households and crime. In 1986, for example, former White House staffer Bruce Chapman published data showing only 47 percent of inmates in US correctional facilities had been raised in two-parent families. The figure for the population as a whole was 77 percent.

Nor is the breakdown in marriage the only symptom of the disintegrating relationship between the sexes. In 1994, Jacky Renouf, New Zealand Marriage Guidance Council's chief executive, said divorces were only the tip of the iceberg. Breakdowns in de facto relationships occurred without being officially recorded. The two main causes of divorce, said Renouf (Christchurch Press, May 11, 1994), were a breakdown in communication and expectations that were either too high or unattainable.

Communications and expectations have always been a problem between the sexes. But why is divorce on the increase? Why are more couples experiencing a breakdown in communication than they did in the past? Where are their unrealistic expectations coming from?

When western households included the extended family and marriages were arranged between families, marriage was not so much about the sexual and emotional fulfillment of the individual, but about community, continuity and cooperation. The extended family contributed to marriages that were stable and enduring. Now, the western nuclear family is cast out to survive on its own frequently meager resources, often with thought for little more than the pleasure of passion, and no responsibility.

Available and safe contraception, together with labour-saving devices in the home, have made it possible for women to undertake paid employment during marriage. What most men regard as a deadly rat-race is now the fashionable life-style married women aim to enjoy. Feminism forced employers to accept women workers in growing numbers. And Feminism instructed women to feel guilty if they did not work outside the home after getting married:

"In the last analysis, millions of able women in this free land chose, themselves, not to use the door education could have opened for them. The choice – and the responsibility – for the race back home was finally their own." (Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique).

Feminism also instigated other changes. Many federal governments no longer tax families as units. This means a working couple with two low incomes may well pay less tax than a single-income family with the same total gross income. This discriminates against women who choose to stay at home and look after their children. Moreover, Feminists raised the issue of housework as a constant background irritation in marriages. If the wife didn't work, then it wouldn't be an issue. But Feminism taught women it is better to get a job outside the home than to do a good job of looking after children.

In his latest book, Warren Farrell proves men do as much housework as women. (Farrell, Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say, Tarcher/Putnam, 1999, www.warrenfarrell.com) "Puttering around the house" (including household repairs, etc.) is work, whether he enjoys it or not. If it contributes to the well-being of the household, it's housework.

Likewise with roles. The best thing about the old-fashioned philosophy "a woman's place is in the home" was that husband and wife had distinct, well-defined, and complementary roles in the socio-economic system of the family. If both are working, then they are to some extent competitors. Of course, complementarity also results if the wife works and the husband is a househusband. Having a job of her own makes it more likely the wife will feel like leaving her husband. Every relationship goes through stresses and strains. And the social and legal climate help determine how much a couple will put up with before they separate or divorce. And what kind of legal tactics they may use against one another:

"During my divorce, after the Parenting Evaluation came back strongly in my favor, my ex-wife accused me of molesting my 2-year-old son. The CPS investigator she spoke with wrote down 30 pages of allegations against me. After I passed a polygraph and the CPS investigation cleared me, we put my ex under deposition. Her claim was that the CPS investigator just 'misunderstood her' and that she had never accused me. Apparently, everyone else my ex-wife spoke to 'misunderstood' her too – the baby-sitter, the daycare provider, all her friends, her roommate, etc. Despite proof to the contrary, and despite overwhelming evidence that this was a classic false allegation, she was never punished, prosecuted or even reprimanded for filing the false report of sex abuse.

As a fathers' rights advocate, I have seen literally hundreds of cases where false allegations have been used. In fact, I have seen many more provably false allegations than I have seen potentially true allegations. And I keep seeing them on a regular basis. A false allegation is like a 'free throw' for women – they can file this charge with absolutely no chance of any repercussion, and by doing so they often obtain custody of the child or children involved." (Lee Math, 27 October 1999)

Kenneth Pangborn, , of the well-known A-Team, confirms this:

"Women using false allegations of incest in divorce cases are nothing new. We can document cases going back to the time of World War 2. The cases, then, were rare but not unheard of. And the system dealt with them vastly differently than we do in today's climate of political correctness.

In 1981 we (men's movement) began to notice that incest allegations were getting to become increasingly common. By 1982 we had traced a connection to various "women's shelters" and women's groups. We began to hear of underground publications that encouraged women to use this as a divorce tactic. We finally in late 1982 obtained several pages of a typed and Xeroxed booklet that was circulated. A second, more professionally printed booklet came from a female attorney in Phoenix, Arizona. Since that time there have been numerous cases documented of feminist lawyers being caught fabricating allegations for their clients.

In the mid 1980's allegations of incest skyrocketed. Several sources placed the increase in reporting by 1989 versus 1979 at over 2,000 percent jump. Strident women's activists claim this is explained by increased reporting. However when one examines figures from the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect as was done by its former director (Dr. Douglas Bersherov) you see a corresponding increase in false reporting noted.

In the late 1990's however the rate of incest allegations in divorce have begun to trail off, being replaced by false domestic violence allegations. Much safer since women don't have to depend on children to maintain a false story and a system that has become weary of the situation. Incest allegations as a divorce tactic has been played to near the end of the string in some parts of the country. Judges and juries have become wiser to false allegations. But the rate of fabricated allegations in divorce remains high in contrast to base periods over the 20th century. What is more, the phenomenon spread from the United States to much of Europe." (Kenneth Pangborn, www.a-team.org, 1999)

Long time fathers' rights activist and writer Hugh Nations offered this comment about the influence of feminism on western legal systems:

"One major casualty of feminist jurisprudence has been the concept of objective, identifiable standards by which conduct can be judged. Perhaps nowhere is this more visible than in cases of sexual harassment. Historically, Anglo-Saxon law has required that before conduct could be punished, the alleged offender had to know what conduct he must avoid. Not so in sexual harassment, however: If a "victim" thinks she has been harassed, her reaction can give rise to a cause of action. Following the same principle, a man should get a ticket home from the front lines if he thinks he is wounded. We all know, of course, what the likelihood of that is."

As with sexual harassment, so with divorce – she thinks she's a victim, therefore she is a victim and he's the victimizer. And the courts seem to agree.

 

Conclusion

According to Thomas (1993), Radical Feminists have grossly distorted the facts regarding crime. They have wildly inflated male sex crime statistics and ignored the ways in which women hurt others. We must remedy this. Sexist, anti-male offences such as "Assault on a Female" must be removed from the statute-books in countries where they exist. We must thoroughly review judicial penalties and reform the system so that (after a transitional period of 20 years or so) the number of men and women in prison, and the amounts they pay in fines are equal. In short, women should no longer be able to do just anything and simply get away with it.

 

See also: The issue of Men and the Law , The issue of Law School, Legal Issues , The issue of Policing , Legal Resources, Lists of Legal Resources, Court Cases and Legislation.