I have read psychologists who suggest that some of the elements that you locate in toxic masculinity (recklessness, risk taking and lack of self care) are rooted in biological drivers (rather than societally / culturally formed) . If they are right, they it may be that men are, from their mother's wombs, toxic.
This nature/nurture debate remains hotly contested. The difficulty with psychological evaluations is that they depend on observing behavioural outcomes, and there is increasing evidence that suggests those outcomes are already being shaped by different nurturing behaviour at a pre-verbal stage.
This article is fairly old, and there is newer stuff now about brain plasticity. Yes there is a degree of hardwiring, but it is massively dwarfed by the effect of nurture.
To end the toxicity of masculinity, we all have to come out of the change as better, more loving people. Anything else is a propogation of that toxicity.
I wouldn't want to stop anyone from expressing their pain at the effect of the toxicity, even if I could (and yes, I accept that I can't). I'm just concerned that I would love, in my lifetime, to get to the point where people can be themselves without apology, shame or fear.
Against this, processes take the time that they take.
Interesting read. It did strike me that the statements on the wall of 'girls are strong' and 'boys are sensitive' were not gender neutral - though perhaps they were corrective.
When I walk down the local night club street, the behaviour of both genders resembles very clearly that seen in the hierarchical displays of primates.
When I read about gender neutral approaches I wonder whether some are seeking to leave behind their mammalian roots.
Nothing? On the assumption that the complaints are of lack of hygiene, tidiness, household chores, time spent together and childcare, and the excess of drinking, nights out not with partner, money spent on hobbies, working hours.
Even if the men were talking about last night's match, it's not up to anyone to shit all over that.
People are allowed to talk about stuff. (I worked in a primary school for 8 years. I was one of 3 male staff members. I heard all manner of things and managed not to tell anyone that they couldn't discuss their domestic arrangements with their colleagues even once. Honestly, it wasn't difficult.)
Fair enough - your mileage varies.
I kinda think that when a demographic is very under-represented (as is the case in primary ed, and SEN early years (for me)), conversations that might otherwise be neutral can become over as punching down.
Perhaps I should have added that there is a back story of some women in the staff room loudly asserting that men are useless in a sweeping manner.
@asher, I get the feeling you really don't understand much about how sexism operates in society.
What women choose to share with one another about their personal lives is none of your business. I doubt they were 'shitting on men'. It is more likely that they were talking about how to deal with abusive partners or how to demand more equity in sharing household tasks at home.
One of the defining characteristics of toxic masculinity is for me what you are doing here by describing interactions between men and women as essentially competitive and not co-operative. A male staff member trusted enough to listen in to a conversation like this, would have said very little and probably have learned a great deal. I get the feeling you were eavesdropping and looking for a way to defend the indefensible, so that you could butt into the conversation and 'show them up'.
Thanks for your challenging response.
As I've posted upthread, I've only ever worked for women in female dominated teams, so it is quite possible that this has blinded me to how sexism operates elsewhere.
You are right, women can share whatever they want with each other. Maybe women are different to men.... I would never collude with a man in criticizing his partner in a public setting. I've never known a bloke do it.
I'll think more about your comment re competitiveness / cooperation. My partner recently attended a course by Eve Poole on women in leadership, who spent time looking at the relationship between hormonal drivers and these two modes of operation. Fascinating stuff.
Your last sentence though......
Eavesdropping?I can confidently say this was not the case (single table, I was there first, small room, loud voices)
Defend the indefensible - don't understand what I am meant to have been defending.
Show them up - no, I just wanted them to stop. I thought they were being sexist.
I'm interested in the comment about "leaving behind their mammalian roots." This sounds (in the context it was said) as if there is something wrong in attempting to move beyond basic animal / instinctive traits. I don't see why. Clearly it is possible both to improve on those traits and to ... dis-improve on them. I would hope for the former.
It's worth recalling that according to Christianity and quite a few other religions, nature is not in itself good or unfallen. It has lots of good in it; but it is by no means an infallible guide to how people can become their best selves. For instance, nature would urge me to place my own family's needs and wants above everybody else's, and to hell with the people I trample on. I doubt anyone wants me to do that.
But also "basic animal traits" include cooperation, empathy, fairness, reconciliation, and so on. Surely, nobody now believes that the animal kingdom is a place of savagery and dog eat dog? Well, sometimes it is, but sometimes it isn't. Frans de Waal is an important researcher here on empathy in various species including rats.
You are right, women can share whatever they want with each other. Maybe women are different to men.... I would never collude with a man in criticizing his partner in a public setting. I've never known a bloke do it.
You've never known a bloke to criticise his partner in a public setting? Jesus, Mary and Joseph are you sure? Have you ever been to a pub?
These are rhetorical questions. You have quite enough people pushing back at you Asher. I just couldn't let that one go through to the keeper without noting my objection.
You've never known a bloke to criticise his partner in a public setting? Jesus, Mary and Joseph are you sure? Have you ever been to a pub?
Never mind the pub - perhaps 75% of my colleagues are men, and I hear plenty of men grousing at each other about their wives at work. The complaints are mostly about indecisiveness and failure to say what they mean, for what it's worth.
I don't think grousing about your partner is either a male or a female thing - it's a people thing. Lots of people like to blow off steam complaining about what the useless article they share their life with has done now. I presume they find it helpful to do so.
You are right, women can share whatever they want with each other. Maybe women are different to men.... I would never collude with a man in criticizing his partner in a public setting. I've never known a bloke do it.
You've never known a bloke to criticise his partner in a public setting? Jesus, Mary and Joseph are you sure? Have you ever been to a pub?
These are rhetorical questions. You have quite enough people pushing back at you Asher. I just couldn't let that one go through to the keeper without noting my objection.
IME men tend to compartmentalize
Why would I talk about about my partner at work/pub etc? I go there to get a break.
(Note to the hard of understanding, this is not my rationale, but suggesting a way of seeing)
Those of us who have experienced a majority male environment have heard men discuss their partners. My daughter, an engineer, has stories of being asked advice in the workplace. I have been in the middle of such discussions and just kept my head down unless appealed to.
Those of us who have experienced a majority male environment have heard men discuss their partners. My daughter, an engineer, has stories of being asked advice in the workplace. I have been in the middle of such discussions and just kept my head down unless appealed to.
<shrug> Fair enough. As I've said I've never worked in a majority male environment.
I guess I'm not surprised that fellas might reach out to a woman for advice on understanding the aliens they are wedded to.
I've been part of a brewing club for 3 years. When we meet we taste each others beers and give honest robust feedback. We discuss how to generate the best hop aroma, water chemistry and yeast. Plan and run festivals. There has never been any discussion of a personal nature - we don't know what each other do for a living, whether we are gay/straight/married/single/parents. Illness - that crosses the line - if people are ill - but that's it.
We are all complete nerds - to the extent that I noticed that the code for this thread (1469) is the yeast code for Timothy Taylor's West Yorkshire Yeast (moderate esters, chewy malt, dry finish).
For me, the great thing about work and hobbies is that they take you away from all the shit in your life - why on earth would anyone want to import the shit into that protected breathing space.
I'm interested in the comment about "leaving behind their mammalian roots." This sounds (in the context it was said) as if there is something wrong in attempting to move beyond basic animal / instinctive traits. I don't see why. Clearly it is possible both to improve on those traits and to ... dis-improve on them. I would hope for the former.
It's worth recalling that according to Christianity and quite a few other religions, nature is not in itself good or unfallen. It has lots of good in it; but it is by no means an infallible guide to how people can become their best selves. For instance, nature would urge me to place my own family's needs and wants above everybody else's, and to hell with the people I trample on. I doubt anyone wants me to do that.
Really, we're human. We can do better.
Shall we pick fighting? Learning to fight through rough play as part of early developmental behaviour, leading to the ability to protect and guard?
Fighting is really discouraged in the education system and in a lot of parenting. And yet in adolescence a lot of young men and women will find great meaning in sports where there is competitive challenge / robust physical expression / violence.
Asher, you made a general statement about leaving behind mammalian roots. I made a general reply, to the effect that nature is not an infallible source of goodness and that human beings can do better than what their "mammalian roots" suggest. You then tried to take it down to a single example (chosen by you) and proceeded to attack someone (couldn't be me, I never said a word about it!) who is theoretically opposed to "rough play," sports, or something of the sort.
This isn't logical argument. You cannot take "we can do better than nature" and treat it as if I said "everything in nature is bad across the board and ought to be avoided." These are not the same statements.
Shall we pick fighting? Learning to fight through rough play as part of early developmental behaviour, leading to the ability to protect and guard?
Fighting is really discouraged in the education system and in a lot of parenting. And yet in adolescence a lot of young men and women will find great meaning in sports where there is competitive challenge / robust physical expression / violence.
Regards
Asher
'Violence' isn't quite the same thing as competitive challenge or robust physical expression. In fact, violence, by definition, would ruin and undermine both competition and even 'robust physical expression'. And fighting, in the violent sense, is not what's going on in most sports. Exceptions, such as boxing eg, remain controversial because of their harmful effects, and the thin line to be drawn between what is acceptable by way of hurting, even killing, one's opponent, however accidentally.
It's true we live in a world where people train for violence in order to protect and guard; and sometimes it does become the final and therefore only remaining option. But it couldn't be regarded as ever being the best option, when the best option to protect and guard is to find ways of living harmoniously and respectfully.
Finally, when fighting erupts through rough play, this is because there has been a failure to contain, restrain and reason; a failure which is understandable in young children. But becomes sadly fatal in us older folk.
But we do, love it or loathe it, need to have people trained in violence to populate our armies and provide national security etc.
So what about groups like Fathers for Justice? Men who want to be involved with their children but for no good reason are not allowed.
That is not what FFJ really are. Most inadequate narcissists running around wailing about how they are excluded from parenting their children because they can't manage the most basic parenting tasks, or even basic human decency.
Toxic masculinity (link to Wikipedia article) damages both men and women. Unhelpfully there are hold outs promoting toxic masculinity: some of the arguments are coming up on the Purg That's Not Entertainment thread, which has segued into discussing porn and sex working. Men's rights are important - there have [been] real injustices in fathers' rights in divorce that need righting - but when it can be said about some groups of the Men's Rights Movement (wiki link)
In 2018, the Southern Poverty Law Center categorized some men's rights groups as being part of a hate ideology under the umbrella of patriarchy and male supremacy. The movement and sectors of the movement have been described as misogynistic, and the perceived disadvantage some men feel is argued as often being due to loss of entitlement and privilege.
that's not helpful either.
But those injustices were years if not decades ago. Fathers for Justice, if you bother to dig - as 2008 Guardian article link pointed out:
Could it be, as I have long suspected, that, for many members of fathers' groups, it's always been less about justice-seeking than it has been about attention-seeking? While these fathers' groups may have been set up with the best of intentions, they evolved all too quickly into social clubs for miserable sods who wanted a free pass to whine about women.
this was the evidence from 2008 showing that contact with the fathers is only an issue when the father is unsuitable:
A study by the Oxford Centre for Family Law and Policy was set up by the Ministry of Justice to look into non-resident parents being awarded little or no contact with their children for the flimsiest of reasons. Last week, the study concluded that the vast majority of separated fathers enjoy access to their children. Only one in 10 cases ends up in court, the rest having been agreed between the parents. When the cases do go to court, more than three-quarters of the applicants, mainly fathers, are able to resolve contact issues, with only a small percentage denied contact altogether, in the interests of the children involved.
which is backed up by this 2016 Daily Fail story entitled Top judge says mothers should have children taken away if they don't let fathers see them
So what about groups like Fathers for Justice? Men who want to be involved with their children but for no good reason are not allowed.
For no good reason? I assume you're saying that there have been legal proceedings and that a judge has completely denied access with no proper basis for so doing. Is that a correct assumption and some examples please.
I was thinking one of the reasons for not allowing access is a previous history of child abuse. There's this story from the Telegraph from 2016, which is entitled Paedophile awarded legal aid in fight to see son, eight.
The paedophile, who has only been identified as ‘Q’, admitted engaging in sexual activity with his 12-year-old nephew in 2009 - and ordered to carry out community service.
His wife left him shortly after his arrest, taking with her their son, ‘M’, who was born in 2007. She filed for divorce.
In 2012 the man admitted a second child sex offence - involving a 16-year-old boy - and was given a six-month jail term, later halved on appeal.
When his wife objected to the paedophile having any contact with their son the man lodged a legal challenge for contact and was refused legal aid under rules approved by Parliament in 2012.
I did know Fathers for Justice were no longer being called upon as spokespeople - but had missed this story Independent link from 2016 which described their current activities as:
neglecting their campaigns in favour of increasingly personal attacks on Ms Nokes and Mr Yalland, as part of a four-year saga which has seen their supporters send death threats, both sides trade allegations of harassment and resulted in a tussle on the O’Connors’ drive.
The article discusses that they are not a listed charity, the only shareholder is Matt O'Connor, who had his Twitter account blocked at this time. Then there's this telling comment:
Former members of F4J say they feel the organisation has lost its way. The group has become increasingly marginalised and the only politicians to deal with them recently are George Galloway – who tabled an Early Day Motion on their behalf earlier this year – and Ukip, who met with Ms O’Connor in May.
So what about groups like Fathers for Justice? Men who want to be involved with their children but for no good reason are not allowed.
I think there is a reasonable argument to be had in the UK about the amount of contact a child(ren) get to have with their fathers post relationship break-down, with much more time-equitable arrangements being found elsewhere in the developed world.
Fathers for Justice are not the right people to start that debate, nor are they particularly interested in having it, but are more interested in grandstanding and claiming victimisation. They are to parental access what Tommy Robinson is to good interfaith relationships.
(FWIW I used to know one of the main movers behind F4J).
I am certainly aware of one women who just wouldn't let the father see the kids for no reason other than they split. Obviously I cannot go into detail. There are good reasons why some cannot see the children.
I am certainly aware of one women who just wouldn't let the father see the kids for no reason other than they split. Obviously I cannot go into detail. There are good reasons why some cannot see the children.
But was the woman's position upheld by a court? That's what is relevant.
There's a range of matters which would prompt a court to deny access, a history of child sexual abuse being an obvious one. Drunkenness is another, wife abuse another.
I am certainly aware of one women who just wouldn't let the father see the kids for no reason other than they split.
Yes, and the ending of most legal aid for family law cases means that unless the father in this case has the means to take the mother to court, it's out of his power to fix. So there are issues around getting legal representation and so on.
But predominantly F4J seem to adopt a seagull strategy to everything they are involved in.
I reckon feminism is making women's lives more miserable
Which particular kind of feminism? Hard to take your argument seriously until you define it.
Right to vote make me miserable? Earning the same as a man for the same job make me miserable? Having the same opportunities to be doctor, lawyer, manager, pastor, retain job after marriage, having children etc make me miserable? Protection from sexual harassment in the workplace, and rape within marriage make me miserable? Mmmm. All feminist goals, by definition, and driven most assuredly by feminist ideals. And all, I would think, reasonably acceptable to any reasonable person.
But maybe you're right. In some countries, the technical freedom some women have to drive a car, marry their own choice of partner, earn a living and walk alone down a street is still unacceptable to many, many others; and sadly even these hard-earned feminist goals are still resulting in violence, abuse and even death for the women militantly feminist enough to persist in claiming these as their rights.
You'll forgive me for preferring to live in a world where feminist targets of equality for all people aim to predominate (and sadly still a long way off), over your preference that those who are 'different' to men should be content with the crumbs from under your table; to quote a well-known lady who intuited that Christ would find it perfectly acceptable for her NOT to keep to her properly assigned place in culture and society.
Equal rights don't make you miserable. Believing you are opressed when you have the same rights and oportunities as everyone else is what does.
Feminism nowadays is not about equal rights. If it was, you'd be fighting for the rights of really opressed women who live in islamic countries, for example. But that's not acceptable in the movement. It's not rational, it's ideological.
Thought of the day, a middle class woman in the west has more rights, safety and prosperity then the vast majority of human beings in the world, including men. You are not part of an opressed minority. Society is not in debt with you.
I think there is a reasonable argument to be had in the UK about the amount of contact a child(ren) get to have with their fathers post relationship break-down, with much more time-equitable arrangements being found elsewhere in the developed world.
It's always worth having a reasonable discussion about anything. In the case of the living arrangements for children post-relationship breakdown, it is usually the case that there is no perfect solution, and what we are searching for is the least bad outcome.
Thinking out loud, housing is expensive in the UK. It is generally not possible for separating parents each to be able to afford a home with adequate bedrooms for the children. This automatically means that the children will have a "main home" with their bedrooms and all their stuff, and a place that they visit.
I am aware of one case in which the parents remained on amicable terms, and agreed to split their time in the family home. They bought a small flat nearby, and each parent spends half the week living in the flat and half the week living in the family home with the children. They are unusual people, though - I don't think this arrangement would work for many divorcing couples.
This automatically means that the children end up with a parent they "live with" and one that they "visit".
Before the marriage ended, it was usually the mother that had the bulk of the childcare responsibilities, and she probably worked fewer hours because of it. This is where the gender imbalance in our society enters. So it makes sense that it's usually her that continues to have primary responsibility for childcare after the divorce.
And there you have, pretty much out of the box, the traditional kids live with Mum and see Dad at the weekend model.
Well I have the taste of ashes in mouth after the weekend.
Went out with a group of men. After a few beers some of the men started swapping anecdotes of their 'conquests' with sex workers. Sort of like 'those two hookers in Amsterdam were the best £300 I've ever spent'.
Couldn't leave it.
Tried to gently challenge - sort of 'what were their names, did they have children, I wonder if this is how they hoped their lives would turn out, I wonder if they were trafficked'
Didn't work. They couldn't see it. I left soon after.
Of course, your parting shot could have been, "I'm off to let your missus know", but that probably wouldn't have ended well.
Nothing in asher's post suggested that the conquests (though the word hardly applies to buying it) being bragged about were recent.
those two hookers in Amsterdam were the best £300 I've ever spent
This sentence, spoken by men with spouses and children, is independent of time.
I've told stories of my past misdeeds. If I tell them with braggadocio, then it is still a negative reflection of my current character.
[The judge] said that prosecutors should have made it clear to the girl that pressing charges against the boy, who was an eagle scout with good grades, would destroy his life.
[The judge] said that prosecutors should have made it clear to the girl that pressing charges against the boy, who was an eagle scout with good grades, would destroy his life.
WTF?!
WTF indeed.
Perhaps the boy's parents should have explained to him that raping the girl would destroy her life.
But he was from a "good" family and went to an "excellent" school, so of course he should be treated leniently.
I hope any college or university to which he applies treats his application with the contempt it deserves.
Comments
This article is fairly old, and there is newer stuff now about brain plasticity. Yes there is a degree of hardwiring, but it is massively dwarfed by the effect of nurture.
I wouldn't want to stop anyone from expressing their pain at the effect of the toxicity, even if I could (and yes, I accept that I can't). I'm just concerned that I would love, in my lifetime, to get to the point where people can be themselves without apology, shame or fear.
Against this, processes take the time that they take.
Interesting read. It did strike me that the statements on the wall of 'girls are strong' and 'boys are sensitive' were not gender neutral - though perhaps they were corrective.
When I walk down the local night club street, the behaviour of both genders resembles very clearly that seen in the hierarchical displays of primates.
When I read about gender neutral approaches I wonder whether some are seeking to leave behind their mammalian roots.
Fair enough - your mileage varies.
I kinda think that when a demographic is very under-represented (as is the case in primary ed, and SEN early years (for me)), conversations that might otherwise be neutral can become over as punching down.
Perhaps I should have added that there is a back story of some women in the staff room loudly asserting that men are useless in a sweeping manner.
Thanks for your challenging response.
As I've posted upthread, I've only ever worked for women in female dominated teams, so it is quite possible that this has blinded me to how sexism operates elsewhere.
You are right, women can share whatever they want with each other. Maybe women are different to men.... I would never collude with a man in criticizing his partner in a public setting. I've never known a bloke do it.
I'll think more about your comment re competitiveness / cooperation. My partner recently attended a course by Eve Poole on women in leadership, who spent time looking at the relationship between hormonal drivers and these two modes of operation. Fascinating stuff.
Your last sentence though......
Eavesdropping?I can confidently say this was not the case (single table, I was there first, small room, loud voices)
Defend the indefensible - don't understand what I am meant to have been defending.
Show them up - no, I just wanted them to stop. I thought they were being sexist.
He: MEN SUFFER TOO! LET'S MAKE THIS CONVERSATION ABOUT MEN INSTEAD!
It's worth recalling that according to Christianity and quite a few other religions, nature is not in itself good or unfallen. It has lots of good in it; but it is by no means an infallible guide to how people can become their best selves. For instance, nature would urge me to place my own family's needs and wants above everybody else's, and to hell with the people I trample on. I doubt anyone wants me to do that.
Really, we're human. We can do better.
You've never known a bloke to criticise his partner in a public setting? Jesus, Mary and Joseph are you sure? Have you ever been to a pub?
These are rhetorical questions. You have quite enough people pushing back at you Asher. I just couldn't let that one go through to the keeper without noting my objection.
Never mind the pub - perhaps 75% of my colleagues are men, and I hear plenty of men grousing at each other about their wives at work. The complaints are mostly about indecisiveness and failure to say what they mean, for what it's worth.
I don't think grousing about your partner is either a male or a female thing - it's a people thing. Lots of people like to blow off steam complaining about what the useless article they share their life with has done now. I presume they find it helpful to do so.
IME men tend to compartmentalize
Why would I talk about about my partner at work/pub etc? I go there to get a break.
(Note to the hard of understanding, this is not my rationale, but suggesting a way of seeing)
<shrug> Fair enough. As I've said I've never worked in a majority male environment.
I guess I'm not surprised that fellas might reach out to a woman for advice on understanding the aliens they are wedded to.
I've been part of a brewing club for 3 years. When we meet we taste each others beers and give honest robust feedback. We discuss how to generate the best hop aroma, water chemistry and yeast. Plan and run festivals. There has never been any discussion of a personal nature - we don't know what each other do for a living, whether we are gay/straight/married/single/parents. Illness - that crosses the line - if people are ill - but that's it.
We are all complete nerds - to the extent that I noticed that the code for this thread (1469) is the yeast code for Timothy Taylor's West Yorkshire Yeast (moderate esters, chewy malt, dry finish).
For me, the great thing about work and hobbies is that they take you away from all the shit in your life - why on earth would anyone want to import the shit into that protected breathing space.
Cheers
Asher
Shall we pick fighting? Learning to fight through rough play as part of early developmental behaviour, leading to the ability to protect and guard?
Fighting is really discouraged in the education system and in a lot of parenting. And yet in adolescence a lot of young men and women will find great meaning in sports where there is competitive challenge / robust physical expression / violence.
Regards
Asher
This isn't logical argument. You cannot take "we can do better than nature" and treat it as if I said "everything in nature is bad across the board and ought to be avoided." These are not the same statements.
'Violence' isn't quite the same thing as competitive challenge or robust physical expression. In fact, violence, by definition, would ruin and undermine both competition and even 'robust physical expression'. And fighting, in the violent sense, is not what's going on in most sports. Exceptions, such as boxing eg, remain controversial because of their harmful effects, and the thin line to be drawn between what is acceptable by way of hurting, even killing, one's opponent, however accidentally.
It's true we live in a world where people train for violence in order to protect and guard; and sometimes it does become the final and therefore only remaining option. But it couldn't be regarded as ever being the best option, when the best option to protect and guard is to find ways of living harmoniously and respectfully.
Finally, when fighting erupts through rough play, this is because there has been a failure to contain, restrain and reason; a failure which is understandable in young children. But becomes sadly fatal in us older folk.
But we do, love it or loathe it, need to have people trained in violence to populate our armies and provide national security etc.
That is not what FFJ really are. Most inadequate narcissists running around wailing about how they are excluded from parenting their children because they can't manage the most basic parenting tasks, or even basic human decency.
Observations from the life certainly
But those injustices were years if not decades ago. Fathers for Justice, if you bother to dig - as 2008 Guardian article link pointed out: this was the evidence from 2008 showing that contact with the fathers is only an issue when the father is unsuitable:
which is backed up by this 2016 Daily Fail story entitled Top judge says mothers should have children taken away if they don't let fathers see them
For no good reason? I assume you're saying that there have been legal proceedings and that a judge has completely denied access with no proper basis for so doing. Is that a correct assumption and some examples please.
I did know Fathers for Justice were no longer being called upon as spokespeople - but had missed this story Independent link from 2016 which described their current activities as: The article discusses that they are not a listed charity, the only shareholder is Matt O'Connor, who had his Twitter account blocked at this time. Then there's this telling comment:
I think there is a reasonable argument to be had in the UK about the amount of contact a child(ren) get to have with their fathers post relationship break-down, with much more time-equitable arrangements being found elsewhere in the developed world.
Fathers for Justice are not the right people to start that debate, nor are they particularly interested in having it, but are more interested in grandstanding and claiming victimisation. They are to parental access what Tommy Robinson is to good interfaith relationships.
(FWIW I used to know one of the main movers behind F4J).
But was the woman's position upheld by a court? That's what is relevant.
There's a range of matters which would prompt a court to deny access, a history of child sexual abuse being an obvious one. Drunkenness is another, wife abuse another.
Yes, and the ending of most legal aid for family law cases means that unless the father in this case has the means to take the mother to court, it's out of his power to fix. So there are issues around getting legal representation and so on.
But predominantly F4J seem to adopt a seagull strategy to everything they are involved in.
@1986_overstaged said this over in Purgatory, but this seems a better place to tackle this particular view on the world:
Possible, but this particular brand of twit is ten a penny. Can be found propping up the bar at a golf club anywhere.
Or getting covered in milkshake in a town or city centre in the UK.
It's always worth having a reasonable discussion about anything. In the case of the living arrangements for children post-relationship breakdown, it is usually the case that there is no perfect solution, and what we are searching for is the least bad outcome.
Thinking out loud, housing is expensive in the UK. It is generally not possible for separating parents each to be able to afford a home with adequate bedrooms for the children. This automatically means that the children will have a "main home" with their bedrooms and all their stuff, and a place that they visit.
I am aware of one case in which the parents remained on amicable terms, and agreed to split their time in the family home. They bought a small flat nearby, and each parent spends half the week living in the flat and half the week living in the family home with the children. They are unusual people, though - I don't think this arrangement would work for many divorcing couples.
This automatically means that the children end up with a parent they "live with" and one that they "visit".
Before the marriage ended, it was usually the mother that had the bulk of the childcare responsibilities, and she probably worked fewer hours because of it. This is where the gender imbalance in our society enters. So it makes sense that it's usually her that continues to have primary responsibility for childcare after the divorce.
And there you have, pretty much out of the box, the traditional kids live with Mum and see Dad at the weekend model.
Went out with a group of men. After a few beers some of the men started swapping anecdotes of their 'conquests' with sex workers. Sort of like 'those two hookers in Amsterdam were the best £300 I've ever spent'.
Couldn't leave it.
Tried to gently challenge - sort of 'what were their names, did they have children, I wonder if this is how they hoped their lives would turn out, I wonder if they were trafficked'
Didn't work. They couldn't see it. I left soon after.
Relationships possibly broken.
These are married men. Children. Daughters.
What. The. Fuck.
Of course, your parting shot could have been, "I'm off to let your missus know", but that probably wouldn't have ended well.
Where is the gospel?
Nothing in asher's post suggested that the conquests (though the word hardly applies to buying it) being bragged about were recent.
I've told stories of my past misdeeds. If I tell them with braggadocio, then it is still a negative reflection of my current character.
WTF?!
Perhaps the boy's parents should have explained to him that raping the girl would destroy her life.
But he was from a "good" family and went to an "excellent" school, so of course he should be treated leniently.
I hope any college or university to which he applies treats his application with the contempt it deserves.
Words fail me.