Male Stereotyping
Father Placed on Child Protection Register for Marrying Young
Lyn and Neville Cox were childhood sweethearts who had grown up in the same street. They were very much in love. When she became pregnant at 15, Lyn’s father was furious and reported 16-year-old Neville to police, who charged the boy with carnal knowledge.
The half-hour court hearing that followed seemed inconsequential, but more than 40 years later it revealed its lasting legacy, branding Mr Cox a child sex offender who should not be around children.
The couple married soon after his conviction, with nothing but a cup of tea and Vegemite sandwich with Mr Cox’s family to celebrate.
They moved away and had two more children, both of whom became police officers, and are respected members of the community in Wagga Wagga.
Mr Cox’s only brush with the law since has been two speeding fines.
Over the years he didn’t give his juvenile record any thought.
”I just presumed that when I turned 18 it was all over red rover,” he said.
It was not until a few years ago he learnt it wasn’t.
Aussie PM in denial as her support amongst Males drops to all time low
Australia’s Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has responded to news of the collapse of her support amongst Australia’s voting public with an air of denial that has even stunned her harshest critics.
With news today that Labor’s support has fallen to 28 per cent, just one percent shy of the figure that has decimated the Queensland Labor party only a few days ago, with a loss of over 40 seats, fears are now growing that Gillard is simply too detached from reality to meet the herculian challenge that is facing Labor at a federal level.
Many critics have identified two key policies that have wedged hard-core Labor supporters away from Labor and into the fold of the Coalition.
A policy that has received little news media coverage but has caused significant grass roots upheaval has been the recent 2011 Family Law amendments, which have effectively dismantled Australia’s popular and broadly successful shared parenting laws, and replaced them with what is largely perceived to be anti-male, anti-fatherhood policies, many seeing this as Gillard cowering to feminist ideologues.
Read full article on Ezine4Males.com
DIVORCE LAWS: Family Court loathed for the vast harm it does
The Americans have a well-known saying for politicians, “It’s the economy, stupid!” — meaning that what matters most for people are economic issues. It’s false.
What matters most to people, and most affects their well-being, are close relationships, and above all family relationships. These are areas where politicians and bureaucrats can do only limited good but almost limitless harm, and huge harm is being done.
Here are some facts regarding Australia today. If there’s a marriage or relationship break-up involving children, and custody or access is in dispute, the parties must submit to an inquisition by Family Court social-workers or the latters’ pet psychologists regarding their past behaviour towards and in the presence of the children.
A major purpose of the exercise is to identify “family violence” by the male, with this being defined as any behaviour “actual or threatened” which causes any member of the family “to fear for, or reasonably to be apprehensive about, his or her personal well-being or safety”.
The term “well-being” is infinitely elastic, and meant to be, as are the other catch-all Family Court categories of “family violence”, such as “psychological violence/abuse”, “emotional violence/abuse”, and “controlling behaviours”.
What about the men? White Ribbon, men and violence
What about the men? White Ribbon, men and violence: A response to Dr Michael Flood by Men’s Health Australia
The White Ribbon Foundation is an organisation that works to prevent male violence towards women – a goal that is extremely worthy and worth supporting. The White Ribbon website states that “all forms of violence are unacceptable,” however in 2009 the organisation issued a document to it’s male Ambassadors which used erroneous ‘facts and statistics’ to downplay, diminish and report incorrectly about male victims of violence. These Ambassadors use federal government funding to take the White Ribbon message into regional, rural and remote communities. These significant errors could have led the Ambassadors, and through them the general public via federal funding, to be misled about the nature and dynamics of interpersonal violence in Australia.
Rugby League – Abusing the truth in its fight against Domestic Abuse
The NRL and the NSW government have recently launched an educational DVD to teach young rugby league players and male students across Australia about the negative impact of violence against women.
This campaign, although well-meaning, has been slammed by many domestic violence experts as a mis-representation of the true nature of domestic violence in this country. Many argue that such a simplistic portrayal of domestic violence will only encourage further abuse, especially amongst the young, because the whole campaign is based on the falsehood.
Although it is fairly well documented that domestic violence is a relationship dynamic, with both parties contributing to the violence and abuse over an extended period of the life of the relationship, Australian sporting codes are unfortunately ‘buying in’ to the myth that domestic abuse and violence is a unilateral phenomenon, and can somehow be stopped by simply vilifying men.
Most domestic violence has a backdrop of abuse tactics from both the male and female in the relationship, dating back many years before the authorities may be involved.
Where Good Men Don’t Count: The Dire Repercussions of Ignoring Men’s Welfare – Story Bridge Murder/Suicide
In another case reflecting the lack of support experienced by separated fathers in this country, many Australians are now questioning the wisdom of Australia’s family support services which have focussed almost exclusively on the welfare and support of women, while ignoring the needs men, resulting in a culture of vilification that has driven some men over the edge, with dire consequences for the innocent children of separated families.
IT WAS dark outside when Danielle Lees woke and reached for her mobile phone. It had only been hours since she last saw him, but something made her dial her husband to see if everything was OK.
By the time the call connected with Jason Lees’ mobile, both he and their son, Brad, were already dead.
Danielle, a psychologist, had been staying with her parents on the Gold Coast.
Neighbours say the couple appeared to have separated, but Jason, a teacher at Brisbane’s “Churchie” and a former rugby union referee, drove to meet her for lunch on Sunday.
He left again for home in the afternoon, taking Brad with him – the two-year-old attended his school’s kindergarten.
It was about 2am when Jason strapped Brad into the car, loaded his bike and drove from their Seven Hills home in suburban Brisbane to Kangaroo Point.
ABS Releases Gender Indicators and Ignores Male Disadvantage
Today the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Australia’s so-called impartial statistical body released its Gender Indicators report: “a summary of gender specific data in six domains representing Economic security, Education, Health, Work and family balance, Safety and justice, and Democracy, governance and citizenship”.
The ABS produced a media release about the publication. This release could have noted that:
- Across the board males fare much worse than females in the education system – most notably being 24% less likely to be enrolled in a bachelor degree or above
- Across the board males fare much worse than females in the health arena – most notably suffering death rates from cancer, heart disease, suicide, motor vehicle accidents and drug abuse between 1.6 and 3.4 times higher
Australia’s Shared Parenting laws finding favour in Britain
FIERCE debate over the success and safety of Australia’s shared parenting laws has been exported to Britain.
Australian-based fathers groups, which are advising British counterparts, yesterday welcomed public comments from Britain’s Minister for Children and Families Tim Loughton that his government was considering “legislative and non-legislative” means to promote shared parenting as part of a broad family law shake-up.
Mr Loughton also distanced himself from the recommendations of a government-commissioned review of family law that cited problems with the Howard government’s 2006 reforms to argue against shared parenting legislation. Lone Fathers Association of Australia president Barry Williams backed the British government stance, which goes against the key recommendation of the Family Justice Review chaired by businessman David Norgrove.
In his final report published late last year, Mr Norgrove said “thorough and detailed evidence from Australia showed the damaging consequences for many children” when courts compelled them to spend equal time with both parents.
Read the rest of this entry »
Mum loses custody to her child’s alleged abuser
Editor: Anyone who understands the Family Law act would realise that we are likely not being given the full story here – see below. This sounds like a typical Caroline Overington beat-up, except for the fact that we have a new journalist in this instance who is likely to be selectively reporting the facts.
One has to wonder why a Judge would give sole custody to a father, if the only facts of the case are as reported in this story. There must be much more to this story than this journalist is letting on, especially with regard to the mother’s parenting abilities, her own possible child abuse behaviours, and perhaps some serious instances of parental alienation or false allegations. Who knows, but what is certain is that there is much more to this than what this news article claims. In any case, if anyone can point me to the actual judgment or provide F4E any further information on this case it would be appreciated.
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Fraud in Australia’s plan to reduce violence against women
The 2009 Australian project a ‘Time for Action: The National Council’s Plan for Australia to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children, 2009-2021′, was approved for implementation by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG). The Plan, which is split into several parts, puts forth recommendations for new legislation, changes to judicial processes, requests for funding and ideas for domestic programs targeted at reducing domestic and sexual violence against women. The advisory council has some powers to implement programs through the Office of Women among other agencies, but much of what the government funded program calls for requires approval by Parliament.
The entire premise of the National Plan was underpinned by the belief in this statement:“While a small proportion of men are victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, the majority of people who experience this kind of violence are women in a home, at the hands of men they know.”[27-pg1] But a quick examination of the statistics and data shows a much different picture to the rather sweeping indictment of Australian men the National Council paints.
