The Myth of Father’s Rights

I’m a pretty polite guy, being Canadian and all I guess you could say that goes with the territory. I usually try my best to be fair even when I’m being opinionated, and not slam the opposing view, rather just present what I have to say and get on with stuff. But there comes a time when even the most placid of us snap, even moderate quiet Canadians have their limit.

The people who are pushing my buttons right now are the ones who are trying their best, under the guise of preserving their rights, to undermine the rights of women. Father’s rights groups, grandparents right’s groups; I don’t really care what they call themselves, but I’m getting damned sick of their self righteous bullshit.

For so many years women had no rights whatsoever when it came to anything. They were pretty much the personal property of their husband, and he could do what ever he wanted with her. A wife was dependant on her husband for everything. If a woman dared divorce her husband she was seen as somehow fallen.

The myth of the sexy divorcee; she’s not getting it anymore on a regular basis from her husband so she’ll be desperate for any idiot, only helped perpetuate that lowering of status for the women who dared leave a husband. It wouldn’t matter if he were a drunk who beat her and the kids, or slept with anything in a skirt, but the man was always in the right and the woman always wrong.

Thankfully that began to change in the seventies and women began to be treated more and more equally in the eyes of the law and the divorce courts. The perception that women were taking men to the cleaners in the courts for alimony is and always has been patently ridiculous. If it were so true how is it that so many women end up living lives of quiet desperation while the men continue on in their affluent lifestyles?

What’s wrong with a woman being given the means to support herself in the style she was accustomed too, especially when the man casts her aside for another woman? If she was a housewife for years, what training or job skills does she have? Close to zero. She’s owed and big time, for losing the best years of her life; think of it as wrongful dismissal compensation and maybe it will be easier to comprehend.

Than there’s the whole issue of Father’s rights; there’s a joke if I ever heard one. Do you know the situation in Ontario was so bad when it came to deadbeat dads reneging on child support that the government had to set up a special enforcement agency just to deal with the numbers?

They complain that they’re being denied access and custody of their children. Well boohoo; maybe they should of thought of that before they did what they did to cause their marriage to fail. How much involvement did any of these concerned fathers have with their children to begin with? What do they want them for?

Do you know how hard it used to be for a woman to retain custody of her children? The person who nurtured, cared for, carried to term, and gave birth to the children was hardly ever given custody of the children if the man wanted them. Why, because they were his property. To this day courts are still more likely to find in a man’s favour in a custody battle if he really puts his mind to it and can prove that he is better able to support the children.

The number of women who have their children taken from them because their husbands have abused them is staggering. If they so much as raise a finger to fight back they are inevitably declared unfit mothers who are prone to violence. No one bothers to check and see why she might have hit the husband, and then taken the kids and run. No they just hunt her down like a criminal, while he comes across like some innocent victim.

Let me tell you a lovely little story that happened very recently. I have a friend, a lovely young women, who used to live on the East Coast of Canada. One day the father of her children threw her out a window and left her there. She managed to find someone to look after her children and crawled to the hospital. While she was in the hospital he took the children to stay with him at his girlfriend’s place

When she got out of hospital she went to get her kids. They hadn’t been fed or changed in who knows how long. Neither the man nor his girlfriend was there, they were out scoring a fix. These were the people that the family courts awarded custody of the children too when she finally snapped and hit him back.

She was declared a psychotic, violent, bipolar and an unfit mother. Nobody would believe her when she described the violence and abuse perpetrated against her. She a hysterical woman and couldn’t be trusted. This happened only five years ago in a supposedly civilized country like Canada.

Battered women’s shelters are full of women and children in hiding from husbands, and the courts would still send children back to the men who beat their mothers for visitation rights. I ask you, if a man beats his wife would you want children to be around him? What kind of role model is that? How can you trust a person like that not to get violent with the children? Yet the courts will uphold his right as a father to see his children.

For centuries, if not longer men have owned women and done with them what they want, Now that women are exercising a little control over their own fates and men are not able to get their own way with everything, their whining about losing rights. To me they sound just like the segregations complaining about not being able to keep black people from voting.

It’s time for society and men to realize that just because a man shoots sperm into a woman’s womb that doesn’t entitle them to anything. Being a parent is not right; it’s a privilege that must be earned. Most men do nothing to earn that privilege.