Posts Tagged ‘Social Issues from Religious Viewpoints’

“Wife Abuse and Custody and Visitation by the Abuser” –A Man Speaks from the Past (1989).

This voice from the past (1989 to 2009 = 20 years!) —

is pretty well drowned out by “the Duluth Model,” and the millions of $$ of grants, funds, and now even new professions springing up, all to help avoid what I’d call THIS common sense. I guess I will have to show. This will deal with the issue of Supervised Visitation: The question nowadays is how to make it safe, etc. The question of why ANY visitation with such violence, scarcely gets raised again.

Wife Abuse and Child Custody and Visitation by the Abuser

by Kendall Segel-Evans

originally published:
ENDING MEN’S VIOLENCE NEWSLETTER, Fall, 1989

I recently read the National Organization for Changing Men’s statement on child custody, and the position taken that, in general, sole custody by the previously most involved parent is preferable to joint custody. I would like to elaborate on this position for families where there has been violence between parents (i.e. woman-abuse). The following includes the main points of a deposition I was asked to provide to a lawyer for the mother in a child custody case. I do not believe this is the last or best word on the subject, {{now THAT’s a rare humility in the field!}} but I hope that it will s(t)imulate useful dialogue** about the effects on children of wife-abuse and the treatment of wife-abusers. I also wish to further discussion on the issue of how we are going to truly end men’s violence. *** Clearly, I believe that the treatment of wife-abusers should not only be held accountable to the partner victim/survivors, but also to the children, and to the next generation.

**{{WAS THAT A FREUDIAN SLIP IN THE ORIGINAL?? “simulate” for “stimulate”??}} . . .

***

I’ve noticed that the professionals are more likely to have the “social transformation” goal, while typically women leaving abuse, and specifically MOTHERS leaving abuse, have a more short-term goal, namely LEAVING abuse and providing safety and good things, including good values, safety, education and role models — for their CHILDREN. This is a significant difference, and with different goals come different means to reach that goal. Moreover, as women leaving abuse, we have a ZERO tolerance for situations that might lead to, well, death. Women have been killed around visitation centers, which is a dirty little secret. Another one is that some supervisors are themselves abusive, or “on the take” and so forth. Again, the professionals have spoken to this issue — but not changed it. (For more info see nafcj.net). Are all? No. But why even risk it?

WHY place both children and the nonabusive parent at any sort of risk whatsoever, for any reason? For one, good grief, what about PTSD? A child has witnessed abuse or been abused. Therefore, expose them to the abuser. REGULARLY, and in a performance situation. A mother has been abused or her child. Therefore, force her — and/or her children — to see their father, regularly and in front of others who will “judge.” AND they do (see “Karen Oehme”). The model lacks integrity, to my mind. No matter, it has government backing, and LOTS of it.

SO this post is a “blast from the past.” I’ve read the literature a LOT, I assure you; you don’t hear this person’s name a lot. Too much common sense. And yet he is in the marriage field, and attaches a Bibliography like anyone else:

Kendall Segel-Evans, M.A. Marriage, Family and Child Counselor 4/15/1989

He recommends not taking chances. Such types of recommendations are not the stuff publication, conferences, and promotions are made out of. No new building needs be built for this recommendation. It’s just too dang sensible.

Reminds me of Jack Straton’s similar work, a while back, here below:

1992

What About the Kids? Custody and Visitation Decisions in Families with a History of Violence

National Training Project of the Duluth Domestic Abuse Project – Thursday, October 8, 1992, Duluth, Minnesota

from the Journal of the Task Group on Child Custody Issues*

of the National Organization for Men Against Sexism

Volume 5, Number 1, Spring1993 (Fourth Edition, 2001)

c/o University Studies, Portland State University, Portland, OR, 97207-0751

503-725-5844, 503-725-5977 (FAX) , straton@pdx.edu

What is Fair for Children of Abusive Men?

by Jack C. Straton, Ph.D.

{Let’s GetHonest speaking….}} Reviewing this document years, and years after baptism by a dissolution/custody suit cold-shock immersion in to the language and lore of Family Court, resulting in a return to Food Stamps, but no return of my missing children!, but I HAVE (there’s always a silver lining) perhaps returned closer to placing my hope in things eternal more than things local! (I’m talking Jesus Christ for those who don’t catch the reference), I have a different opinion, not on its CONTENTS but on its CONTEXT, as follows, re::

I want to express my deep gratitude to Ellen Pence, Madeline Dupre, Jim Soderberg and the others from the Duluth Domestic Abuse Intervention Project for giving me this opportunity to speak with you. The State of Minnesota should be proud that, quite literally, the world looks to this program for guidance on understanding and ending domestic violence. I also want to acknowledge how much I continually learn from Barbara Hart, of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

I will first critically examine the criterion at the base of all custody laws today “What is in the best interests of the children?” I will the talk about children’s choice in these matters. Then I will examine the actual effects of wife-battering on children, and develop an alternative paradigm for custody based on those effects. From this I will examine the question, “Is it ever appropriate to ever give a batterer custody of a child?” (emphasis mine…)

{{PLEASE PARDON THIS INTERJECTION! This article indeed does that, and convincingly.

LINK: DAIP Grants rec’d 2000-2009 (scroll down to bar chart)

(hint: over $4.5 million)

LINK: Grants rec’d by DAIp Parent organization, “Minnesota Program Development, Inc.“

(hint: Over $25 million, and NOT including some of its sub-groups, which apparently get their own grants, too).

(the bottom half of logo proclaims” home of the duluth Model, Social Change to End violence Against Women”)

)

Visitation Center

The Duluth Family Visitation Center opened in 1989. Our mission is to provide a safe place where children can build and maintain positive relationships with their parents. The Visitation Center offers support for victims of domestic violence and their children as well as supervised visitation, monitored visitation, and monitored exchange services to families affected by domestic violence.

(See the nice picture??)->_>_>_>_>

The Center provides a variety of children’s books, games and videotapes as well as beverages and snacks for children and parents to help provide a comfortable and nurturing environment where parents can work on building and strengthening their relationship with their child which so often is damaged by violence in the home.

The Center also collaborates with many other community agencies and accepts referrals from the courts and social services. {{NOw you understand the BUSINESS model…}} Currently we serve approximately 120 families and conduct over 4000 visits and exchanges per year at minimal cost to families.

And I do mean BUSINESS model:

The database simplifies the logistical work of coordinating a Visitation Center and reduces the time to prepare quarterly reports for funders.

Download sample report here

Purchase the visitation center database ($350.00) by visiting our online catalog

Beyond the pure financial collateral, there is also the professional collateral (prestige) and of course feeding much, much much more personal data into databases for further” research and demonstration” projects on how to — end violence against women.

I question why so few have questioned this model. Probably because of the powers behind it, and because those who have been affected by it are often destitute and experiencing PTSD. BY THE WAY — I HAD HEARD OF THIS AND ASKED FOR IT IN MY CASE, AND WAS FLATLY DENIED because there was no “money” for it. In other words, I, the mother, could not pay for it (already on the record) and he the father (being so far arrears in child support) obviously could not. however, when the father asked for — by refusing to acknowledge the court had ordered something different — ZERO contact, it took less than a few months to give this to him, and only one year (as opposed to the years previous I had sought actively seeking help, as single mother, and while personally having to negotiate my own safety, on a near-weekly basis) to retroactively attribute custody and modify the arrears owed ME as the caretaker of our daughters, and which didn’t come to them while living here — down to insignificant and unenforceable payments. Yet our state receives grants to facilitate access by the noncustodial parent. When I became one, I could not access them, either. go figure.

JACK didn’t recommend this model, although he was apparently asked to speak here. BUT – – His voice, too, has been ignored — MOST chiefly by the Duluth “Domestic Abuse Intervention Project” itself, apparently. This paradigm, I simply didn‘t find it once in operation — ever — anywhere — experientially. Our society simply does not accept this yet. And, FYI, there is a LOT of money in this venue bent on “transformational language” and “therapeutic jurisprudence.” Doing this is considered in many circles “good,” and not surprisingly, because many of our school systems share the same premise, they are “values transformation centers” and succeeding well at this, apparently.

Nor have I found someone who accepts this No-Visitation where there’s been Violence paradigm. (And I talk to Dads, not just Moms, and I research, a LOT, on–line. I have been in circles which don‘t believe women should speak, literally, and I have lived in which men did not confront violence towards “one of their own” by even TELLING the man to stop it! Let alone, intervening themselves in any manner to stop it. Ever since I finally took it upon myself to get someone from outside these circles to indeed stop it, I have been exposed, through the family law venue (and others) to a virtual nonstop “litany” of “just get over it” as if either the lethality risk, the economic abuse, the stalkings, and the implicit threat to escalate were somehow “over” in my case. My experience, lots of it, showed the precise opposite. Any attempt at independence was countered. this got tiring for such a person, and others were found and incited to participate in communal denial, a sort of catharctic self–cleansing ritual, I suppose.

AGAIN, I myself didn’t share this paradigm initially. However, this was because I had been enduring years of this type of threat/intimidation/etc. behavior and attempting — myself — to ‘reason” with this man, after it became clear — and from the OUTSET — that saying “no” or “Stop!” was likely to result in physical assault, or worse, and my friends, there IS a “worse.” Now, I have some perspective: 10 years living with a batterer, 10 years of attempting to separate from one. My perspective has changed, after i watched the reactions of society to my assertion of my right to say NO! and ENOUGH! I gave ENOUGH! in the “let’s negotiate” process, and shouldn’t have ever entered into it or been encouraged to. These were the PRIME working years of an intelligent, responsible, and law-abiding woman and mother. Now, I would like some change to happen. i would like the truth of the situation OUT, and I am taking it (obviously) to the blogosphere, and my local Congressperson, AND up the chain, as are others. The truth of the situation is that this paradigm that Jack and Kendall discuss, was not taken seriously by their colleagues then, nor was it ever likely to be. Like him, I have immense respect for Barbara J. Hart (can anyone say “lethality risk assessment”?) But — today or tomorrow, probably — I am about to post the $$ figures of some of these “helping” groups and ask — where’s the help? Moreover, show us the books! I will show the grants, at least from the sources I have. But what I want to see is expenditures, processes, and evaluation tools. I want to see DOCUMENTED fewer homicides, suicides, infanticides, child-kidnappings, and wasted years in the family law system. And if these are not being documented, then what was all the hub-bub about?

IN this “paradigm” all “fallout” from abuse either didn‘t exist (that‘s the “fantasy world” Straton refers to, I suppose) or was exclusively my responsibility to fix, as the mother. However, when I then sought to address this in my own manner, I was again given marching orders, a drumbeat of 3-word myths, and told to get in line. I didn‘t. Consequently, two adolescent girls were removed from my custody and replaced in the care of the man they grew up witnessing threaten, impoverish, assault, abuse animals, deprive of access to transportation and ffinances that a “normal” family would not do, even when I worked at times, and be subjected to repeated lectures on how to behave – – sometimes even on a stool!.

Therefore, as seemingly re–assuring, or validating as these talks may be, that I refer to today, they are most definitely the “minority opinion” in this field. They show me I am not alone in my perspective at what‘s sensible and what‘s not, but these premises were never moved into practice.

There‘s reasons they were not, and THAT should be the topic of a “responsible citizen” male or female, parent or not, in this country. WHY they were not is a public issue, not a “domestic dispute.” The topic of this issues is not just “where are my children?” but “where are my taxes going? as well as “what kind of leaders is this next generation, if we get that far, going to consist of? children accustomed to trauma, abuse, and participating in the cycle themselves?

I suspect the answer, at this point, MIGHT be “YES” but I am not yet resigned to the fatalistic, fundamentalist “I‘m not of this world” passivity when it comes to social justice. I must speak up!

STRATON, Ph.D., Ct’d…..

In the process, I am going to talk today about the effects of male power and control over children, not about parental power and control. I know that it is popular these days to de-gender family conflict, to talk about “spouse abuse” and “family violence” rather than “wife beating” and “rape.” I know that we want a society in which men nurture children to the same extent that women do.

I know that fathers and mothers should both be capable parents. But if you ask “What about the kids?” I want to give you a serious answer. I cannot seriously entertain the myth that our society really is gender neutral, so to consider “What about the kids?” while pretending such neutrality is to engage in denial and cognitive dissonance. I cannot hope to arrive at an answer that will positively affect reality if my underlying assumptions are based on fantasy.

I would like to say more about the history of these movements (which I am still learning), but readers deserve a break:

Have a nice weekend. Again, I’d rather see a sermon than hear one any day.

While this essay is music (the voice of logic, of common sense truth) to my ears, but it’s not a tune many people like these days. Because it actually addresses the impact of role-modeling and personal responsibility upon the next generation.

There are only two places to really put the responsibility: Either on the INDIVIDUAL (which is actually empowering, it acknowledges choice), or on the “THERAPIST” or “SOCIETY AS COLLECTIVE THERAPIST.” Either/or, my friends.

Benefits of putting the responsibility on the INDIVIDUAL. :: If we are indeed EQUAl and ENDOWED with certain UNALIENABLE RIGHTS, then we are also ENDOWED with certain UNALIENABLE RESPONSIBILITIES as to how we exercise them. This leaves a LOT more government time and resources and study, etc., upon maintenance of DUE PROCESS.

It also removes the excuse for killing people, for assault, for rape, for destruction. There IS no excuse. The question comes of up of what about “war”? My answer is, how is what we are seeing now take place towards women attempting to leave abuse, with children, too, not a real war — not a “virtual” war. When there are casualties, that comprises a REAL war.

Moreover, most wars are about ideas to start with. Sometimes they are about basic human lusts couched in more palatable ideas.

SO, check the dogma it’s vitally important, and it’s vitally important also that “foreigners” — people to whom actually facing abuse, having a life on the line, having lost a child, having had to comfort an abused or traumatized child while in trauma onesself — are not to be setting policy. Moreover, those who set policy are not to do so from a particular chip they have on their shoulder, that every one should carry the burden of relieving. And this happens (You can see my chip on the shoulder” here, obviously, but I’m not recommending the undermining of due process in the courts, and re-defining criminal activity as non-criminal. THAT’s Cognitive Dissonance for sure!

(Well, I’d better back out this post fast. Feedback appreciated! My exit takes place Here: XX.

Anything below was added earlier)

This was written Pre-VAWA and Pre-National Fatherhood Inititative, which one theme of this blog has been showing what these cost, and how they attempt to cancel each other out.

Yesterday, I saw a significant DV initiative that was also receiving thousands under “promoting Responsible fatherhood” as well. Same source, different themes entirely. The fatherhood movement has positioned itself as FIRMLY anti-VAWA and in its writings, and in people responding to its writings, says to clearly. Many of them also position themselves as religious, which is true in the WORST (not best) sense of the word, as I understand it. They identify a common enemy, which is feminism, and feminISTS. The prelude to identifying an enemy is attacking it, and this means people. Typically (not always) “feminists” are, my friends, women, and this is who is often getting severely attacked for separating.

The VAWA movement, it has different characteristics, but I do not believe it started out of man-hating. It started out of hating to see beaten up women, and recognizing this has a true social cost.

Both these movements have “morphed” and are now in the higher stratospheres (translation: best-funded organizations) collaborating. In these collaborations they share many things — primarily the design and structure of FAILING TO INCLUDE THOSE MOST DRASTICALLY AFFECTED IN THE COLLABORATIVE PROCESS, and “SALVATION AS A MARKET NICHE.” (in essence). What else is (not) new in the world!

Perhaps THIS ESSAY, THEN (below) can be a reference point from how far off base is society (specifically, government and nonprofits addressing: Violence Against Women, Responsible Fatherhood, and Healthy Marriages — and failing abysmally in terms of the human toll — on all counts, across the nation. (And, world). Perhaps (though I doubt it) some common sense will “redeem” us from all that debt, with so little dent in the problems the debt is incurred to address….Policies get MORE and more pervasive, self-replicating and intrusive, and still we have things like an 11 year old abducted from a bus stop, held captive in a back yard by a (incidentally, MARRIED couple) – – for 18 years — and being used as a personal sex slave and baby-making machine. In a nice suburb, eh? So much for suburbia and “family-oriented” safe communities.

Police missed an opportunity to rescue Jaycee Lee when they visited her captor’s house in 2006 Photo: REUTERS

Officer Ally Jacobs sat in on a meeting with Mr Garrido and his daughters after he requested permission to distribute leaflets on the Berkeley campus of the University of California.

But her suspicions were aroused by the strange behaviour of the two girls – and led to the eventual release of their mother, Jaycee Lee Dugard, after nearly two decades of captivity.

She said Mr Garrido arrived with the girls, aged 11 and 15, who stared at their father “like God” during the meeting. “They had this weird look in their eyes, like brainwashed zombies,” she said.

She spoke out as police said that Mr Garrido’s home has been searched for evidence of a link to the unsolved murders of several prostitutes in the early 1990s, and as Garrido, 58, and his wife, Nancy, 54, denied charges of kidnapping, rape and false imprisonment in connection with Miss Dugard’s disappearance at their first court appearance.

When Officer Jacobs asked the younger girl about a bruise near her eye, the 11-year-old said it was an inoperable birth defect.

(I NOTE: THIS WAS A FEMALE POLICE OFFICER, AND HER JOB ENTAILS NOTICING THINGS THAT DEAL WITH LIFE AND DEATH, POTENTIALLY. HER JOB ENTAILS NOTICING “ANOMALIES.” THERE WAS FACT-CHECKING IN THIS CASE, AND THE FACTS CHECKED RESULTED IN FREEDOM AND DELIVERANCE, THOUGH AFTER 18 YEARS, FOR 3 WOMEN, JAYCEE’S MOTHER, JAYCEE’S STEPFATHER, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, FOR HER — AND HER CHILDREN.

A NICE, MARRIED COUPLE . . . . HAD MR. GARRIDO HAD THE SAME CRIMINAL BACKGROUND, AND ACTUALLY BEEN JAYCEE’S FATHER, IN MY EXPERIENCE, HIS KIDNAPPING WOULD HAVE BEEN OVERLOOKED, AND HIS EX-WIFE SEEKING TO SEE HER DAUGHTER BEEN TOLD (as I was) TO JUST GET ALONG WITH IT, OR GIVE IT UP, NO CONTACT WITH YOUR DAUGHTER BECAUSE YOU JUST CAN’T GET ALONG WITH THIS PARENT. CASE IN POINT: WE WERE GIVEN A COURT ORDER THAT EXPOSED US TO CONTINUAL ACCESS AND ABUSE BY A MAN THAT MY DAUGHTERS HAD WITNESSED ASSAULT THEIR MOTHER. EVENTUALLY, A DRASTIC (and criminal) EVENT HAPPENED on an overnight.

TODAYS’ POSTED ARTICLE, 20 YEARS OLD, QUESTIONS THE POLICY ~ ~ REALLY, THE DOGMA ~ ~ THAT WOULD EVER, EVEN ONCE! ~ ~ALLOW SUCH THINGS TO TAKE PLACE. U.S.A. . . . . .

OR – – – OR – – – – THINGS LIKE THIS ONE, A MISSING FOSTER CHILD TURNED INTO A HOMICIDE VISITATION. AGAIN, HAPPENED IN A VERY YUPPIE NEIGHBORHOOD, ALSO NEAR BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA.

HASSANI CAMPBELL (see my recent post on ‘AMBER ALERTS’ for more photos)

Foster Parents Arrested Over Missing Boy

AP

OAKLAND, Calif. (Aug. 28) – The foster parents who held vigils pleading for the safe return of a missing 5-year-old boy with cerebral palsy have been arrested on suspicion of murder, Oakland police said Friday.

Louis Ross and Jennifer Campbell, who is the boy’s aunt, were being questioned by investigators in the case of Hasanni Campbell, who disappeared on Aug. 10 after Ross said he briefly left the boy outside his car in the parking lot of an upscale Oakland neighborhood shoe store where Campbell works.

REGARDING “THERAPY” FOR BATTERERS:

I think Lundy Bancroft says it well — there are certain indicators that one is wasting one’s time. I’ve read them, and you can too, HERE: I am not quoting Mr. Bancroft because he’s an expert, but because i already experienced what he gave voice to. I had no idea who the author was in picking up the book.

While I am thankful for Mr. Bancroft’s insight and observations (and have featured it elsewhere on this blog), I think that the failure to look OUTSIDE the family court system and INTO the funding behind it, which consists of a powerful government grants system, underwritten in some cases by conflicting actual laws (I refer to “supervised visitation” vs. “Access visitation” premises, which are BOTH funded — in a huge way — and which DIRECTLY oppose each other in fundamental premises, creating chaos — not just “disorder” — but literal “CHAOS” in the courts. Why? Because what’s fought over is power, control, and money. I do not, therefore, agree that training to eradicate deeply held prejudices or myths — when applied to JUDICIAL professionals (court-related) any more than when applied to batterers — is a critical solution. I believe that we should pull the plug on the profit system, which it clearly (my research shows) is. That said, in about 2003, had his not book been there (and this above book) for a point of reference WRITTEN BY A MAN for me emotionally, as I exited another life-changing and mind-numbing session with a mediator, I might be a different woman today.

Women, and mothers, do indeed have instincts. I believe these are God-given, and they are protection-related. Moreover, as a DV survivor, and beyond that, professionally a teacher and musician, it has been my job to pay attention to group dynamics in relationship to a standard! The accuracy of my instincts, and speaking up about them, has been ignored in the courtroom. This told me something about family courts, when I accurately predicted a child-snatch, and was shouted down in advance AND afterwards about the same matter.

Two Female Officers (above) accurately noticed, reported — and because they were cops, apparently, and because this was NOT a family law venue, they were not a litigating parent — they were HEARD and lives were saved.

In the Jaycee Dugard case (above), I heard on TV that a woman (neighbor) HAD called 911, saying this man was psychotic, she was very disturbed. Was her call not heard because she was female? I watched Sheriff Rupf apologize on TV that their county law enforcement had “missed it” in this case.

Our current administration has a lot of TALK, but very little RESPECT for mothers in general. Our pro-active protective and active involvement in our children’s lives is viewed with suspicion after separating from their father in particular after marriage. . . . The fact is, I believe, our involvement is a perceived threat to a child-care-based, employee-driven, dependent-family-substrate economy. (which is not today’s topic).

These instincts are not in operation all the time, and along with Phyllis Chesler (Dr.), I acknowledge fully “Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman” exists, and is horrific. And some men (I have known them) notice more than some women. This is also called “CARING.” Such men are also sometimes castigated as “feminine” by fellow-men, and deal with this in whatever manner they choose to.

However, I take a look at who are some of the most vehement women I personally have had to deal with (not including certain judges, whose behavior cannot be logically accounted for somewhere other than financial reward, which I WILL be finding one of these days, and I am not the only person who has had this happen, same judges), I can see where either their childhood was severely messed up, OR, they never got to have children themselves. Some key component of the logic system (the part that doesn’t acknowledge court orders!) is out of commission, and when confronted on this, reacts in a retaliatory manner as if the threat were personal, when the statement was, I want court orders respected! I have already demonstrated the ability to respect court orders I don’t agree with, for years, but the double standard has been devastating to our family.

The other category which comes into play is “second wife” syndrome. While there are I’m sure (and I’d love to be one, some day!) healthy second wife scenarios, all too often a batterer will go specifically SEEK a woman in order to extract the children from the first wife, when he couldn’t otherwise. That 2nd woman lends a seeming credibility, and yet, sometimes these women can be more vicious than the men they married to start with. An abusive man is not going to pick a second woman who is likely to confront him on his abuse!!

WELL, this post is now over-worked, but I wanted to include the Jaycee and Hassani case above, to make a few points. It also has helped me get past another few hours in a day in which, I have no visual contact with either daughter, as one of them is entering college and the other one is, at this point, alienated, a thing I never inflicted upon her father while they lived here. They have HAD to make some sense of their existing world. Their existing world included a sudden, and COMPLETE elimination from their mother’s input and involvement, without a chance to say goodbye. They were involved in keeping secrets (and induced to) before the event, for over a year, on pretenses of the adults around them. The facts surrounding this event are still not out, and I happen to believe that my absent daughters are not yet aware of what was said on paper about them. I know that they are not exposed to the penalties my family has exacted upon me (subsequent) for continuing to speak up.

This is a HOW -TO for the intergenerational transmission of trauma and abuse. IF the goal is to do this, I am looking at the HOW of it. All that REALLY needs to be sacrificed, in the bottom line analysis, to stop it, is a LOT of pride in high places, and what I call dogma and others call social science, policy, or probability-driven practices (it’s called “evidence” but the actual “evidences” considered are often summaries of “probability.”)

AS TO THE 1989 ARTICLE (BELOW):

I’m not in agreement with his theme that men can be taught not to abuse. I think men mostly respond to what they’re taught in this society — authority, and taking control. Women are taught to negotiate and submit, overall (I didn’t realize HOW much til confronting others after leaving my own violent marriage, and then, in shock, realizing it was expected I should take orders. I said no, and took this to the institutions available (first, the courts) to set boundaries and standards. Then I was in for even a ruder awakening to the state of affairs.

So just consider the fall-out, the social fall out from these things, the canaries in the coal mine. it’s also a good part of the present NATIONAL economic distress and contributing to it, do not kid yourself! Asking Big Brother to coach, teach, punish, reward, analyze, and rationalize the common ethical issues of life — BIG, mistake. This is called farming out thinking to others. In the process, we are paying people to also form our own ethics, when these were formed and stated long ago in the US Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights, PLUS the fact that these stemmed from a refusal to become the colony of a distant king.

Figure it out — the distance these days may not be so geographic as in worlds apart in perspectives. The colonization part still seems to apply. Children are the MOST attractive and fertile field for TOO many people, and they are hurt in this unnatural process, a constant interruption to their lives. I saw this happen to my own, there was a point in time (a certain season, when others saw the personal gain in our divorce and and custody issue) that –because of a badly written visitation schedule — I watched my daughter who, prior to this, had been able to adjust to separation with regular visitation, and retain their personal integrity — they became performers. It was clear that they were collateral in the fight, and I believe knew this too. They talked about it, too. It was unfair to them, and to me as their mother.

SOURCE —

http://members.shaw.ca/pdg/wife_abuse_child_custody_visitation.html

Note: “Last updated Nov. 2008”

(More of my comments below, for once!)

Stop Violence Against Women
A project by The Advocates for Human Rights

Copyright 2003 Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights.
Permission is granted to use this material for non-commercial purposes. Please use proper attribution.

(THESE documents do not appear to have stopped violence against women. I used to read and read from this International Source, but no matter — the people most directly involved with our lives chose NOT to read, or accept, some of these writings. So what good have they done, other than to increase the frustration level, the awareness of the discrepancy between reasonable, and unreasonable? Sometimes, I wonder.

<><><><><>

(Best read in the original HTML, but here:

Wife Abuse and Child Custody and Visitation by the Abuser,

Kendall Segel-Evans, 1989.

Wife Abuse and Child Custody and Visitation by the Abuser

by Kendall Segel-Evans

originally published:
ENDING MEN’S VIOLENCE NEWSLETTER, Fall, 1989

{{Let’s Get Honest has decided to interrupt the article more than to put :}}

MAIN POINTs?:____________________ after each paragraph, in hopes that a thoughtful reader will think about what was just said.

Again, one of the greatest motivations for THINKING about various policies, doctrines, and dogmas, is if something valuable is at stake in the mix. Plus, if one has developed the habit of THINKING with this in mind, throughout — as if not just “someone’s” life or livelihood, but as if “your own” life, or your child’s, were at stake in the matter. THAT is responsible government hood (along with respecting civil rights and due process). COLLECTIVELY, what we all have at stake is to acknowledge that what we may think is “common” sense is nothing of the sort, and that the view gets foggier the less time one spends at street level — and I mean on a regular basis. Dwelling in courtrooms only is NOT “street level” in the sense of, what happens after the court order is written?)

I recently read the National Organization for Changing Men’s statement on child custody, and the position taken that, in general, sole custody by the previously most involved parent is preferable to joint custody. I would like to elaborate on this position for families where there has been violence between parents (i.e. woman-abuse). The following includes the main points of a deposition I was asked to provide to a lawyer for the mother in a child custody case. I do not believe this is the last or best word on the subject, but I hope that it will simulate useful dialogue about the effects on children of wife-abuse and the treatment of wife-abusers. I also wish to further discussion on the issue of how we are going to truly end men’s violence. Clearly, I believe that the treatment of wife-abusers should not only be held accountable to the partner victim/survivors, but also to the children, and to the next generation.

MAIN POINTs?:____________________

I would like to mention that I will speak of husbands and fathers abusing wives and mothers, because that is the most common situation by far, not because the reverse never happens. It also seems to be true that when there is wife to husband violence it is usually in self-defense and usually does not have the same dynamics or effects as wife abuse. I will use the words violence and abuse somewhat interchangeably, because, in my opinion, domestic violence is not just about physical violence. Domestic violence is a pattern of physical, sexual, economic, social and emotional violence, coercion, manipulation and mistreatment or abuse. Physical violence and the threat of such violence is only the part of the pattern that is most visible and makes the other parts of the pattern difficult to defend against. Once violence is used, its threat is never forgotten. Even when the violence is stopped by threat of legal action or by physical separation, the coercion, manipulation and abusiveness continue (Walker and Edwall, 1987).

MAIN POINTs?:____________________

Accompanying this pattern of behaviors are common styles of coping or personality characteristics – such as the tendency to blame others for ones problems and impulsiveness – that most batterers share. Almost every man I have worked with has a tendency to see his partner (or his children) as responsible for his pain when he is upset. This leads to seeing his partner (or his children) as an enemy who must be defeated before he can feel better. This is destructive to emotional health even when it does not lead to overt violence.

MAIN POINTs?:____________________

In my opinion, it would be better, in most cases, for the children of homes where there has been domestic violence not to be in the custody of the abusive parent at all. In many cases it is even advisable that visitation be limited to controlled situations, such as under a therapist’s supervision during a therapy session, unless the batterer has been in batterer’s treatment and demonstrated that he has changed significantly in specific ways. “Merely” observing ones father abuse ones mother is in itself damaging to children. My clinical experience is consistent with the research literature which shows that children who witness their father beat their mother exhibit significantly greater psychological and psychosomatic problems than children from homes without violence (Roy, 1988). Witnessing abuse is more damaging in many ways than actually being abused, and having both happen is very damaging (Goodman and Rosenberg, 1987). Studies show that a high percentage (as high as 55%) of fathers who abuse their wives also abuse their children (Walker and Edwall, 1987). In my experience, if one includes emotional abuses such as being hypercritical, yelling and being cruelly sarcastic, the percentage is much higher. The damage that children suffer is highly variable, with symptoms ranging from aggressive acting out to extreme shyness and withdrawal, or from total school failure to compulsive school performance. The best way to summarize all the symptoms despite their variety is to say that they resemble what children who suffer other trauma exhibit, and could be seen as a version of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (Walker and Edwall, 1987).

MAIN POINTs?:____________________

Equally serious is the long term effect of domestic violence – intergenerational transmission. Children who observe their mothers being beaten are much more likely to be violent to a partner themselves as adults. In one study, men who observed violence towards their mother were three times more likely to be abusive than men who had not observed such violence (Strauss et al., 1980). The more serious the abuse observed, the more likely the men were to repeat it. Being abused also makes children likely to grow up to be violent, and having both happen increases the probability even more.

MAIN POINTs?:____________________

How children learn to repeat the abuse they observe and experience includes many factors. One of the more important is modeling. When they grow up, children act like their parents did, consciously or not, willingly or not. Several of the boys I have worked with have been terribly conflicted about being like their father, of whom they were afraid and ashamed. But they clearly carried parts of their father’s behavior patterns and attitudes with them. Other boys from violent homes idealized their father, and they were more likely than the others to beat their wives when they grew up (Caesar, 1988). Several of the men I have worked with in group have lamented that they told themselves that they would not beat their wives the way their mother was beaten when they were children. But when they became adults, they found themselves doing the same things their father did.

MAIN POINTs?:____________________

One reason for this is that even if the physical abuse stops, if the children still have contact with the batterer, they are influenced by his coping styles and personality problems. As Lenore Walker observes (Walker and Edwall, 1987, p. 138), “There is also reason for concern about children’s cognitive and emotional development when raised by a batterer who has a paranoid-like pattern of projecting his own inadequacy and lack of impulse-control onto others.” Dr. Pagelow agrees, “It may become desirable to avoid prolonged contact between violent fathers and their sons until the men assume control over their own behavior and the examples of ‘manhood’ they are showing to the boys who love them, (Pagelow, 1984, p. 256). If the abusive man has not sought out domestic violence specific treatment for his problem, there is no reason to believe that the underlying pattern of personality and attitudes that supported the abuse in the past have changed. There is every reason to believe it will impact his children.

MAIN POINTs?:____________________

Additionally, in a society where the majority of wife-beatings do not lead to police reports, much less to filings or convictions, it is easy for children to perceive that abusiveness has no negative consequences. (One study, by Dobash and Dobash, found that 98% of violent incidents between spouses were not reported to the police [reported in Pagelow, 1984, p. 437]). Some children, seeing who has the power and guessing what could happen to them if they opposed the power, will side with the abuser in custody situations. Often, children will deny that the abuse ever happened. Unfortunately, the children who side with the abuser, or deny the abuse, are the most likely to be abusive themselves as adults. It is very important that family court not support this by treating a wife-beating father as if he were just as likely to be a good parent as the woman he beat. As Gelles and Strauss point out in their book Intimate Violence (1988), people are violent in part because they believe they can get away with it. Public consequences are important for preventing the intergenerational transmission of violence. Boys, particularly, need to to see that their father’s abusiveness leads to negative, not positive results.

MAIN POINTs?:____________________

Lastly, I would like to point out that joint legal custody is likely to be damaging to children when there has been spousal violence. My experience with my clients is definitely consistent with the research results reported by Judith Wallerstein to the American Orthopsychiatric Association Convention in 1988. The data clearly show that joint custody is significantly inferior to sole custody with one parent when there is parental conflict after the divorce, in terms of the children’s emotional adjustment as well as the mother’s safety. Most batterers continue their abusiveness after the marriage, into the divorced parent relationship, in the form of control, manipulation and harassment over support payments, visitation times, and parenting styles. The children are always aware of these tensions and battles, and sometimes blame the mother for not just giving in and keeping the peace – or for being too submissive. The batterer often puts the children right in the middle, taking advantage of his belief that she will give in to avoid hurting the children. The damage to the children in this kind of situation is worse because it is ongoing, and never is allowed to be resolved or have time to heal.

MAIN POINTs?:____________________

Because I work with batterers, I am sympathetic to the distress they feel at being separated from their children for long periods of time. However, the men who truly cared about their children for the children’s sake, and not for what the children do for their father’s ego, have been willing to do the therapeutic work necessary to change. They have been willing to accept full responsibility for their violent behavior, and however reluctantly, have accepted whatever restrictions on child visitation existed for safety reasons. They have been willing to be in therapy to deal with “their problem.” They have also recognized that they were abused as children themselves, or witnessed their mother being abused, or both, and are willing to support interrupting the intergenerational transmission of violence.

MAIN POINTs?:____________________

Kendall Segel-Evans, M.A. Marriage, Family and Child Counselor 4/15/1989

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Caesar, P. Lynn., “Exposure to Violence in the Families of Origin

Among Wife Abusers and Maritally Violent Men.” Violence and Victims , Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring, 1988.

Davis, Liane V., and Carlson, Bonnie E., “Observation of Spouse Abuse

– What Happens to the Children?” Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Vol. 2, No. 3, September 1987, pp. 278-291, Sage Publications, 1987.

Dutton, Donald., The Domestic Assault of Women, Allyn and Bacon, 1988.

Gelles, Richard J. and Strauss, Murray A., Intimate Violence, Simon and Schuster, 1988.

Goodman, Gail S., and Rosenberg, Mindy, S., “The Child Witness to Family Violence:

Clinical and Legal Considerations. Ch. 7, pp. 47ff. in: Sonkin, Daniel. Ph.d., Domestic Violence on Trial, Springer, 1987.

Pagelow, Mildred Daley, Family Violence, Praeger Publications, 1984.

Roy, Maria., Children in the Crossfire, Health Communications, Inc. 1988.

Roy, Maria., The Abusive Partner, Van Nostrand, 1982.

Sonkin, Daniel. Phd., Domestic Violence on Trial, Springer, 1987.

Strauss, Murray A., et. al., Behind Closed Doors, Anchor Books, 1980.

Walker, Lenore E.A., and Edwall, Glenace E.

“Domestic Violence and Determination of Visitation and Custody in Divorce.”

Ch. 8, pp. 127ff. Sonkin, Daniel. Phd. Domestic Violence on Trial, Springer, 1987.

Wallerstein, Judith., Report to the American Orthopsychiatric Association Convention, 1988.

Some of the above professionals listed here, from what I understand, have either changed their tune, or found more profit in conferences funded by the shared-custody, father’s-rights, premises that women are equally as violent and dangerous as men in marriage. Or, that what is said above, here, about role modeling and responsibility to the NEXT generation, doesn’t apply. I have seen them (I think even Dutton was seen in my last post, at such a conference.). Nevertheless, read what he wrote!

And I can show you, in approximately $millions$$ (as I have been at times in news headlines) the cost of these premises, in particular to the next generation. But what kind of generation IS it that can’t see right/versus wrong, principles of values as defined by what is and is NOT criminal behavior, when they see an age gap. How does gender pre-empt behavior, or youth pre-empt age? Why must women be held to a higher standard of accountability as parents then men, and men be paid — by the U.S. Government through the states through the courts, prisons, child support systems, mediation, supervised visitation, parenting education classes — and AFTER many times a K-12 (or almost 12th in some cases) educational system that itself is a major public expenditure. . . . Moreover, WHY should programs supposedly aimed at low-income people (as if such people had fewer human rights, common sense, or were less entitled to due process and informed consent about what’s happening! than others) are being utilized by sometimes some very well to do individuals in the divorce arena. For example, google the Alanna Krause case. This does not make “sense” to me.

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Speaking personally, the exchanges where were the problems occurred in our case. I asked (for YEARS) for help with this, and got none. Then finally on an overnight, I stopped seeing my daughters again.

I think that had COMMON SENSE PREVAILED long ago, our own family would be much more prosperous, and I doubt life with me would’ve been so stressful for the girls, after all, each weekend was likely to become a scene, or not come a scene. I could scarcely relax much around that. Add into the mix child support issues, and we have a decade of devastation, at least from my point of view.

And WHY? To support some new theories and professions? How about the professions Moms were in beforehand? (Many of us were, FYI).

To support: marriage and family therapists, mediators, custody evaluators, trauma specialists?

When a society either refuses to deal with — OR cannot agree on the source and causes of the ongoing sources of trauma, SOMEONE will have to pay the cost of a traumatized populations, just as any war-torn country, or AIDS-ravaged country, there is collateral damages to go with the death, shock, poverty and collapse of infrastructure. In the United States, this plays out entirely differently, of course, because we still have a significant infrastructure, or at least many of the population believe we do, and those not so badly hurt by it as others wish to, apparently, maintain the myths that it’s sustaining something valid.

And yes, I repeat, those are myths.

Where is the real moral, let alone economic, validity in paying multiple professionals to deal with one recalcitrant, overentitled, or person unwilling to seek help with his REAL problems, rather than to alleviate the symptoms of his REAL problems, such as being separated from his children. I had to face this in marriage, and now with family of origin, and again in the family law system? I find a fundamental flaw, and the truth of the matter, the difference is in worldview of (1) humanity and (2) whether or not law applies to all, or only to some. I.e., the “double-standard” mentality.

And that typically falls on the gender divide. Other times, it falls on the Economic Divide. While it’s common for rich to blame poor for being poor in a matter that an abuser blames his victim, there is wiggle room in both viewpoints, and the institutions we live in and deal with ARE not formed, historically, by poor people. They aren’t. Rather, they tend to impoverish. The familyy law system is GOING to do this. It is going to move wealth around, and afterwards, SOMEONE is going to be impoverished under this theme that it’s not an adversarial system, its’ “really” all about the children.

For child-molesters, this may be true. For those who see $$ when they see custody to one parent or the other, in a sense it might be.

But it’s NOT about the children’s welfare, not like this.

If the individual is unwilling to separate his behavior from himself as a person, after being offered multiple opportunities to do so, and go through equivalent shock of personal changes, as did his victim(s) and bystanders affected, then THAT is the issue.

MOREOVER, if the family system surrounding this individual is ALSO unwilling or unable to confront own criminal behavior, life-threatening and life-changing behavior, in one of its own, what’s that family FOR? that is precisely the family that should be dismantled, yet a system says, no it shouldn’t. (Theoretically, although I know plenty of mothers who can’t see their children under this theory. When the pedal hits the metal, that’s how it plays out, too often).

Voices from the even further past, still valid today:

Too bad we’re more religious than actually a truly God-conscious society — because of the simplicity and beauty with which truths are stated:

“Even a child is known by his doings, whether they be good or whether they be bad.”

“Ye shall know them by their fruits.”

As to who to socialize with, who to take on as business partner or close friends:

“Evil communications (this just means “associations”) corrupt good manner (ethos).”

The book of “Proverbs” (31 in all) was directed to young people, and talks about not associating with an angry man or a furious man “lest you learn his ways.” Family law says, if it’s supervised, it’s OK, and a child must, because it’s his father. Today’s essay talks about that…. Proverbs talks about not meddling with them that are given to sudden change. That’s common sense! Sudden change could be backstabbing, betrayal, turning on you. That habit, done ONCE, is cause to separate if not confronted, admitted, and changed. FAST. We have a RIGHT to be once burnt, twice shy. . . . . . Yet this family law system attracts such characters, accepting hearsay as evidence when it’s not, suppressing evidence when it’s found too often; it keeps the litigation going, and exposing parents and children to a series of sudden shocks, disrupting their entire lives and livelihoods, sometimes everything. We should not have to do this. And Proverbs ALSO talks about not associating with fools: “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be ashamed.”

When our children are forced to break these simplicities, for a different ideology, this is in effect using parents, particularly mothers, to produce children for the state. That’s not what we went through nine months for, or labor! No woman goes through this in order to raise a fool, a criminal, or have her kid hurt and taught values that will lead that child to sometimes a lifetime of it. Or to have no coherent set of values but personal survival!

(Note on quoting Bible verses here: I quote them as what’s in my thinking, others may (if they wish) look some of them up on-line at “http://bible.cc” (KJV) or elsewhere. My quotes may not be verbatim.)

What mother would WANT a son or daughter to join a gang of criminals? Yet they do, or sometimes they die for NOT being in a gang. It’s not only the risks, but the values systems.

What about a government gang? What about a system that robs parents of years of productive work based on a theme that someone is somehow to be deciphered psychologically, apart from his or her behaviors? What about a system that would bring ongoing conflict onto growing children — and do so for financial and personal profit — based on the belief that freedom of association does NOT belong to (typically) their mother?

It’s nice to have a lot of professions spring up on how to stop violence against women, I suppose, BUT how about the professions Moms were in beforehand? (Many of us were, FYI). The professionals I most needed in the early 2000 would’ve been a criminal (not family) defense attorney. Then again, where was the funding going to come from?

Demonstrating Healthy Marriages – Think Big, Invest Much, Expect a Lot, Require –???

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U.S. Health and Human Services — Administration of Children and Families

Office of Family Assistance

Healthy Marriage Demonstration Grants

Last post, after I got over the sticker shock of how much California Healthy Marriages took (as I perceived it) starting in 2006 from funds that otherwise might have met desperate need, unmet to date, for enforcement of existing court orders granting me ACCESS and VISITATION to my to stolen on an overnight visitation daughters, just as I’d found despite searching — HARD — no such help before then to get help <>prevent this event, <>enforce existing child support or collect any of the mounting arrears, or <>consistently enforce even the weak, poorly-written visitation court orders, <>obtain an extension or renewal of the original restraining order so I could work in peace and a degree of safety in supporting my household WITHOUT consistent child support, or <>stopping the subsequent (once RO was off) stalking, etc.

Another year, including a flurry of arrangements and orders, none of them adhered to, yet when i pressed for this, certain things were done OUTSIDE the courtroom to warn me not to disrupt the status by taking my court-ordered rights (or his responsibilities to them) at face value. Eventually I again saw (a few rounds in family law system will probably make this clear) that the court itself wasn’t taking them seriously either, and I was evidently some rabble rouser for doing so myself. Concern for their intents with our daughters continued to rise. During this time, of course there was no child support either.

In subsequent months, after the dust had settled into the dreary zero contact, I worked instead on seeking help merely to maintain a cell phone so as to replace the work lost in all this process, not to mention unemployment. The bottom, marginalized line of society were told to get in line (and I did), and that a phone was simply not a necessity for life. At least life on welfare, which I am beginning to realize was possibly in the original plan. It’s hard to control people who are in a satisfied manner working and living out their life’s purpose, particularly when there’s a match between that and livelihood. They are less likely to have the financial difficulties.

Phone help — and unemployment — was, however, promised from certain agenices, as if a person going through the family law system needed another layer of bureaucracy to decipher.

So, after THAT, I sort of figured out a way to maintain things, and tried to keep my chin up.

All this time, really prior to that child-stealing event had worked its way through family law and child support court to the point of, basically ZERO (contact, or enforcement of arrears), I had had existing work, pending work, and referrals, plus sources of them. It was increasingly frustrating to have no single obstacle to acting on this other than the toxic relationship of having dared to leave a divorce, and then after that dared to say “No” to invasive orders-giving about how to rebuild a life and livelihood. And to have attempted to set clear and reasonable boundaries — and mean it. To continue to be dealing on a personal level with this level of hostility and/or dysfunctional thinking, the same kind that endorses wife-assault if she’s uppity, or he doens’t want to answer that last question. Or just because . . . . I’m talking about dealing with family who refused to acknowledge existing court orders, and systematically placed themselves in my life and above the law against my will, and brought destruction with it. I call that a criminal mind set.

Most of my life work had been spent in voluntary situations/organizations (nonprofits often) where people came there because they wanted to, or wanted their kids to, which made for a much better climate (and better pay, too).

Now that my schedule had so cleared, and significant time to study WHY this happened, the answers are not that complicated to understand — just hard to accept. What it’s hard to accept for our society is that some women — and sometimes for VERY valid reasons — “just want to be alone” when it comes to live-in sexual partners, or live-out ones either. In addition to this, the fact of not having a live-in sexual partner (married or unmarried) would not be AS hazardous to adults’ or children’s health if society would simply just “deal with it,” rather than attempt to wholesale “eradicate” it. The word “CHOICE” is the relevant word here.

I DID learn a valuable lesson, to bastardize a quote from an assassinated U.S. President, “Ask NOT what your country can do for you — even when it has proclaimed it will ….”

I had been naively looking in the wrong Department of the U.S. Government. Naively, I thought the key to why justice wasn’t happening lay in the justice department, and its workings. I looked at law, rules of court, mediation (as to domestic violence issues), I consulted databases (and emailed staff at) national judicial databases, or the respected National Council of Juvenile & Family Court Judges (“NCJFCJ” if I have the word order correct), I read, researched, networked, talked, called, and wrote, gaining information, seeking to see the WHY . . . . .

Now, here I see these movements and this particular California Coaliation:

This coalition, as of 2006 (the year of this loss) had received over $2 Million — per year — for 5 years — in my state to help marriages that WEREN’T on the rocks, or split up, or broke already due to domestic violence, and related extended-family-wide safety issues. So, I think I could be forgiven for a strong, public exclamation at this indignation. For one, ACF, the same OPDIV umbrella under which HHS’s hated and feared OCSE had granted this CHMC, Inc. group $2.4mil/year on the basis of its HOPING and EXPECTING that this demonstration grant would demonstrate some serious results and accomplish many lofty goals, such as reducing crime, poverty, domestic violence, and of course the social plague of “fatherlessness” which is now responsible for those first 3 social plagues.

For the unwary:

(Administration of Children and Families)

(Operating Division)

(Health and Human Services)

(Office of Child Support Enforcement)

(California Healthy Marriages Coalition, Inc.)

I realized that this coalition’s “Target Population” was, basically the entire state (married or unmarried, rich or poor, and any cultural or racial background too) that had successfully survived life to the age of 15, which I suppose represents fertility, or something similar. They are thinking BIG — and as such deserve big bucks.

These funds are not just dollars, they practically have a life of their own:

They are going to:

BIRTH
NURTURE, and
SUPPORT the development of a . . .

. . . . well, you can read below. . . .

Name of Grantee:	California Healthy Marriages Coalition
Federal Project Officer:	Michelle Clune (202) 401-5467
Target Population:	Married and Unmarried persons in California, ages 15 and older, of all racial, cultural and economic backgrounds
Federal Award Amount:	$2,342,080/year
Program Name:	California Healthy Marriages Coalition
Project Period:	9/30/2006 – 9/29/2011
Priority Area:	1 (five or more allowable activities)

Allowable Activities: Public advertising campaign (#1); Education in high schools on the value of marriage (#2); Marriage education, marriage skills and relationship skills programs for non-married pregnant women and non-married expectant fathers (#3); Pre-marital education and marriage skills training for engaged couples and for couples interested in marriage (#4); marriage enhancement and marriage skills training programs for married couples (#5); divorce reduction programs that teach relationship skills (#6); and marriage mentoring programs which use married couples as role models and mentors in at-risk communities (#7).

Organization Description: California Healthy Marriages Coalition (CHMC) is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to saturate the entire state of California with marriage education. CHMC will pioneer a “coalition of coalitions” model across the state.

Use(s) of ACF Program Grant Funds: The program grant funds will be used to birth, nurture, and support the development of a statewide interlinking network of community healthy marriage coalitions. The grantee will use the following curricula:

— Youth: “Connections” and “Love U2”
— Non-married pregnant women and expectant fathers: “Love’s Cradle” and “Bringing Baby Home”
— Pre-marital education: “FOCCUS,” “PREPARE/ENRICH,” and “The RE Marriage Prep Program,” and “How to Avoid Marrying a Jerk.”
— Marriage enrichment: “Relationship Enhancement (RE),” “Mastering the Magic of Love,” “PAIRS,” “10 Great Dates,” “Active Relationships,” and “World Class Marriage.”
— Divorce reduction programs: “Retrouvaille,” and “The Third Option”

>>>>>>>

See, I thought FAR too small. I did birth, nurture and support only as many as I spent 9 months apiece on. MY vision was to separate them from domestic violence, give them the best possible education, and set an example that it’s OK to leave dangerous situations — that women are not to be assaulted by their spouses, and don’t have to stick around for more of that. This has to do with things like self-respect, exercising legal rights and other such folderol.

I would like to, pretty soon, take a closer look at the marriage education being offered. I think a BETTER way to preserve marriages in California, especially existing ones, would be to SATURATE the faith communities with copies of:

Mandated reporting laws on domestic violence and child abuse, and a stern statement to rabbis, pastors, imams, priests etc., AND any teachers or child care workers involved (etc.) that “THIS MEANS YOU”
Copies of the state’s laws against these behaviors for distribution and posting.
Statements against joint counseling of couples once violence has entered (which could be dangerous); retaliation might well happen after the one-hour or half-hour “performance” has ended, and without witnesses.
Warnings to have a little humility when a situation exceeds their expertise…call in an expert (I have literally seen thumbnail-sized (tiny) booklets that appear to suggest someone reading the few pages is qualified to counsel such situations. We’ve seen SWAT teams that couldn’t save the situations, let alone a casual reader).
A reminder that women got the vote in 1920, and that POSSIBLY, some of the institutions might wish to allow them to speak up not only in their public places, but also possibly have a voice in their marriages also.
800#s resources in case the messages don’t get through
(A frank reminder to the WOMAN to avoid the family law system at all costs, if possible, should this crop up)
“You Breed ’em You Feed’em” business cards, pre-marriage.
Occasional messages from the pulpit that no one was created to be a scapegoat or target in life, male or female.
Prominent postings of the Bill of Rights
A realistic statement on how they expect to reconcile their activities with contrary activities within the public school system, for example some dismantling of the “abstinence education” stuff.
Financial education, as this is a primary area of struggle within marriages.
Suggestion that, for real, the couple look at the family history, education and work history, too.
Got milk? Got any more ideas?

Among, of course, other things, such as the wisdom of having both partners retain access to finances, transportation, and be informed of the state of their own economic affairs, and other things such as might be a deterrent to different forms of abuse common in these places.

I think SATURATING California with such things might save some marriages (or prevent some unwise ones).

It might have mine… The joint counseling thing almost made a statistic out of our nuclear unit.

Moreover, saturation or non-saturation, there ARE people who just shouldn’t get married, no matter how much they like to have sex. I’d like to see (since it’s taxpayer funds) how California Healthy Marriages plans to handle this, and has to date.

I would like to see that NONE of the materials are saturated with the misogynistic, near-vigilante, woman-blaming, feminist-hating talk. For example, when people are killed by an irate ex (last time this happened — well, I know there was a hostage/femicide-suicide combo this past week, in San Jose. They WERE happily married, but the husband was not the little girls’ father, who didn’t take kindly to losing custody. Now she’s an orphan. Both biological parents are gone. Tragedies are tragedies. However, at times, as with any movement, it attracts all sorts. We had (see blogroll to right) one commenter blaming a domestic violence homicide on the woman, for fililng a protective order. It was awful; a little background search (Google) revealed that the person had done jail time previously, related to some skinhead type affiliations (and weapons accumulations).

This coalition needs to be sensitive to the fact that such hate-talk exists, and not take advantage of a tragedy to promote a policy, or that it will produce MORE overentitled males and transformational cell groups whose real agenda is not publically stated. These indeed do exist, and some may be viewed, apparently (fairly new site to me) at http://www.rickross.com.

I owe my readers a short post. This is one. . . .

Here’s the link to review the stringent requirements and “detailed” descriptions of other “Priority Area Demonstration Grants for Healthy Marriages.” I look forward to a radical shift in the headlines — fewer family wipeouts, and less government intrusion in our lives through child support enforcement, or lack thereof.

I’m also still searching (among these) for a description in any abstract of what constitutes a Healthy Marriage. I mean, among these grant recipients, is it sufficient (for now — this IS California after all, and the challenge isn’t going away) that a man and a woman be involved? Does there need to be some parity in contributions, rights, or discussions of long-term plans? Do they have to have the same religion? Do they have to decide whether childre are to be involved, or what to do if this is a second marriage for one partner? (In that case, read more on my blog and the blogroll to the right, FAST!). Does healthy involve “mild” or any forms of domestic violence, and if so, is this going to be “explicated” by a differently funded HHS grant from, say, Office of Violence Against Women?

Can a healthy marriage happen where the woman earns more or is more highly educated?

What about age differences (I am simply noticing that many — not all — of the incidents with fatalities involve a middle-aged male with a far younger woman, which makes me wonder whether he married for the babies or not. Or vice versa.).

In fact, now that I think of it, how in the world could a coalition define what is really a relationship? I mean, who’s to say what they do in the bedroom or with their finances? And if it’s a religious group behind this, WHO is going to advocate for the poor girl to keep her credit and bank accounts open, if they exist, and NOT put a house in only one person’s name?

Is it going to say: Boys and Girls belong together to procreate. If you’re going to procreate you should marry and stay married.

Is it going to address the high incarceration rate in the U.S. and say, “when Dad gets out, we want you two kids {meaning the parents of a child or children) back together, now, OK? MARRIAGE is HEALTHY, and FATHERLESSNESS is a social scourge, after all.

(FYI, this is already what the US is doing….).

HAPPY BROWSING:

HERE is the link to the descriptions of the use of these funds. As you can see, some have smaller target populations, although one with the word “Dibble” does say “throughout United States.” Another one I looked at yesterday (and need to view a bit more) made news article for having been taken over for certain bookkeeping inconsistencies by the Dept. of Education. I’m puzzled why the funds are still going through. We are, after all, in tough economic times (and I’m still owed money, also).

We appear to be carved up into REGIONS (not states).

Regions 1- 9 (except “6,” which appears to be “MIA”

Hover for a summary (titles and target populations), or Click to Look.

Many of these are 5-year obligations of around $500,000/year.

Apart from the CHMC above — I hope there’s a no-competition clause in there somewhere, because it’s not the only one in California — my other favorite for scope of vision (if not clarity) is:

Office of Family Assistance
Healthy Marriage Demonstration Grant

Name of Grantee: The Dibble Fund for Marriage Education

Federal Project Officer:

Heather Sonabend (202) 260-0873 Target Population: High school teens across America Federal Award Amount: $549,999/year Program Name: Healthy Marriage Discretionary Grants Project Period: 09/30/2006 – 9/29/2011 Priority Area: 8 (one or two allowable activities)

Allowable Activities: Public advertising campaigns on the value of marriage and the skills needed to increase marital stability and health (#1) and education in high schools on the value of marriage, relationship skills and budgeting (#2).

Organization Description: The Dibble Fund for Marriage Education was founded in 1996 with a mission to focus on helping teens learn the skills needed for current healthy relationships and future strong and sustainable marriages.

WOW — that was shortly AFTER the National Fatherhood Initiative (1994) and shortly BEFORE the U.S. Congress voted in both houses that we have a plague of fatherlessness (1998/1999, see prior posts and I think I have blogrolls on this). I hope they will be nice to Mothers too…

Use(s) of ACF Program Grant Funds: The Dibble Fund plans to create a public advertising campaign on the value of marriage and the skills needed to increase marital stability and health, and to provide education in high schools on the value of marriage, relationship skills, and budgeting. They will train 500 Family and Consumer Sciences high school teachers each year to implement peer education projects to reach 113,500 students with over 1.66 million hours of instruction over 5 years. They will increase the number of high school age youth that have access to “best practices” healthy relationship and marriage programs (including **Love U2, Connections, and The Art of Loving Well curriculums{{Curricula??}}) through schools, youth agencies, faith communities, and peer-to-peer education efforts in states with limited Healthy Marriage Initiative (HMI) teen programming. They will influence the knowledge and attitudes of teens about healthy relationships, the “success sequence,” and marriage through an innovative media campaign that reaches teens “where they are,” by leveraging the power and reach of the entertainment media (TV shows and magazines that teens already flock to), the internet, and other new media (mobile phones, i-pods, and other new technology that delivers content in non-traditional ways).

You have to admire the chutzpah, though — “teens across America” and in states deprived by “limited Healthy Marriage Initiative” teen programming. That’s ALMOST higher than the U.S. Dept. of Education goal that No Child Be Left Behind — ALL be able to read, write, and count (at a minimum) before they turn 18.

BERKELEY, CA must be Healthy-Marriage Initiatve deprived (too many same-sex marriage advocates?) because they got a grant, I saw in yesterday’s chart.

But then again, the HHS budget is far larger than the Education budget, so they can aim higher.

**Some curricula designers are going to be profiting from this 4SURE, too.

REGION 8 — apparently Colorado, Colorado, and Colorado** plus Utah and Wyoming.

**See my link on “Policy-Studies.com” and if it’s still there, “Center for Policy Research” with Jessica Pearson et al. The 1983-2005 picture of a tree showing its growth is worth the wait time if your PC/Mac takes as long to load as mine does.

Under Wyoming, I note a group that’s new on the scene (in getting gov’t grants to promote marriage….) as of 2002 — AND targeting 2nd marriages and stepparents. Good for them. They will also be aided (where one partner is the man) in the generous Access Visitation Grants in getting his child support reduced by gaining custody of the children, if they aren’t already in the home:

Organization Description: The High Country Consulting, LLC dba Faith Initiatives of Wyoming (FIWY) is a statewide intermediary organization for faith and community-based (F/CB) organizations founded in 2002. It currently serves more than 2400 F/CB organizations through training and technical assistance, fund development, identification of best practices and advancement and use of technology, all aimed at building service capacity at the local level. FIWY also assists with direct management services, data handling, event planning and coordination of partnership activities for F/CB projects.

It WILL, of course, be cautious not to maintain a balance between the religious viewpoints with those of atheists, or non-adherents. I’m curious of those 2400 F/CB organizations span a variety of faiths…

Use(s) of ACF Program Grant Funds: High Country Consulting will implement and evaluate a marriage enrichment program that will target stepfamilies and couples in second marriages. They will provide marriage preparation, enrichment and divorce reduction services through both community-based and faith-based organizations, using a pilot program as a cultural model to reach out to over 1,250 participants…

REGION 1 – (Simply substitute the number in the “URL” to switch regions) — one grant only,

Character Counts In Maine

Organization Description: Founded in 2002, Character Counts In Maine (CCM), doing business as Heritage of Maine, has delivered abstinence education that includes marriage preparation skill building for adolescents in communities across Maine over the past two years. Their Heritage Keepers abstinence until marriage curriculum teaches relationship skills which lead to the formation of safe and stable marriages. CCM has formed a coalition of civic and faith-based organizations, high schools, youth groups, churches and marriage education organizations known as the Main Community Partnership to bring healthy relationship education to high school adolescents.

Target Population:

Adolescents/Teens in High School; Educators in High Schools (to deliver services to adolescents); High School Principals (quarterly newsletter)

REGION 2 — 3 grants, slightly more interesting:

In the Bronx

Organization Description: University Behavioral Associates was founded in 1995 by the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Montefiore Medical Center and is the main provider of behavioral health care in Bronx, New York. Additionally, the organization has long-standing relationships with local welfare-to-work programs and has the capability to manage information for hundreds of married couples.

SO — we have the religious approach, and the Behavioral Modification approach. So long as teens and adults from one set of marriage programs don’t marry teens and adults from the other side. Well, this is targeted at already married people..

Organization Description: The Research Foundation of SUNY, Stony Brook University is a non-profit organization located within the Stony Brook University campus. They proposed to use a highly innovative, empirically-supported, empowering program for income, unwed parents soon after the birth of a child.

Region 3

Organization Description: Family Guidance, Inc. will be the lead agency for a coalition of regional non-profit agencies, calling itself “TWOgether Pittsburgh,” to strengthen marriages. Coalition members include: The Center for Urban Biblical Ministry, The National Fatherhood Initiative, evaluator Dr. Stanley Denton, The Women’s Center and Shelter of Pittsburgh, and Smith Brothers Advertising.

High school students, married and unmarried couples and individuals who are residents of Pittsburgh, PA and the surrounding 5 counties.

Region 4 – one of the larger (or more active regions — SE United States (Georgia, FL, Alabama, N. Carolina, etc.)

This one particularly bears some looking at, and I hope to. Several universities make the list, a “Trinity Church” and a good deal of abstinence-based education, which is being fought elsewhere in government circles, at least within the school systems. I also note a certain curriculum popping up a lot, and am curious as to how many of the institutes receiving grants (judging by originating date) may be offshoots of the Fatherhood movement which — it should be clearly noted here — is a reaction to the feminist movement which, at least according to itself, is a response to simply oppression on the basis of gender, and things such as — you got it — violence within the home, or an attempt to deprive a person of some basic civil rights. Feminism is not the antithesis to patriotism (nor is patriotism as promoted by some of these groups synonymous for respect for the Constitution and the laws of the land).

I became a feminist precisely because of my trip through marriage and afterwards, the family law system. Til then, I took too much for granted. I am a mother, and I retain my faith — just practice it in safer places. We find help and strength where it is found. The hardest thing in my life to date was not having children, raising them with a violent, narcissistic, father (and working and struggling economically also), nor was it afterwards supporting them. That was a piece of cake, until the advisors began flocking into my life on the basis that I didn’t have a man in there (long before I was ready for such a relationship, after all this). On the basis of my profile, not the actual behavior, facts, results, or character. In fact, the experience of being “advised” after marriage when I wasn’t seeking or needing it, of being forced to do things I personally knew (and announced) were destructive to both work, relationships, and daughters’ educational options — was very much like living with abuse, only with more participants and less actual physical attack. Psychological escalated, along with the lies (once audiences were found).

The hardest thing I have ever done in my life, that I can recall, is surviving the total removal of my children from my household, and all significant contact with them at THE very point where our household was poised to succeed dramatically, in several categories (work, housing, schooling, neighobrhood, and surroundings). It was about AS healthy a (single-parent) family (with contact with the other parent available in the circumstances.

THAT, friends, was the problem to an abuser — success and independence HAS to be stopped. This doesn’t happen by telling the truth and complying with commonsense laws: Don’t steal, don’t perjure onesself in court, don’t suborn perjury, don’t kidnap, don’t harass, don’t stalk, and don’t refuse to work in order to punish the other parent — adn the kids alongside. Put your need to dominate SECOND for once in your middle-aged, male life. Develop work, not just alliances in the slander, and take-down campaign in order to somehow justify that NO single mother can handle life alone.

Well, not with this kind of attitude running the environment.

There are many uncomfortable similarities with the personal history here (which parallels many I’ve heard of) to the overall scope of this movement. HEY, I’m in favor of marriage, too obviously — I married, right?

I’m just not in favor of a national religion, at others’ expense and my own. I am pretty sure, by now, that the difficulties these children went through, and others still are (and mine are), and their confusion (or unified, but unjustified, belief of lies about their mothers, which is undermining to a healthy values system for growing adolescents) — are in good part traceable to some of the grants and initiatives I have been detailing on this blog. They are contributors to the social problems, while purporting to solve them.

Until this connection is made by enough people, the burden will just get larger and larger, while the public proclamation would be, funds are shrinking and shrinking. WShen the proclamations are coming from THE largest arm of the Exec Dept (and elsewhere), at some point in time, we have to say, WHAT are you doing with that MONEY? At an individual level (like I am starting to) and then call your Congressperson in charge whatever grant affects your area.

The catch: Mostly the people who can do this are on the outskirts

In essence, it’s socialism. There have to be safe options for not marrying, and these are to be as valid as the others. When it comes to my case, it was only being forced to live a serious “half-life” half-in and half-out (or, 95% in)multiple GOVERNMENT_RUN- institutions — that economically and artificially suppressed prosperity for us. I was forced to fight, instead of work, after having done my best to reconcile the irreconciliable differences with an abuser. This has done nothing but escalate, since I met the guy, basically — with only a few brief pauses.

I talk with a LOT of people on a daily basis, and it’s rarely a day I don’t hear of another similar situation.

Preaching marriage around the place doesn’t help matters, as far as I am concerned — the entitlement in such cases is through the roof. I did practically everything I am reading about in these abstracts — didn’t have children out of wedlock, stayed committed, worked alongside, supported, you name it. Hung in there as long as possible. My commitment to this ideal of marriage, for one, didn’t match the father of my children’s. He was committed to its privileges, but not its emotional sacrifices in that, he was to engage with a separate human being AS a separate human being, not a household (or biological) function.

ABOUT MARRIAGE

When it works well, it works well. When it doesn’t, then I wish that the national atmosphere (federally-pronounced) would cool it on the propaganda — the air is highly charged around here, and domestic violence ignites quickly when marriage (or other fatherhood, proprietary success-mandated) entitlements become the national ideal.

I dare anyone to get up there and OPENLY substitute one skin color, one ethnic group for the word “father” and another for the word “mother” in the same languages, and then got about to make this happen.

Or, religion.

it would be seen for what it truly is — ridiculous, and bigoted. Somehow, and for somereason, the concept of “fatherhood” unites a LOT wider spectrum of people, more closely, and incites more trouble. For example, I’d say a good proportion of the domestic violence I lived through and my kids witnessed, traumatizing and sometimes terrorizing all of us, and then engendering response compensatory behaviors (including super-performance mentality in the girls, when small), plus it wreaks havoc on the biochemistry (I came out obese, which was handled, but remains a struggle when dealing closely with the situation long-term). The obesity was a clear self-defense measure, and has been studied nationally (www.acestudy.org). When I lost weight, significantly, and felt TERRIFIC (post-marriage) we were still seeing each other regularly (on exchange of the children for visitation) and somehow this brought out more aggression, stalking, and competitive behaviors from a person who’d already filed for divorce! I was sitting at my work, and considering not only my own safety, but that of a person apparently perceived (not even real) “rival.”

I’ve had to struggle morally with whether it was FAIR for me to enter into relationships — almost any kind — with the knowledge of how volatile the situation is.

Put that together with work, and figure it out.

These groups are talking about the high cost of “fatherlessness” to a growing society. I’m not sure this equates with motherlessness. But here’s a question you don’t hear too often — what about Rachel lamenting her children (that’s a Bible reference).

What about the effect on society of taking competent, mature, sometimes skilled and dedicated FEMALE workers and contributors to society — and keeping them traumatized a decade at a time, and in use of multiple social services they wouldn’t otherwise need. What about their risk of old age poverty and homelessness from simply a few decades out of the work force, in order to handle:

1. Abuse, first, (including verty often as part of the control system, economic abuse), then.

2. Recovery, brief respite indeed — AFTER which, a long drawn-out custody trial for all too many, resulting in MORE lost work and opportunities.

What does THAT do for society? First, stealing from its contributions, and then, burdening the safety net.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it

HANDLE the domestic violence issues, and you will handle a multitude of other issues. STOP forcing women who left abuse through classes (I wasn’t, but I know it’s a cash stream in the family law) when they weren’t violent. STOP trying to put back together what already broke up unless you are willing to sign up front: I take PERSONAL responsibility, up to and including incarceration along with those classes, if those attending my class addressing battering behavior go out and kill their ex, or anyone else, afterwards.

WELL, if taking the class allows a slick performer to pass with flying colors, and fly out the door, get sentence, or get OUT, and then go get EVEN, it’s setting the climate for homicide. And I’m not the first person to point this out, either.

I bet there’d be fewer takers on these grants, and a slightly different economy.

The government is not a good teacher, it’s an abusive rulers, and it would do better to follow the examples of good teachers that are already OUT there, find out what principles they use, and follow them.

This is of course practically impossible with such a federally huge educational system — which is one reason many people, who can, opt out of it. Now the government wants another crack at educating people who didn’t make the grade the first time through.

No, I do not have a firm technical business plan answer. But I know one that’s NOT it when I see it, and “healthy marriage education” falls under that category. Either we have a national religion or we don’t. The country needs to make up its mind. The educational system claims that we don’t (I’m not sure I agree), HHS department is demonstrating we do, structurally speaking.

In my life, and as a fully-functioning intelligent working adult, I have experienced the worst of both worlds when it comes to treatment of females — blind to abuse, and upset at personal (peaceful) choice. From atheists “educated” and from religious “undereducated” both.

This post was drafted a few days ago, I have more research coming. The BOLD LINKS above give more detailed descriptions.

Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up

July 19, 2009 at 3:24 PM

Posted in "Til Death Do Us Part" (literally), Designer Families, Domestic Violence vs Family Law, History of Family Court

Tagged with custody, Education, family annihilation, Intimate partner violence, mediation, parental kidnapping, social commentary, Social Issues from Religious Viewpoints, Studying Humans, U.S. Govt $$ hard @ work.., women's rights

“Wife fought off Pa. man killed in shootout.” Maybe–MAYBE, Forget the Restraining Orders, Remember 2nd Amendment? Or, toss a coin…

with 2 comments

Part II of II on “Responsible Citizenhood” is in labor.

The waters have broken, and there is a flood of information and synthesis of concepts gushing forth on many topics, and my brain is dialating. They will have to be posted in stages.

Translation: I am being a Responsible Citizen (see prior posts) and exploring who is my Congress, the Constitution, who is funding whom, and finding all kinds of juicy information on whose idea was it to reinstitute a national religion called Fatherhood, funded by all of us. I have also located a few new (to me at least) search tools How many thoughts have been provoked!

But, this (relatively) recent news alert reminded me, that Part of Responsible Citizenhood might entail learning how to handle a gun, and being willing to use it during a home invasion. Even a home invasion by an estranged husband:

Wife fought off Pa. man killed in shootout

by Michael Rubinkam

Let’s look at this headline again. This woman fought him off, and neither she, nor any of her offspring got killed. If you look up the articles and read the details, she made a mistake, which, if you read below and see how WIGGLY Pa considers the “PFAs” when it comes to what they mean, is almost understandable. But once the situation became clear, she took QUICK action to protect her children, get free, and call for help.

This is not, folks, how it often plays out. Who knows whether, God, fortune, or luck played a role, but we DO know this woman didn’t stop to debate, and she also didn’t panic and go dysfunctional. May I propose that this woman listening to her INSTINCTS and acting on them may have prevented a higher body count. LESSON ONE: Don’t jerk around with someone who has just crossed a boundary. Don’t second guess instinct. And (next time) don’t compromise one INCH on an existing protective or restraining order — it sends a mixed message, and could lead to this.

May I propose something else? I suggest that lawmakers and courts consider that women are people too, and smarten up to having us believe the fiction and play the slot games with any intimate partner who has been battering us in the home, or threatening to, etc. May I suggest that instead of — or in addition to — DISarming him, they somehow ARM her, and if she’s not trained how to do so, get her some professional responsible training. It could be mace, it could be pepper spray, but constitutionally, it could be a gun, too, at least in the home.

Given the options, she has hope, luck, prayer, and walking around the neighborhood with her instincts on alert, her antennae up, and then trying to also rebuild a life. “LIFE, LIBERTY, and PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.” Now what was that first one again?

Detriment: May give a whole new picture of “motherhood” to “fatherhood” people who don’t believe women should be allowed to separate, do not have equal rights, and VAWA should go back to where it came from.

In this above statement, I omitted the comma between “fatherhood” people and who don’t believe. This is generous on my part, because I am conceding that there could be people all excited about and promoting fatherhood who DON’T believe these things. In fact, I don’t really believe this. I think that what the “fatherhood” movement is about is that the genetic / gender / biological composition of a family and household (one man, one woman, both married) is more important than the character or behavior of such families. I am not the only person who believes this. Some data is here (hover cursor for my comment. Note: This dates to 2002, almost 7 years ago. .http://www.canow.org/fam_report.pdf.

Now, when I married, I picked someone of the opposite gender, rather than someone of the same gender and, when it came to wanting children, either adoption or a sperm donor. This is probably because of how I like my sex, and the other versions didn’t concern me.

However, when I realized that my opposite-gender person’s main concern was my gender and household function ONLY, and not me as a person — and began physically punishing me for showing up as a person like him, and expecting to pursue some personal goals, not only the laundry/cleaning/nursing/f____ing role (in addition to supporting him in his business, and — if I wanted necessities — also working myself in and/or outside the home for pay) — I made a determination that behavior was the determinant, not gender, or a two-parent status. The MAIN reason I did this was because we had children, and it was a damn lousy role model they were being exposed to. The children were of my gender, and they were being taught how this one was somehow inferior and equipped with fewer rights, if any, and no boundaries or ability to say NO without taking retaliation for it. THAT’s a lousy role model, and he got himself evicted, not after several warnings.

I suppose you would like me to get to the story here, how THIS woman saved her life, her children’s life, but alas, not the pursuing policeman’s life, or her husband’s (although I lay that one as his responsibility — no one forced him to threaten his wife with a gun or kidnap his child, or place himself above a clear law he knew was in place upon him).

YATESVILLE, Pa. (AP) — Hobbled by a broken ankle, the estranged wife of a man killed in a shootout with Pennsylvania state troopers managed to fight him off as he threatened her with a gun before he kidnapped their 9-year-old son, the woman’s friend said.

The order of events is a little jumbled in the paragraph. The AP wanted it out fast, I guess, and so we get this:

A. Her ankle was broken
B. She was estranged from her husband
C. He was killed by PA state troopers in a shootout (i.e., he was shooting back).
D. 1. She fought him off 2. while he threatened her with a gun.
E. He kidnapped their 9 year old son.

Having been through a FEW of the events above (not including the shootout), let me put it, I suspect, chrono.

B. Cause of broken ankle — don’t know and probably not relevant.
D.2 He threatened her with a gun
D. 1 THIS MOM FOUGHT BACK.
E. THEN (having been fought off), he grabs their son and dashes off (probably in a car).
C. State troopers, apparently, caught up with him, and I’ll gol-dang bet he shot first. Predictably, they shot back.
Thank God the state troopers had some firearms training, so HE got killed, not his wife and not the son he kidnapped, this time.

First of all, let’s deal with the grammar dishonesty (gender bias?) with B. “She was estranged from her husband” which has an element of the truth, and distorts the actual context. This is such common press practice in domestic violence homicide (or incident) reporting:

LEGALLY, it appears he’d acted first, and she had responded with a “protection from abuse” order. Unless the news disagrees with the judge that is THE most relevant factor in the case, apart from this incident. It most certainly is prime factual, legal and emotional dynamic CONTEXT of the incident. “She was estranged” could’ve been, she got tired of his dirty socks around home, she wanted to pursue another affair, or he did; he refused to work OR was an alcoholic, she was bored, he was using drugs or alcohol, or they had other “irreconciliable differences.” “She was estranged” already must minimized the truth. If a protective order was in place, and these reporters are not aware enough yet that this produces LOTS of hot news leads in the form of crime reporting, they need to review the job descriptions — or their editors do. (To tell the truth, I didn’t notice this the first time through the story myself, although I have always thought it an odd phrase).

B. THEY were estranged. or, better,

B. “In _____ (date) (or how recent), she obtained a PFA (say it: “protection from abuse“) order (in what court, or county), forcing him to leave the family home.

It is so typical of abusers, abuser enablers, and for that matter, the bulk of the family law system, to IGNORE THE ACTIONS and TALK ABOUT WHO “WAS” WHAT RATHER THAN WHO “DID” WHAT. IT”S PSYCHOLOGY NOT EVIDENCE. THIS IS NO ACCIDENT!

From the 2002 California Family Court Report (link above): (under “Loss of Due Process”)

A. Lack of procedural and evidentiary due process,since the Family Code was

separated from the Code of Civil Procedure and the Evidence Code in

1992.

Alas (and the emphasis of other articles on this event) — – Mad Dad was not in a compromise mood, and shot at responding officers. Terribly, he got a cop, too. Again — and these officers WERE brave, and they DID stop a kidnapping in process.

That’s about a recipe for suicide by cop. Whether or not he had thought THIS far ahead, one thing is clear: He’d pre-meditated far enough ahead to bring a gun and point it at his wife.

I experienced a decade of being exceedingly afraid of my husband in the home, being traumatized, and eventually being sure enough (because he talked about it often enough, fantasizing about this, and telling me, so, or otherwise bringing it up casually in conversation: “I’ll just have to kill you.” At this time, both our children were under 8 years old.) This has caused economic devastation upon me, my daughters, and people associated with both him, and us. It has wasted taxpayer funds year after year (in family law, where our case shouldn’t have been at the time) and taken almost 20 years of the prime working years of my life and trashed them repeatedly, under threats, stalkings, intimidations, sudden appearances at my home, and in general, one hell of a mess. He is still only working part-time, if that, doesn’t pay taxes (I don’t because I don’t earn enough), he is not financially independent yet and, because of this and unfortunately, neither am I. Our state is broke (supposedly) which is headline news, and is getting people very short-tempered in general.

I wonder, and I DO reflect — SUPPOSE I HAD FOUGHT BACK, AND NOT ONLY THAT, THREATENED BACK: IF YOU EVER DO THIS AGAIN, YOU’LL BE MISSING A BODY PART. OR DEAD! And then dropped everything until I had learned self defense.

Or, I had told been less committed to my marriage vows, and dumped his ass out on the street — in other words, brought it to a head earlier. WHY did I not do that? (a number of reasons: #1. VAWA and awareness of DV laws was not commonplace. #2. I’d never had a similar experience where I had to set a boundary with a violent man before, and wasn’t acquainted personally with such situations. #3. self-defense and handling a gun is not a typical part of the public school education, and not exactly promoted, as in, exercising 2nd Amendment rights, in general. We are not hunting our food, but buying it, for the most part (or growing it). I was not raised in urban areas, where awareness of guns and gun violence was commonplace, but in more rural; people shot deer, or sometimes squirrels, not people! I also wasn’t raised on TV.

School rewards taking orders and obeying rules, at least theoretically.

And that’s not “feminine” behavior.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

WHAT IF MEN UNDERSTOOD – – – REALLY UNDERSTOOD – – – THAT EVEN WITHIN A RELATIONSHIP, A SMACK WILL BE SMACKED, BACK, HARDER, BECAUSE IT’S SO OUT OF ORDER? WHAT IF WOMEN WEREN’T SO DESPERATE TO SURVIVE ECONOMICALLY, OR FOR SEXUAL ATTENTION, OR TO HAVE A MAN ON THE ARM, THAT NONE OF THEM COMPROMISED?

WOULD THERE STILL BE FAMILIES AS WE KNOW THEM NOW?

Maybe the fatherhood guys are “right.” Maybe (from that perspective) if men are not needed to provide for and protect women,and defend them from other suitors, stalkers, or rapists, or to help them, particularly when they are more vulnerable, pregnant and raising young kids, the differences between the sexes (as to functions in life) would so blur, that, well, the drive to achieve and provide would diminish, the wheels of the economy would crumble (and a lot of faith institutions also), and life just wouldn’t have that same glow, or afterglow.

Without the primal urge, there would be no skyscrapers (9/11?) or cathedrals, and no empires, multi-national or otherwise. Maybe. life just wouldn’t have that zest and drama. Newspapers would need to find other ways to sell the products, if there weren’t crises to report.

Well, that’s a larger topic. But it seems a natural question: If the nuclear family ain’t what protects, and provides for its young, the only alternative is for equality of income. NOW, Papa Obama and the majority of Head Start, Zero to Five, Administration for Families and Children, (sorry sir to pick on you, this wasn’t your idea to start with) might be out of work. ONLY if the ONLY way to produce income is a “job” that MUST be done outside the home, ONLY then is it essential to have the other functions of raising a family: care, daytime feeding, and education — to be done by someone else, institutionally.

However the people so vigorously promoting this solution ONLY (and highly suspicious of, say, the homeschooling option which is a lot more fluid, lets mothers network and find each other’s long suits, collaborate locally to find the best teachers (including some of each other, as well as hired professionals), and fire the lousy ones — now THAT’S a plus) and actually have a better understanding of who their children are, and possibly better relationships with them, not rigidly defined ones) — these people — and I coudl show you, or you could look for yourself — are THEMSELVES either inheriting wealth, or have sufficient assets to go fund ggovernment policy, publicize and drive various programs through and teach THEIR young how to own businesses and produce passive cash flow, themselves.

Then who would work in the businesses they own? There has to be a steady population — and the majority of the population — that does NOT know how to live independently from the government, or the “employee” situation — or life would, well, it just wouldn’t work right. Who would work the factories, produce the many, many terrific products we enjoy in this country, the material prosperity, the varities of fast foods (and agencies pronouncing that fast foods are bad for you), and all that?

(Along with the domestic violence kidnappings, suicides by cop, traumatized kids, and sometimes dead people, that go along with when this doesn’t work out so well…..).

Well, that dialogue is what I get for thinking. It’s Monday night quarterbacking, I guess, “what-if” scenarios. I cannot turn back the clock in my own case. The fact is, if I hadn’t been who I was, probably the genetic and particular DNA of my two wonderful daughters (who are probably not reading this, yet), and with whom I am NOT spending any more time, would not have been born. I have already determined (and she’s spoken with me recently) that woman number two was targeted for a certain gullibility and in a certain venue, for use to get the kids away from me. He’s out on the loose again, troubling me, because I’ve been contacted, and her, because of what that indicates.

HOWEVER, the rest of this post, below, shows how the local Women’s Resource Agency describes why women should keep coming, keep asking for “PFA” orders and keep playing the odds, because, it’s after all, only about ONE out of THREE cases that violates these orders, and “NOT ALL” do “WHAT HE DID.”

Well, in school, 66% is not a passing grade. Last I heard, 70% was. We are talking 66% success rate when the other 33% (add your decimal points later) might get killed and result in this. We’re not talking about graduating from high school, but living out a normal lifespan, and not in terror, trauma, or having to before a child is ten, witness a homicide. Or two. Or being kidnapped. About officers NOT having to make that sacrifice, and THEIR children lose a Daddy also. How is THAT “promoting responsible fatherhood.”

I think that the time of restraining orders may have passed, and that we probably need to focus on both attitudes, cultural values and self-defense techniques (including weapons if necessary) that make it ABSOLUTELY clear that any such violation of a personal boundary in the form of a HIT will be met with equal, and to make a point, slightly greater responding force to emphasize the unacceptability of it.

I think local communities will have to figure out processes, not “states” they wish to achieve. And this requires being realistic about restraining order and a valid understanding of what abuse IS.

I have one: ABUSE is violating personal boundaries (and, most time, state criminal laws) in order to establish a “giving orders” situation between what should be intimate partners. As such, it qualifies as “two-year-old” behavior and should result in the adult who has regressed to it, and thinks that 2009 is, in fact, closer to 1920 (when women finally got the vote) should be treated like the two-year-old mentality of, the world should conform to you when you don’t like it, without your submitting to some process of negotiation, compromise, or humility. I would like to add that, as I recall this, I always wondered why our daughters didn’t go through the famous “Terrible Twos” {is this an Americdan term only? I don’t know…} rebellious stages. I remember this at the time also. It could be that we weren’t dumping them off in daycare, where they needed more attention, oir it just possibly could’ve been that we had a much larger Terrible Two in the home, in the form of their father, and they knew this.

Only when it’s UNacceptable throughout society to beat women, and terrorize anyone, will this stop. The only acceptable reasons for doing anything like this in defense of life’s essentials — and these do not include maintaining a status quo in which the abuser’s world is perfect, and his ego cannot handle rejection, the need to apologize, or occasional value conflicts. The heart of any really good intimate relationship would do real well to closely resemble what’s written in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, which most of us (and our legislators) have apparently forgotten.

I happen to be a Christian, and my faith tells me about when this will, and will not happen. I have had to often re-evaluate the duality (us/them) and domination (Christ came once and was humbled/crucified voluntarily, but will return in authority as king and by force put down all rebellion, bringing in world peace), and I assure you, in the many, MANY years I have been around and working (through music) in several faith institutions, the music is terrific, but within white (in particular, but not only) Protestantism, nondenominational especially, equality of women is “anathema” and these places are producing wife-beaters and wife-killers. They do not communally or prominently acknowledge the laws of the land in their hearts, and many (those who do not ordain women, or and hate even the concept of them in leadership, let alone of gays, or lesbians) , despite sometimes sheltering a battered woman, or helping her (i’ve been helped a few times recently), they will NOT stop sheltering the doctines and attitudes that produce more batterred women, and more overentitled men. this is behind the “fatherhood” movement, and it produces a form of social schizophrenia, in which we have a public school system where “God” is not allowed, or prayer, yet public policy where “faith-based” advice and policies are promoted. Well, which is it, folks?

That’s all the psycho- social-analysis for this post. What’s below (written earlier) relates more directly to this particular domestic violence double-homicide, kidnapping, assault, and tragedy which began with “she was estranged,” and a look at the neighborhood response.

What probably kept that woman and her children alive was her willingness to fight back. What put her at risk was compromising the existing restraining order (including drop off at curb), and (possibly) her not having the means or intent to, at ALL times since it was issued, NEVER compromise it AT ALL. ONE means might be for her husband to have understand that she understood her 2nd Amendment right to self-defense, and having it in the home, AND her willingness and intent to act on it, if even 3 yards of a restraining order was violated. This sends a clear message, and would put that man back in a place to reconsider whether he wants to test the limits, or can talk or plan, or manipulate his way out of obeying that order.

The courts need to do more to communicate this necessity to women who have just separated. They need to understand that NOW, it’s OK to take a personally aggressive stance and back it up with a willingness to act if boundaries are violated. That IS, after all, WHY the “United States of America” is no longer a British colony, or any other colony (so far), and we might do well to keep communicating this principle to our young, boy and girl alike. Not to belabor the point, but our schools absolutely do NOT, do this at this point, and I say, intentionally so. You can’t “manage” people so well who understand their self-worth.

However Susan Autenreith may have been raised, at the crucial time, she found something within herself to say No, and stand up to this. Having made a mistake, she didn’t condemn herself or try to talk out of the situation. Gun meant FIGHT BACK, YELL DIRECTIONS TO HE KIDS, & CALL FOR HELP.

How Logical Is This?

~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

About that MOM?

Let’s go chrono, OK?

Not all (female) readers have been through the process of, say,

(1) childbirth,

(2) being assaulted, threatened, intimidated, battered, and in short abused, or other situations which tell you “Danger! Danger!,”

(3) filing and getting a PFA (domestic violence restraining, or etc.) order with kickout, indicating “Danger! Danger!” to all and “STAY AWAY!” to Dad, (and, you can’t buy guns, either, or own them), and then

(4) IMMEDIATELY after these at least actions (applying for a temporary, filing with judge, getting it signed, serving the husband (which then in effect throws him out of the house in some manner), going to court for a hearing to have it made permanent, having it made “permanent” (i.e., facing the ex in that court hearing), and meanwhile attempting to explain this to one’s children in terms they can understand why he can’t live here anymore, then — with a restraining order in effect — typically the NEXT stop is the mediator who will then proceed to act as though there wasn’t really, any serious domestic violence (other than, meetings may be separate) and say, “OK, so long as it’s peaceful communications around the children” and then design some visitation plan any other divorcing couple might have, even the most amicable divorces. Which appears to have happened in this place.

In 1992, Jack Straton, Ph.D. (NOMAS: National Org. of Men Against Sexism) recommended a cooling off period.

So far, no one has figured this out, evidently.

(5) Agreeing, after this, to a custody/visitation exchange plan which basically has a split personality:

Hey, he was so dangerous, you had to get a judge to tell him to stay away, and order no weapons in the home, BUT . . . .. BUT . . . . . it’s OK to give this same, by now pretty distraught or indignant/upset man access to the fruit of his loins, regularly . . . . After all, what about a child’s right to bond with both parents?

This, I say, gives the man, the woman, and the children a mixed message. I have also learned (the hard way) since, the courts ALSO are getting contradictory messages (and funding) about these matters. IS domestic violence a crime, or not a crime?

And so we get cases like the Autenreiths, where Dad didn’t LIKE having that protective order in place, and made this clear with a 9mm. His girlfriend helped him get a gun. Again, his girlfriend.

WHICH BRINGS UP THIS POINT: Telling a man to not own weapons, and get rid of any he does own, doesn’t prevent him — in the least — from grabbing one from a friend who has one (or in this case, a girlfriend buying one for him. I believe this is called a straw purchase, and laws exist to address this, but still, it points out that generally there is a way around the law for those who intend to find one).

(How long were they separated? How hard is it for a man with a plan to get around a piece of paper?)

in order to STOP the cycle of abuse which, without intervention, generally does one thing — escalate, until someone is killed, or more than one,

WHAT ARE THE ODDS? HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW THAT MAN? HOW WILL HE RESPOND TO THE PFA?

=======

HERE IS THE RESPONSE REGARDING “PFA’S” TO THIS PARTICULAR ASSAULT, BATTERY, CHILD-KIDNAPPING, THREATS, CAR CHASE AND DOUBLE-HOMICIDE. I HAVE EMPHASIZED ANY AREAS THAT SHOW UNCERTAINTY, LOOPHOLES FOR DANGER:

WOMEN’S RESOURCES OF MONROE COUNTY (PA): PFA’s WORK IN MOST CASES

By Andrew Scott

Pocono Record June 12, 2009

A protection-from-abuse order [“”PFA”] may be just a piece of paper unable to stop the likes of Daniel Autenrieth, the Northampton County man who threatened his wife at gunpoint, kidnapped their son and led police on a high-speed chase that ended in a fatal shootout in Tobyhanna.

{To review: PFA, then:

DEAD PEOPLE — 2, OFFICER, MAN
WOUNDED — 1, OFFICER
VERY TRAUMATIZED — 9 YEAR OLD SON, MOM, OTHER KIDS}}

The fact remains that most people with PFAs filed against them comply with those court orders and don’t do what Autenrieth did. So although PFAs aren’t absolutely guaranteed to stop someone who’s unbalanced or really intent on doing harm, people who are being physically abused or feel threatened with physical harm in relationships still should apply for PFAs.

That was the message at a Thursday press conference at Women’s Resources of Monroe County in Delaware Water Gap. Women’s Resources is part of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence, which provides a network of advocacy, legal, counseling, medical and other support services for domestic violence victims.

. . .

In Pennsylvania, PFA violators can face up to six months in county jail and fines of up to $1,000, depending on the severity of the violation, said Wendy Bentzoni, a detective with the Monroe County District Attorney’s Office.

If a woman requests a PFA against her husband and he consents to the order’s terms

Being evicted from the home he/she shares with the plaintiff/victim and having no contact with that person.
Being evicted, but being allowed to have contact.
Being allowed to stay in the home as long as there is no physical abuse or threat of physical abuse.

In Pennsylvania, a PFA can be in effect for any length of time up to three years, depending on what a judge rules or what the parties involved consent to in each individual case. If the defendant doesn’t violate the PFA, the order simply expires when its time is up.

Of the 450 PFAs granted in Monroe County last year, more than 125 were violated by defendants, Bentzoni said.

{{OK, Let’s look at that. Suppose it was 150. 150 violated out of 450 is 1 out of 3. That means for every 2 that WERE kept (as far as they know — by whether or not a violation was reported or not) 1 was not. How do you like them odds? Your PFA has a 33.33% of being violated (in which case, see above for potential risk/fallout).

In some cases, getting a PFA filed against an abuser can worsen the victim’s situation because the abuser sees it as the victim trying to take power away from the abuser{{WHICH IT IS INCIDENTALLY}}, she said. Desperate to retain that power over the victim, the abuser might become even more dangerous.

“Against someone with no fear of the law or jail, a PFA might not be the best action to take,” Kessler said. “In that case, we explore other options with the victim. The goal is to get the victim out of a vulnerable position.”

If the abuser is the sole breadwinner for the victim and their children, fear of losing the abuser’s financial support also might deter the victim from applying for a PFA, Kessler said.

Well, I know in my case it sure delayed getting one. Often economic abuse can precede physical.

Economic abuse can precedes and enables the physical AND IS PRE-MEDITATED. If the targeted person can’t afford to get away, or see how they could conceivably do so, they will take their chances staying, possibly. What a great choice — homelessness or increasing domestic abuse.

So, it seems to me if we want a less violent world, the most sensible thing would be focus on teaching children and young people how to become economically independent. In a wonderful contradiction of intent, we DON’T! The entire public schools system in the U.S.A., for the most part, consists of teaching children how to be submissive and take orders, leave the thinking up to the experts, who will grade them, and prepare them for this: College, and Jobs. Not, College and BUSINESSES. Or College, and understanding the economic principles that would help them become business owners, investors, cash-stream producers, foundation producers, and independent thinkers. How hypocritical.

And that includes independent thinking about how to survive financially should they choose to have children, or should they not choose to have children, but set up housekeeping (and sleeping) with a partner that might become sick, injured, or — face it – incarcerated. They should not have to go nurse off Dad, or Mom, or Big Brother the Welfare State, in this case. The goal should NOT be lifetime jobs, but lifetime progression towards financial independence. They cannot do this if they aren’t studying people who have accomplished this, and the basic principles of wealth.

We should also teach them not to let any partner or potential partner disarm them economically — whether it be job, or bank account, or credit, or access to transportation etc. That any such action is aggression, and dangerous to their welfare, creating an artificial co-dependence. They should know this going into relationships.

Now right there, we have a SERIOUS problems. Many world religions don’t accept this, and are not likely to.

Well, maybe they should, in the US, then lose their tax-exempt status. Believe me, I’ve thought of it. Because if they are contributing to the climate of “It’s OK to dominate a woman by any means (or weapon) that comes to hand, because it makes you more of a man,” then they should have to fork over the taxes that society might need to take care of the resulting mess.

And I’ll tell you another “secret” (not a real secret) — one I’ve been thinking about more recently. The majority of these institutions are in a co-dependent and domination relationship within their own ranks. If they didn’t dominate and under-educate them on their own sacred scripts (men and women alike), in the US, at least, many people would not be so dependent on spiritual, social, and emotional nourishment on the weekends and maybe ONE weekday. But that is another post, and probably, blog.

We ought to teach, besides, reading math writing, sport and the arts (to put it roughly) the PROCESSES and VALUES OF:

Self-sufficiency, Self-defense, and self-discipline, to the point of in-depth excellence and mastery in one primary area. With that I believe will come sufficient self-esteem not to enter into too many co-dependent relationships.

I recommend reading John Taylor Gatto’s short book called Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, in which he says, plainly, that the seven lessons he, as a teacher (and at the time NY State Teacher of the Year” actually is teaching is not “relevance” and “interrelationship” of subjects, but the exact opposite. Specifically, in order from the chapter: “The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher,” they are:

CONFUSION
CLASS POSITION
INDIFFERENCE
EMOTIONAL DEPENDENCY
INTELLECTUAL DEPENDENCY
PROVISIONAL SELF-ESTEEM
ONE CAN’T HIDE.

The next chapter is called the “psychopathic school” after which he details his efforts of getting a little girl who read beautifully out of a class of bad readers. The girl (reading aloud beautifully) tells him how the administration had explained to her mother that she was, in reality, a “bad reader who had fantasies of being a better reader than she was.” Then, the author relates how the principal tried the same thing on him: how was he, a substitute to know whether or not this child could read.

MY EXPERIENCE: This actually is at the heart of the educational AND the family law system of “experts.” My “sin” was homeschooling the children, and having fantasies (as do many single mothers leaving abuse) that we could make a sound decision on behalf of our sons and daughter, after we’d made just about the soundest one around — LEAVING the situation!

Consider this:

Our form of compulsory schooling was an invention of the State of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted — with guns — by about 80% of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost being Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard. (p. 25,

There is more, but as I review those 7 lessons above, I can’t help thinking about the uncommon similarities between abuse — even it’s definitions — and the family law system, as well as the concept of using another abusive system to handle abuse by one person towards another in the presence of children.

Is ALL conflict bad? No, conflict involving true self-defense, or boundary violations.

Is marriage, or an “intimate partner relationship,” a person as property contract? A relationship as property contract? I believe the law calls it a FIDUCIARY relationship. As such, no one has a right to commit what in other context would be a crime, to protect loss of contact with this former sexual partner, parent of one’s children, children, or the breakdown of a relationship.

WHEN IT GETS TO THE POINT OF PFAs and RESTRAINING ORDERS, the enforcement should be thorough, immediate, clear, and strong. The dialogue above illustrates why, in practice, it ain’t. SO the conflicts go on, and escalate.

I have taught lots of children (and adults) in lots of venues and classrooms, and non-class situations. There are always rules ,and in-progress negotiation about common standards, there is always a dynamic flexibility within the group, there is the matter of consensus and critical mass.

The superb choir that got me going into music was about 40 in number, and we stood in mixed quartets, holding our own parts, produced records, soloists, and in general moved mountains and kicked butt musically. It was powerful stuff. We rehearsed almost daily and worked to pay for some of our own needs (including uniforms, painting the room, and going to conferences). We associated after school (and sometimes before) and in other venues than school; we ate, played, and attended concerts together.

Since then, I have sung in (and sometimes directed) choirs numbering from approximately 12 up to over 100. The ideal size (and one of the best choirs I was in) was about 18, or very maximum 20, if they were professionals and unified. I have had a little choir of only 11 do amazing things, because it was small enough to be responsive.

I have always thought it odd that the top ensembles are generally smaller than a typical public school classroom, and many of them not much larger than a large family, with a cousin or two. It brings out the best when there is a unified goal that is reasonable (but still stretching limits) to the people involved. The best choirs also were VOLUNTARY, not compulsory. They chose challenging music (to keep the participants growing) but always taking into account that the audience might not feel so esoteric in general. They mixed and matched, but they HAD to set a fairly high standard technically and musically – or in portrayal.

How does this relate to the Wife who Fought Back?

The system they were ensared in was too large, and is ruling and prognosticating by “the odds.” MOST people (translation: men) do not violate the PFAs, after all, just over 125 out of 450 did in this particular area. Therefore, the women should keep on coming, because what else could they do? It MIGHT not result in this, after all, NOT ALL men do what Mr. Autenreith did.

And we have this growing crisis of “fatherlessness”? That’s a fatherless family, and it just made a peace officer’s kids fatherless, too. I wonder what kind of father the nine-year old will make, should he become one.

I think the doctrine is becoming a little self-defeating, if not downright dangerous. I mean, this is all about the children, right? It’s all because children in single-parent families are at risk.

Well, yeah, with some vigilantes running around the place . . . . . However, if she’d been armed and determined…

I think we (Responsible Citizens) need to take a serious look at the Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher and ask, is this what we are willing to be taught, as adults, by our elected officials? I mean, the same values ARE shared, it is the “Hidden Currriculum” overall, I’d say. And it’s downright un-American, including “parenting classes.” The government already had a shot at the majority of the children in this country, through the public school system. If it were my kids, and the teachers failed, I’d go find me a new teacher and system.

OH, I FORGOT TO MENTION — I DID. AND MY CHILDREN WERE STOLEN ON AN OVERNIGHT VISITATION (UNSUPERVISED) PRECISELY BECAUSE I DID. AND PUT BACK IN THE SYSTEM, BECAUSE THEIR MAMA HAD ALREADY FIGURED OUT THAT THE 7 LESSONS WERE BOGUS.

This is a system that brooks no competitors. It allows some, but scoops up any stragglers, and family law is a great place to find them, and weaken them for the snatch.

Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up

July 2, 2009 at 6:10 PM

How bad Is it? ~ Skirting the Truth at Cairo, Telling it in America, Turned Down at Brown, Left to Tell after Rwanda

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I was told to shorten my titles. This was the original:

In Cairo, Obama Delicately Skirts the Issue of Islamic Violence Towards Women, but Chesler (Honor Killings), LetsGetHonest (DV and Christianity), Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Infidel), Nonie Darwish (They Call Me Infidel), Immaculee Ilibagiza (Left to Tell, 91 days in a Rwandan bathroom) shoot from the hip on the dangers of ANY pride/shame/hate-based culture

Note: Of the above “notables” obviously President Obama’s OFFICE outranks the rest of us, but I’ve put 4 famous female voices (& mine) to 2 male to underscore, well, who and what the others have downplayed

Note: LetsGetHonest’s voice here doesn’t mean she considers herself on a par with these feminist &/or COURAGEOUS for Truth women, but that my experience resonates to elements of their voices. I have many role models, but these are among them, particularly Imaculee with her faith and Dr. Chesler with her decades of feminist writing & reporting, including on some matters regarding the courts.

The two “Infidel” Books (“Infidel” and “They Call Me Infidel”) describes aspects of polygamy which – – strangely — spoke the inbred emotional truth of my own family line, in ganging up against a grown, literate mother to (try and!) teach a lesson about authority, and the punishment being removal of children and “excommunication.” (and my family line identifies itself, with apparent pride, as NOT believing in God, this is for supposedly inferior intellects and emotionally weak individuals).

[Have been told to shorten the posts, too, not just the titles. Working on it!]

This post, July 2 (2 days before “Independence Day” USA) had been on hold. Unlike several women featured here, I added my voice to theirs, telling it like it is, then self-censored out of fear: I felt MY contribution was too radical, too out-spoken, and too indignant.

Well . . . .

BUT, I have noticed the headlines since July 2nd — a litany of murder/suicides, family annihilations, and slaps on the wrist for men punching, stalking, kidnapping or threatening to kill women, after which they then kill. I had my children stolen for daring to report abuse, violations of court orders, and for refusing to “submit” to arbitrary orders on how to dumb down my smart daughters. I know what “shunning” is. I know what “enabling abuse” is.

I have never experienced fundamentalist Islamic violence against women, but the sense of the Christian version of it over here is starting to feel like a sort of ritual purging process. It is starting to ffeel like “No Exit” unless there is a miraculous parting of the Red Tape, a CLOUD covering my behind and a FIRE leading the way. We already tried the “appeal to reason” paradigm, or the “appeal to law” ONE, ALSO. We also did the “it’s not in your best interest” reason, but some people will pay a lot of money for the privilege of refusing to stop abusing. Like they say, truth is on the auction block, and was sold cheap, Lies fetched a higher price.

I pay attention, and have SEEN Protestant so-called Christian Caucasian men drilling young men how to dominate women twice their age in the name of their god, and been subjected to this as well. Recently. Yeech — Retch! What kind of “sanctuary” is that??

However, now that a suburban California back yard finally released ,29-year-old Jaycee Dugard and her 11 year old and 15 year old girls fathered by the man who kidnapped HER when she was only 11, I felt this post is quite appropriate:

This case is shocking for its combination of statistics (18 years! Missed opportunities! “We never knew!” “But they looked like a nice couple!” “I spoke with Jaycee on the phone, she was courteous and professional” (She was not only a sex slave, but also supported this man’s business while living in shack-like conditions in a back yard with her kids). A WOMAN called the police reporting that people were living in the back yard. Like my calls and reports to police that another man, their father, was going to kidnap MY daughters, her voice was not heard.

Are we willing to listen and change behavior YET? The behavior “we” need to change is to get smart and act on hunches. While people who take the scriptures too literally are castigated and censored, disdained in public media, how about some of us in the U.S. start taking the 3 charters of freedom: Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights literally for a change? Starting by knowing their INtents based on their CONtents! And then recognizing that humanity is a DNA thing, not a color thing or a gender thing! And the usage of “all men are created equal” in the first was NOT “men vs. women” and did not say, although it was so practiced, “all Caucasian landowning males.” It meant ALL EQUAL and not to be colonized, or, like Miss Dugard (sr.) was, pimped.

I am United States citizen by birth, and was never beaten, or degraded because of my gender before I married. Nor was I forced into marriage. But women of faith or no faith nowadays who attempt to leave, risk being stripped of children, or killed, for the act of — leaving their marriage and asserting legal rights they already have.

While our current President has described the angst and sense of loss he felt not having his father in his life growing up, the rest of us describe some of what it’s like to be a target of violence and punishment for the crime of having been born without a Y chromosome, for some, a life sentence punishable by death.

President Obama, pre-election, helping out Senator Bayh in Indiana, with some more Mother-Omission:

2006 – EVER TRYING TO RAM THROUGH ANOTHER BILL, FINE-TUNING & REDEFINING FATHERHOOD AND HEALTHY MARRIAGE

As one of my fellow-bloggers commented in Indiana Mothers for Custodial Justice: Evan Bayh is not his Father’s Son,

Senator Evan Bayh’s (fatherhood-promoted) own father Senator BIRCH Bayh, was in favor of equal rights for women: so much for a chip off the old block, and passing down values from father to son, politically.

According to this post (Verifiable Here) both Senator Evan and then-Senator Obama co-sponsored YET ANOTHER “Healthy marriage and Responsible Fatherhood” bill, which was defeated in 2006.

Like this Senator, and another well-known FR attorney from the Chicago Area, both the Senators also remembered all the Hoopla around Father’s Day, Fatherhood, Father Celebration, and etc., etc. (can we say “patriarchal?”) in June PR (June is Father’s Day month, FYI), but forgot the same on Mother’s Day, in May. Actually, in 2009 and (I found) 2008, PR around now-President and then-Senator Obama eclipsed this acknowledgement of where they came from, literally (they had mothers, right?), as the word “Mother” has become, as I blogged elsewhere, virtually invisible linguistically in connection with “families” on the whitehouse.gov site. The preferred term, for those of you not in the know, is “Parent” when it comes to the divorce situation, and “Women” when it comes to who’s having violence (including murder) perpetrated against them by, often enough by the father of mutual children.

~ ~ ~ ~

It is difficult to control a population aware of their “unalienable rights,” not intimidated by verbal derogatory talk, or economically dependent upon abusers or captive to them by the threat of death as they leave. Now one factor that often gives a mother courage and motivation to LEAVE abuse is precisely her motherhood, so no wonder it would be threatening to any:

Fear/Shame/Pride-based culture or religion.

The mother/daughter/son bond, culturally needs to be degraded and broken (stepmothers will do) if we are to have a truly sheepish culture that will do what they are told without protest. Family Court venue is GREAT for this, and I happen to believe was designed for the purpose, despite all the hoopla from under-funded (??), under-recognized (????????) fathers, especially those who like to minimize their own violence towards their own women, often prompting separation, which even that bill (above) recognizes is a primary cause of separation!

@@@

The link “parsing Obama” caught my attention, and led to an article from “Real Clear Politics” on the Cairo Speech.

I have just written on “Women” vs. “Mother” and the weak (# occurrences) presence of both when it comes to Family Issues being discussed under the current US Administration’s “White House” page. Not only were the words barely absent, but their usage (which I didn’t analyze and post — but noticed) was also weak. In looking for the word “mothers” I would have to assume that after the age requiring home nurse visitations, we don’t exist. For example, the President’s own mother was transformed into the word “parent” in a sentence highlighting absence of a father. To people who haven’t been through systemic prejudice against their “mothering” it may not register, but when examined, it’s blatant PR omission. It undermines the credibility of the whole page. (granted, the month was the month of Father’s Day, however, if someone has a record of this page during May and wishes to countradict my post, please feel free to comment).

SIMILARLY, when it comes to speaking in this nation, Egypt, the mention of Islamic violence (not bias, but violence) toward women, the omission is just as loud.

So, I just slapped up the article, with someone else’s commentary on it, for your consumption. Then I searched out and pasted up interviews, articles or book reviews from several women who do NOT Delicately skirt the issue of violence towards women, and hate talk in general. Two of these women came to America, and one of them, since coming, has converted from Islam to Christianity.

A third woman from Rwanda didn’t convert, but was already Christian. Her story isn’t about gender violence, but it was another “can’t put down” book of survival in the face of hate, and refusal to hate back. The individual verbal abuse or hate talk that often DOES escalate to physical domestic violence got me (in marriage, after marriage) sensititve to moods and fluctuations in language that might indicate an “event” about to erupt also precedes genocides or attempted genocides. The speech sometimes works the speaker or groups of speakers up, or justifies the abuse. Whether the Holocaust or Rwanda, hate talk is a danger sign. Just as PTSD from domestic violence does indeed have similarities with PTSD from actual war.

So, this had me also noticing books and commentaries on the languages preceding genocides or attempted genocides; Rwanda had caught my attention earlier from the book on which the movie “Hotel Rwanda” was based. This book details times when pastors protected, and times when pastors betrayed, those that were being hunted down. So I include the “Left To Tell” book because it seems relevant.

And I added my two bits. And a few links indicating that this fatherhood stuff is turning to vigilante behavior, unfortunately. And pointed out, again, what our Declaration of Independence was about….

On my blogroll to the right, is a little Youtube showing just how low my President bowed, casually, quickly, to the leader of a Muslim country, in the company of Queen Elizabeth and a G20 meeting. This disturbs me, and was of some serious debate in a blogtalkradio dialogue (as I recall the source, anyhow) moderated by Dr. Phyllis Chesler and Marcia Pappas of NYS NOW. Is he the leader of the free world, or at least part of it? Then what’s that obeisance about? Would he kneel to the Pope to be politically correct, kiss the ring and insult all those boys and girls abused by priests, and the concept upon which this nation was founded, Bill of Rights Number I?

I myself am VERY disturbed at how domestic violence killings are starting to take on a vigilante nature, as if in retaliation to a woman leaving a family, or exposing a sin, how DARE she? As a mature woman and mother who has been dumped by the roadside by a combination of my own family and my ex-batterer, apparently for — again, exposing family something or other — I am thinking about:

How
Why
Who ARE these people?
What IS this world?

How many OTHER myths have I believed about life, my country, my family, the legal system, etc.? I will tell you one I have let go of: “The American Dream.” I have switched this my dream from anything material, and am changing it to a character issue, a personal one with myself.

I am calling upon the combination of my God (NOT the one that is a respecter of persons, or genders, or legalistically profiling and whimsical in judgment, that I have seen in certain places), and my courage, and putting my intellect a good bit lower, respectively, than it used to be. Plus, from within, my emotions of concern and compassion for others, and whatever picture I can imagine. Indignation about injustice only goes so far, and as the injustice basically never stops, another motivation must be found.

I think part of the trouble around here is that people pretend to be neutral and detached (a high value) when they aren’t anything of the sort. They can incite to violence, ride roughshod over families, due process, and civil rights, as easily as any other nation or culture, but claim this is based on “evidence-based practices.” In one place on this post, I included a Rwandan woman — the issue was not on men versus women, but the same principles: hate talk towards a certain group of people (Tutsis) and how quickly it ignited.

We have become an incredibly morally bankrupt place (as well as fiscally — and they are related), while drowning in certain materials and products. However, the solution to this is not to be found in the institutions, but rather in the people who are aware that these institutions are not going to replace human basic functions of: produce, protect, educate, alleviate, CREate (when it comes to arts, ideas, concepts, etc.), that which we have procreated. If you’re new to this blog, you’ll notice that when I have a strong emotional reaction to a certain thing (or idea), I pile on labels, like sauce on a hamburger, or whipped cream on a milkshake, or, . . . . or. . . .

I was referring to the churches, some of which I left voluntarily, and one of which I got thrown out of last month for being female, having understanding of a Biblical passage, and speaking up (even with permission). How dare I think I knew something!

See:

“Family Values” Pundits not so upstanding themselves.

This is a new site to me: REAL CLEAR POLITICS. This dates to June 2009

I simply posted the whole article. Any italics are my emphasis, some (not all) of the other style changes are mine, too:

Did Obama Say Enough About Women’s Rights?
Posted by Cathy Young | Email This | Permalink | Email Author

As I said in my previous post, I had a largely positive reaction to Obama’s Cairo speech. However, I agree with David Frum’s criticsm of Obama’s comments about women’s rights — which should have been a key part of an “outreach to Muslims” speech. In contrast to Obama’s strong affirmation of the principles of democracy, his discussion of women’s issues and Islam was too general, too weak, and afflicted with excessive even-handedness.

{{with which “even handedness, as I have beLABORED in previous posts, the Whitehouse.gov agenda on families is not even remotely afflicted. It flat out ignores the fact, practically, that mothers exist. Period.}}

Here is the passage in its entirety: (OBAMA):

“The sixth issue that I want to address is women’s rights

“I know there is debate about this issue. {{“debate”?!?}} I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality. And it is no coincidence that countries where women are well-educated are far more likely to be prosperous.

Now let me be clear: issues of women’s equality are by no means simply an issue for Islam.

{{EXCUUUUUSE me? Is this or is this not a dodge, or an understatement? Was there a political or safety reason for this understatement at this particular conference?

http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/211/are-honor-killings-simply-domestic-violence

I have posted an excerpt below. And photos. OK, now you may continue reading President Obama’s speech…}}}}

“In Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia, we have seen Muslim-majority countries elect a woman to lead. Meanwhile, the struggle for women’s equality continues in many aspects of American life, and in countries around the world.

Our daughters can contribute just as much to society as our sons, and our common prosperity will be advanced by allowing all humanity – men and women – to reach their full potential. I do not believe that women must make the same choices as men in order to be equal, and I respect those women who choose to live their lives in traditional roles. But it should be their choice. That is why the United States will partner with any Muslim-majority country to support expanded literacy for girls, and to help young women pursue employment through micro-financing that helps people live their dreams.”

Frum takes issue, in particular, with Obama’s remarks about the head-covering issue: he points out that not only “some in the West,” but many women in the Muslim world regard the hijab as a symbol of female submission (not to God but to man), and that many women who “choose” to cover themselves (sometimes not only their hair but their face) do so because of coercion and intimidation either by family members or by radical Islamic militias. I do believe Obama was right to affirm a woman’s right to choose hijab; quite a few Muslim feminists regard it as a legitimate and positive form of religious expression, no different from the Jewish yarmulke, and quite a few moderately traditional Muslims are alienated by the categorical rejection of the hijab as oppressive. However, it would have been fitting to balance his statement with an assertion of a woman’s right to choose not to cover their hair — a right that, in some countries, they are denied not only by informal pressure and harassment, but by law and official policy.

As for the rest of this passage, it was nice of Obama to assert the importance of educational opportunities for girls and women, but that’s about as uncontroversial as it gets: who, except for the Taliban, disagrees? In all too many Muslim countries, the main problems facing women are far more severe: forced marriage, vastly unequal treatment when it comes to divorce and child custody, and socially sanctioned violence. How can one talk about women’s rights in the Muslim world and not mention honor killings? Or the horrific recent public flogging by a Taliban militia in Pakistan of a 17-year-old girl whose apparent offense was to have stepped outside her house without a male relative escorting her? Or cases in which Islamic courts have sentenced rape victims to death for fornication or adultery when the rape could not be proved under a stringent standard requiring two male witnesses? (While we’re at it, how about the fact that in Islamic courts, the word of a female witness is officially given half the weight of a man’s?) What about female genital mutilation? Against the backdrop of these genuine horrors, literacy programs and micro-financing for young women’s employment look like a rather feeble response. How about first ensuring that the girl who participates in a literacy program doesn’t get brutalized for showing a strand of hair in public?

In this context, Obama’s comment that “the struggle for women’s equality” is also a problem in America is also, to say the least, unhelpful. Yes, there are still gender disparities in the U.S., though I think many of them are due to, as Obama put it, women not making the same choices as men. But to mention what sexism still remains in American society in the same breath as the violent misogyny and patriarchal oppression still pervasive in much of the Muslim world today is a truly misguided attempts at even-handedness. It’s a bit like saying that of course it’s a bad thing that of course it’s a bad thing that Joe locks his wife in the closet, beats her senseless, forbids her to talk to any other man and monitors every penny she spends, but hey, Bill spends only half the time his wife does on housework and child care and treats his own career as more important than his wife’s, so if he voices disapproval of Joe he’d better mention his own failings too.

Yes, of course it’s not only in Muslim countries that women face severe oppression. (The issue of women being elected to lead in deeply patriarchal cultures is a separate, and fascinating, one, but I don’t think it’s a good measure of the overall status of women in society.) And I know there is a vigorous debate about whether Islam is inherently more female-unfriendly than other major religions and whether an Islamic feminsm is possible. Nonetheless, the fact remains that in recent decades we have seen a rollback of women’s rights in many societies — sometimes a drastic rollback — due to the influence of Islamic extremism. Obama’s failure to mention this fact was extremely disappointing. Talk about a missed opportunity. In my previous post, I said that Obama’s comments on women’s rights deserved no more than a B-. Analyzing them now, I’m lowering the grade to a gentleman’s C.

I give it an “F.” See below:

PLEASE READ THIS ARTICLE: I PASTE ENOUGH TO ENCOURAGE YOU TO GET OVER THERE AND READ IT!

Dr. Phyllis Chesler:

Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence? (title is URL)

by Phyllis Chesler
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2009

Families that kill for honor will threaten girls and women if they refuse to cover their hair, their faces, or their bodies or act as their family’s domestic servant; wear makeup or Western clothing; choose friends from another religion; date; seek to obtain an advanced education; refuse an arranged marriage; seek a divorce from a violent husband; marry against their parents’ wishes; or behave in ways that are considered too independent, which might mean anything from driving a car to spending time or living away from home or family. Fundamentalists of many religions may expect their women to meet some but not all of these expectations. But when women refuse to do so, Jews, Christians, and Buddhists are far more likely to shun rather than murder them. Muslims, however, do kill for honor, as do, to a lesser extent, Hindus and Sikhs.

{{Everything underlined here, was an issue in my Western, non-Muslim marriage. I snuck education. I was stalked, through my own family and individually for leaving to the point that I have had major fear to finalize this divorce, and have not; I experienced retaliation consistently of engaging in activities outside the home, specifically anything that related to my former profession. This retaliation could come in the form of interfering with me getting out the door, or sabotage — allowing me to start, but making it hard to complete, a simple season’s engagement; complaining about or withholding funding for something as elementary as a simple black skirt and shirt to perform in; display of weapons immediately after returning from a rehearsal, leaving the car with insufficient gas to get back from one, and other night-mare-inducing behavior. This extended also to times my daughters were engaged in music as well; UNBELIEVABLE. I have watched my piano be physically attacked, buried under virtual trash, and then I was mocked for not practicing it enough, which I barely could find time to do in a day. I left home once, with an infant, in another state, for a week. I was given extra tasks to complete before leaving, and I came back to a house that was dangerously trashed –NO dishes had been done, broken glass on the floor (and we had a baby), and a special plant/bush I’d given him had not been watered, and was dead. Food in pots was moldy; I was stunned. In subsequent (to marriage) public times, in court, he repeatedly talked about the condition of the house, as if I didn’t also work, or was solely responsible. I had an unbelievable time getting access to a car, which was resented.

Finally, when I was able to leave the family home for two weeks, for a music camp, with daughters, when I returned, I’d been thrown out of the bedroom, a lock installed, and in short, this was when I determined to leave. These TYPES of activities continued, to this day, post-separation. Every decision I made that entailed putting daughters in a music class, or lessons, was permitted reluctantly, but eventually stopped. Then public declarations were made that I was isolating and depriving them. I attended a VERY liberal Midwestern college, and as a young person, was not restricted or berated for anything regarding my gender. The place I met this man was not illiberal — it ordained women, we preached in teams, and sometimes lived together.

During this marriage, I began to doubt that I was indeed in America. I had never heard of any experience like this, or known anyone who had experienced a situation like this violence, and abuse. Speaking of it to the variety of people I did, indeed, come in front of year after year, few of them had words to describe this thing that was happening to me. To this day, my “liberal” relatives will not use the word “domestic violence” or “abuse” in front of me, practically, and appear to be furious that I have actually spoken in these terms and insisted that this is indeed what happened. The denial has taken it beyond the legal terms — there has been, within my family — a literal denial that any of the laws to protect people from domestic violence exist, apply, or have anything to do with our case, or my many difficulties. Experientially, it needs a name. Now, gradually, through blogging, networking, reading, talking — and I have not been through ANYthing like the women below here — I have come to understand that this is a serious moral / emotional / social crisis our country is in. There are powerful political factors that HAVE to say the words “domestic violence” with their mouths, because the cat is out of the bag, and the horse is out of the barn. BUT, they are diluting, reframing, derailing the conversation and attempting, in many and disturbing ways, to turn back the clock on this matter of women saying NO! You can NOT do this! and saying it through the courts.

Every woman has to determine how she is going to respond to this shunning, when women in our world survive, and are emotionally supported primarily through their connections with others. that is the value that is respected (often) with American women. We are in our communities, we have children OR, we have careers, or juggle both. For women of my age (middle, OK?) to have both lost children AND career, and contact with their family, but not be a radical feminist, is indeed interesting. We can come into the church perhaps as ministers, acolytes (so to speak), or servants supporting its infrastructure. I, for one, no longer care to support the infrastructure of anything so dysfunctional. I consider myself to be courageous and independent (in certain ways), but there comes a burnout level. I have PTSD, and when exposed to more “women, get thee behind me, Satan” talk in certain denominations (many of them), I simply have to speak up, then leave. I will not hang out there. At least I have a few options.

To survive abuse, sometimes, one has to become two people: a public one and a private one. This includes sometimes with one’s spouse. At some level, my soul was not going to show itself any more, for another verbal beating for mere existence. Instead, I took the verbal tirades for being, supposedly, apathetic, wimpy, not caring and passive. Well, being anything else got me physically assaulted, or some other form of escalation, sometimes involving property destruction, or attack on pets. Children were in the home. I just couldn’t keep that up, and guess what: No one was backing me up. No one was confronting this man, really. At the end of the day, I had to come home to sleep. He began accumulating guns, and large knives. I don’t use these, or know how to, and it wasn’t too long (although more than a year) after this that I realized — we had to separate. I cannot tell you the level of shame and embarrassment I had, with or without children, having to hide my mail, ask strangers for rides, or a few $$ to put in the ggas tank (if I had a car). One night, I got stranded late at night in a downtown urban area after my night job. I took a ride with what might have been a drug dealer to get to a gas station. My ex came and got me, but with the news that someone had run over the cat that day, my favorite one (I always found this suspicious timing). The concern for my personal safety was at zero level. I kept journals. My journals were targeted, and I had to remove them from the home for safekeeping. He went after, and befriended the people keeping them, I got them back.

NOW: Now, I cannot live that dual personality way, and will not. When I go into a church and am expected to adopt a certain demeanor — I won’t. It’s like violence to the soul. I am one person: I will tell someone (in my family) if I am upset with them, and why.

The Court System:

The Family Court system in this country has become a charade. It rewards short-term performance in front of evaluators, mediators, judges, and other people. No one really looks behind the scenes — there is no interest, time or resources to fully check facts. For the most part. This system rewards the batterer “snake” personality: Charming, manipulative, dissembling. Or, alternately, wounded and looking helpless. I have seen a (female) judge leap to aid my ex, to the extent of testifying for him, as if he could not speak. I have watched him interrupt an attorney and derail the direct question, and get away with this. When I go to court, I am primarily PTSD, although I try pretty hard. All such a person needs to do is get through the next appearance with some person in authority, get their way, and afterwards, do whatever they want.

There are too many similarities between the hypocrisies and coverups of fundamentalist religion, and what I see in these courts. It is going to take women, feminist women, to address it. The other factor is, in this court, children are involved. We are not always 100% on board with the radical feminist regimes. I cannot tell you how many women in my situation, leaving batterers, losing their kids to stand by helplessly as their kids are showing symptoms of abuse, including child sexual abuse, are themselves religious. Many of them, their husbands or partners specifically targeted them in these circles — because the environment is male-domination-friendly.

When I say in my posts, that churches are NOT havens for women leaving violence, or necessarily shelters for them, I am absolutely in earnest. i hope, in my way, to be able to speak to this and do something about the shameful failure to support — or even SPEAK about — the laws against violence towards women, and children — in these venues. They are in their own ether, with their own agenda, and their own intents. I do not believe this is the genuine religion of, in my case, the man Jesus Christ as I read about him in scripture. I read nothing about his abusive or dismissive treatment of women; in fact it is the opposite. I think what we have now is a charade of that. For the most part. I don’t think most people have the guts to do what he did, but some do.

(WOW — where did THAT come from? Well, I’ll post. I may erase some of it another day…..)

Amina Said (L), 18, and her sister Sarah, 17, were shot dead by their father Yaser at their home in Irving, Texas, in January 2008. Said was upset by his daughters’ “Western ways” and was assisted in the killing by his wife, the girls’ mother. The victims of honor killings are largely teenage daughters or young women. Unlike ordinary domestic violence, honor killings often involve multiple family members as perpetrators.

Let’s Get Honest comments:

In “ordinary domestic violence” family members could be either hostages, victims, OR enablers. The truth is, it takes enablers for a PATTERN of domestic violence to thrive and grow. There is denial, there is incompetence, there is scapegoating, there is helpless ignorance in what to do. Many people in my culture have very strong emotions, but in certain classes and circles, this is not “socially acceptable.” So they suppress them behind circuitous speech, evasive answers, or simply no answers. When I got, out, I had some strong emotions (anger) as I began to stop hating myself (which was safer) and be angry. My anger was noticed – his violence, and the danger this represented — was not. I only recently simply decided to forgive, and do this entirely detached from any reason to, other than a decision, and a desire to be free from anger, and reactionary mode, which is typically either anger, or depression, when the insults, aggressions, etc. continue. That’s how I am choosing to handle it at this point.

I am posting quite a bit here about Islamic violence towards women. However, I am doing so with an understanding that forms of Protestantism (mainstream and nonmainstream) Christianity can still kill, destroy, and maim — physically and emotionally. I am here to warn out country not to ignore this hate talk from governmental circles towards women. In the lingo of domestic violence, denying it is a form of it (a.k.a. crazymaking). Below, is a passage from “Infidel” about “baari.” If I am able, I will find the passage from a Focus on the Family publication that sounds uncomfortably similar. And I will say, the “shunning” and patronizing (social, psychological) takes a different form, but still exists, when a Christian woman throws out an abusive husband and then shows up in church unapologetic.

And expecting to be treated with respect. Or worse, looking for an opportunity to actually speak or teach the Bible (this was why I got thrown out of the last place, and I was entirely too submissive in that as well). I finally came to the conclusion that it was safer outside those buildings.

Another alarming trend, vigilante-style behavior — AND TALK — around the issues of the family courts. Continuing on the topic of Honor Killings, which was “skirted” nicely in the Cairo speech, above….

The United Nations Population Fund estimates that 5,000 women are killed each year for dishonoring their families. This may be an underestimate. Aamir Latif, a correspondent for the Islamist website Islam Online who writes frequently on the issue, reported that in 2007 in the Punjab province of Pakistan alone, there were 1,261 honor murders. The Aurat Foundation, a Pakistani nongovernmental organization focusing on women’s empowerment, found that the rate of honor killings was on track to be in the hundreds in 2008.

There are very few studies of honor killing, however, as the motivation for such killings is cleansing alleged dishonor and the families do not wish to bring further attention to their shame, so do not cooperate with researchers. Often, they deny honor crimes completely and say the victim simply went missing or committed suicide. Nevertheless, honor crimes are increasingly visible in the media. Police, politicians, and feminist activists in Europe and in some Muslim countries are beginning to treat them as a serious social problem…

(SO WHY ISN”T OUR PRESIDENT?)

PLEASE ALSO, READ THESE TWO BOOKS. OK, THREE. I DID. I COULDN’T PUT THEM DOWN, IN FACT. AND I FELT I WAS READING ABOUT MY OWN FAMILY. I LIVE IN THE WEST. I LIVE IN THE USA. I DIDN’T EXPERIENCE, PHYSICALLY, AT ALL THE SAME AS THESE WOMEN. WHY DID IT FEEL FAMILIAR?

I FEEL AS THOUGH OUR FAMILY HAS BECOME LIKE A POLYGAMOUS CULT, AND WE ARE A SMALL, NUCLEAR, PROFESSIONALLY INVOLVED FAMILY, ABOUT 3RD GENERATION IN THE COUNTRY. NO ONE HAS BEEN JAILED. WHY DID THE BEHAVIOR SOUND SO FAMILIAR, AND WHAT’S GOING ON? I BELIEVE THAT IT IS THE EMOTIONAL, SPIRITUAL CONTENT OF THE BEHAVIOR WHICH IS THE SAME, FROM CULTURE TO CULTURE, EXPRESSED DIFFERENTLY. HATE IS STILL HATE.

This book, and woman, are so well-known, I don’t think there is too much to be added. However, if not, READ.

WIKIPEDIA: (evidently not fully current)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali ( pronunciation (help·info); Somali: Ayaan Xirsi Cali; born Ayaan Hirsi Magan 13 November 1969 in Somalia)[1]is a Dutch feminist, writer, and politician. She is the estranged daughter of the Somali scholar, politician, and revolutionary opposition leader Hirsi Magan Isse. She is a prominent critic of Islam, and her screenplay for Theo Van Gogh‘s movieSubmission led to death threats. Since van Gogh’s assassination by a Muslim extremist in 2004, she has lived in seclusion under the protection of Dutch authorities.

When she was eight, her family left Somalia for Saudi Arabia, then Ethiopia, and eventually settled in Kenya. She sought and obtained political asylum in the Netherlands in 1992, under circumstances that later became the center of a political controversy. In 2003 she was elected a member of the House of Representatives (the lower house of the Dutch parliament), representing the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). A political crisis surrounding the potential stripping of her Dutch citizenship led to her resignation from the parliament, and led indirectly to the fall of the second Balkenende cabinet.

She is currently a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, working from an unknown location in the Netherlands.[2][3] In 2005, she was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.[4] She has also received several awards for her work, including Norway’s Human Rights Service’s Bellwether of the Year Award, the Danish Freedom Prize, the Swedish Democracy Prize, and the Moral Courage Award for commitment to conflict resolution, ethics, and world citizenship.[5]

HERE IS A LINK TO A 2007 Interview (NY Mag Review of Books). “The Infidel Speaks,” by Boris Kachka, Feb. 4, 2007

SHE SAYS SOME EXTRAORDINARILY RELEVANT THINGS.

I THINK IT EXTRAORDINARLY REMARKABLE THAT MY PRESIDENT DIDN’T MENTION MUCH ABOUT THE TREATMENT OF WOMEN, OR ANY OF THESE EXTRAORDINARY ONES, WHEN VISITING A MUSLIM COUNTRY. NOTE (AS TO “CAIRO SPEECH”), NONIE DARWISH, BELOW, FLED EGYPT FOR THE USA, AND CONVERTED TO CHRISTIANITY. HER YOUTUBE AND A PARTIAL INTERVIEW IS BELOW (SO LABELED: THIS IS THE SOMALIAN SWEDISH AMERICAN WOMAN HERE:

To her admirers, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a maverick, bravely defying the Netherlands’ political correctness to address Europe’s growing cultural rifts. To detractors, she’s a charismatic bomb-thrower with as little regard for her adopted nation’s safety as for her own. Both sides would have to admit that the former Somali-Dutch politician is a master of self-reinvention. After a rough childhood (circumcision, daily beatings) in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Saudi Arabia, she escaped to Holland from a forced marriage, eventually joined the Dutch Parliament as a Muslim criticizing her own culture, and made a provocative film with Theo van Gogh that got him killed and sent her into hiding.

This is why I think that, just perhaps, President Obama might have been a little remiss to simply not address this issue in a Muslim nation. Nonie Darwish’s father was killed in jihad, and she left Egypt for the US. Now here is an American leader back in Egypt, speaking on this topic, and nothing substantial?

When a rival threatened to revoke her citizenship, the resulting furor toppled the governing coalition. But Ali just moved on, resigning and moving to Washington, D.C., where she now works for the American Enterprise Institute. It’s all retold in her eloquent new memoir, Infidel. Stopping by Soho House recently, she spoke with New York about life and politics in her latest adopted land.

You’ve been here for six months. How do you like the U.S.?
That is the question they all ask! I love it. The most comforting thing is the anonymity. I’m not allowed to talk about security—to tell you who in this room is security and who is not—but the pressure cooker of Holland is over. I am now just one individual in the melting pot.

You’re at a conservative think tank—perhaps an odd place for a harsh critic of religion in political life.
I consider myself nonpartisan, but I’m a liberal—not in the American sense, because Americans seem to refer to communists as liberals. What we see in Europe, because of the welfare state, is government pretending to provide all sorts of services they shouldn’t be providing.

Let’s Get Honest comment: My point EXACTLY, in many of these posts!

But what do you make of Christian conservatives in your ranks?
No one in the American Enterprise imposes their beliefs. We clash, and I think that’s what the West is all about.

But you’re with them on the whole “clash of civilizations” thing?
When I was in Holland, the idea was, all cultures are equal and all are to be preserved. My idea was, no, all humans are equal but not all cultures are equal. In the culture of my parents, we never seemed to be able to succeed in such basic issues as getting food, interacting and living in peace with each other, or adapting to our environment, and the West, they’ve succeeded in all those. I’d been taught Western culture’s only bad. Maybe that’s good for your self-esteem, but it wasn’t taking us anywhere.

This woman comes from WHERE? And she understands the Declaration of Independence (principles) better than we do? It’s not the CULTURE, it’s the HUMANS:

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

THAT IS THE PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENTS. NOT DISHING OUT HAPPINESS AND HEALTH, BUT SECURING THOSE RIGHTS!

That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

LOCALLY SPEAKING, SOME WOMEN NEED TO DISBAND THEIR FAMILY UNIT, TO SECURE THEIR SAFETY. WHO THE HELL IS THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES TO UNDERMINE THAT DECISION BY GOVERNMENTAL DECREE, AS HAS BEEN DONE IN THE FATHERHOOD RESOLUTIONS, GRANTS, INITIATIVES, AND TASK FORCES ?? ???

THE MAIN QUESTION IN THESE MATTERS IS WHETHER OR NOT WOMEN ARE INCLUDED IN THE INCLUSIVE NOUN “MEN” NOW, WOMEN HAD TO FIGHT FOR THIS, BUT IN 1920, AFTER SLAVES, WE MANAGED TO GET THE RIGHT TO VOTE. THIS WOMAN CAME FROM A RELIGION, THE NAME OF WHICH MEANT, “SUBMIT.” THE NAME OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT, PER DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE FROM GREAT BRITAIN, ABOVE, IS IN ESSENCE, PERMIT.

NOW AS TO FAITH-BASED INITIATIVES, I’D LIKE TO CITE THE PRIMARY CHRISTIAN VERSE USED TO JUSTIFY WIFE-BEATING:

You’ve dismissed accusations that you’re lashing out because of childhood traumas. So why write a memoir graphically detailing the abuse you and your siblings suffered?
It became important to say, “Okay, you guys keep accusing me of using my past. Let me tell you my story, and my story shows that I do not blame the death of my sister on Islam. I do not blame female genital mutilation on Islam.” My whole awakening was triggered by the eleventh of September, and it did not affect only me, it affected a lot of people.

Do you regret certain things you said about Muhammad—like that he was a pervert and a tyrant?
I don’t regret that. I’m still convinced that for Muslims to integrate fully into modern society, we cannot avoid discussing the prophet. We didn’t only deal with communism militarily, but we said it is a bad idea. The works of Karl Marx were discussed.

Maybe academia would have been a better—and less dangerous—venue.
Politics is not a good thing for me. But I wanted to bring out the issue of Muslim treatment of women in Holland, and I could only accomplish that in Parliament. If I had been a professor, it would just have disappeared in a cabinet.

“the Territory that is now Somalia was divided between the British and the Italians, who occupied the country as colonizers, splitting it in two. In 1960 the colonizers left, leaving behind a brand-new, independent state. A unified Somalia was born.”

Page 12 of her book “”Of course my mother had no right to a divorce under Muslim law.” “a woman who is baari is like a pious slave

“If in the process of baari you feel grief, humiliation, and everlasting exploitation you hide it. If you long for love and comfort you pray in silence to Allah to make your husband more bearable

Page 13 of her book

AND:

“They call me infidel”. Ex-Muslim Christian Nonie Speaks out

This was of interest to me because the author had experienced a regime change within her home country, and then come to America and experienced a change of religion. So she spoke of the qualitative differences.

(11/20/2006)

Egyptian-born Nonie Darwish is “too controversial” to speak at Brown University, where her invitation to speak was just taken back. The title of her new book about says it all Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror . Good luck with that one. Here, where we’ve been attacked by jihadists, we don’t like to hear about the enemy we face.

(THIS IS AN INTERVIEW. EXCERPTS, HERE:)

LOPEZ: Are the majority of Muslim women oppressed? What can be done for them?

DARWISH: The majority of Muslim women are oppressed and that is due to Islamic sharia law which severely discriminates against women. Even the most educated and powerful Muslim women are faced with a legal system that is very discriminatory against women. Muslim women start the marital relationship from a weaker position. The Muslim marriage contract itself is unfair to women because Muslim men can add three more wives if he wishes. That changes the dynamic of husband/wife relationship even if a Muslim man does not exercise this right. Polygamy has a devastating impact on families. There are chronic social ills and tragedies stemming from this single right.

The court system is designed to oppress women, without a doubt.

{{Commentary: I read her book. She talks about how polygamy (one man, many women) pollutes relationships not just between the man and the woman, but also between women: backbiting, whispering, intrigue. I remembered my own case, which has many women involved in protecting a single man, vigorously defending his behavior, which was criminal, as though it were honorable, and I were the criminal for speaking up. I could not put this book down, asking WHY? does this sound like my family? I think these are spiritual issues, and that while the West does NOT endorse polygamy, within the court systems, at least, many of these dynamics are at play — first wives, second wives, etc. They are used against each other, undermining ALL women. }}

LOPEZ: How prevalent is “honor killing”?

DARWISH: According to Islamic law sex outside marriage is prohibited and the penalty for that is often death. The woman is always to blame because she is regarded as the source of the seduction. Muslim men’s honor is dependent on their women’s sexual purity. It does not matter how honorable the character of the Muslim man; but if his female relatives commit any sexual taboos, Muslim society will dishonor him. Arab culture is based on pride and shame** and a Muslim man cannot survive with this kind of shame unless he kills the source of that shame which is the female relative who have had sex outside of marriage. It is not known how common this crime of honor killing happens since it is often goes unreported and the police often looks the other way, but I believe it is common in certain parts of the Muslim world if the girl is discovered to be no longer a virgin or pregnant. That is why most girls in the Middle East remain virgins till marriage and there are very few births out of wedlock in the Middle East.

{{**I am concerned about the culture of “manhood” in the west being based on the same things. It is not a good basis. I also believe that, despite the level of indoctrination being nothing of the like, this same BASIS of education in the U.S. exists — and that is not a good basis for human behavior. Rather, how much better, to respect accomplishment in a variety of life situations. But school is NOT a variety of life situations, it is ONE of life’s many situations. To teach people to be puffed up, or feel inferior, based on their grade performances (although it is good to study and learn, and be able to have those skills), is simply wrong. How much better to be, rather engaged in the process of learning, and let that be the intrinsic reward. We will have better people.

I believe (opening up a bit here) that what happeend to me in music was, I was allowed to be more expressive, and less analytical, also less about, producing a grade. I didn’t value grades — already had them. They did nothing for me socially and weren’t hard enough to earn. They di dnot increase my sense of self-worth at all, as an adolescent. I learned to be ashamed about things that had no basis in shame, including my (good) grades, and so forth. The act of going to and from a classroom is not exactly a major accomplishment in life. The ability to help others learn to do something, or to engage as a human being; to build something, to design something, to perform something. But to fill in the correct multiple choice answers on a test sheet according to data you were fed in a textbook? That’s nothing; it’s for the convenience of the school comparing you to everyone else. . . . .. I remember failing on purpose, just to see what it felt like. I still graduated at the top of my (public high school class). The skills needed in college were entirely different. Thank God, there were pianos and there was singing, which led to different types of social interactions.

I believe that what I noticed about this book was when she spoke about the intense hatred, rivalry and bitter suspicious, ongoing, between women in particular. I have been dealing with this for the many years since I left my ex-husband, after the difficulties while dealing personally with him in the home. It really is wearing to the soul, and saddening. I am still seeking and believing for some of these family issues to resolve, but I feel sad when I see that, for the sake of eradicating my world view and values, my children were, literally, uprooted from contact with me, as if I might contaminate them somehow, with self-confidence, and the courage to be different. The courage to expect a woman to have equal legal rights to a man, in America, our country. So far, “NO DEAL”!!}}}}

LOPEZ: What’s it like to be a journalist in Egypt? Worse than life under the Patriot Act?

DARWISH: I was a journalist in Egypt in the early seventies when I worked at the Middle East News Agency in Cairo, Egypt. I was an editor, translator, and censor. As a censor I decided what was to be allowed for publication and what was not allowed. Egyptian media outlets at the time were controlled more or less by the government. Journalists were not really journalists in the Western sense of looking to expose government corruption and internal problems; they were more concerned in blaming the outside world. Military information was totally off limits in reporting. I once said to a fellow journalist that I met a Jew in one of my trips and that that was the first time I met a Jew. The colleague warned me that Arab journalists who communicate with Jews in foreign countries come back to Egypt in a box. Very few Arab journalists were even aware of the true role of media in a society. As to Western life under the Patriot Act, I think it the opposite Arab government controlled Media. In the West it has often become Media controlled government where freedom of the Press (having too much of a good thing) often comes before other important things in Western society, such as for example national security. Sometimes Western media has no tolerance for any restrictions and that can help America’s enemies.

LOPEZ: What made you leave Egypt?

DARWISH: I always regarded America as the land of hope, equality, and opportunity and that was my motivation. I also wanted to leave the Middle East with its problems, its jihad, its pride, anger, and anti-Semitism and above all the constant state of war with Israel.

I CAUTION, the United States of America, I CAUTION them to monitor the “us/them” mentality in every area of life. I CAUTIOn them to keep a lit on this vigilante return to Fatherhood, and the farming out of any conscience, guidance, and education of their young to anyone such as those in those in the Executive Branch of Government, who are presently engaged in establishing, on one hand a national religion (through a variety of means) and on the other hand, a totalitarian system in which choice is the heresy. Opting out of government involvement in the basic processes of life is a heresy.

There are aspects in which the fatherhood movement — as practiced, reminds me of the KKK. It is the same type of hate speech.

I am going to talk about another, very uncomfortable genocide I have read in some detail about (it just came up, and I continued reading, OK? It’s what I DO!) Rwanda. This is of interest to me because some churches protected, and some betrayed. Here is a personal, amazing story I ran across. Again, it is told by a woman:

“LEFT TO TELL“

In 1994, Rwandan native Ilibagiza was 22 years old and home from college to spend Easter with her devout Catholic family when the death of Rwanda’s Hutu president sparked a three-month slaughter of nearly one million ethnic Tutsis. She survived by hiding in a Hutu pastor’s tiny bathroom with seven other starving women for 91 cramped, terrifying days. This searing firsthand account of Ilibagiza’s experience cuts two ways: her description of the evil that was perpetrated, including the brutal murders of her family members, is soul-numbingly devastating, yet the story of her unquenchable faith and connection to God throughout the ordeal uplifts and inspires. This book is a precious addition to the literature that tries to make sense of humankind’s seemingly bottomless depravity and counterbalancing hope in an all-powerful, loving God.”
-Publisher’s Weekly, Starred Review, March 2006

We all ask ourselves what we would do if faced with the kind of terror and loss that Immaculée Ilibagiza faced during the genocide in her country. Would we allow fear and desperation to fill us with hatred or despair? And should we survive, would our spirit be poisoned, or would we be able to rise from the ashes still encouraged to fulfill our purpose in life, still able to give and receive love? In the tradition of Viktor Frankl and Anne Frank, Immaculée is living proof that human beings can not only withstand evil, but can also find courage in crisis, and faith in the most hopeless of situations. She gives us the strength to find wisdom and grace during our own challenging times.”
-Elizabeth Lesser, co-founder of the Omega Institute, and author of Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

“Left to Tell is for anyone who is weary of the predictable “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” trance most of the world suffers from. Immaculée Ilibagiza breaks that spell by bravely quelling the storm within, and contacting a force so powerful that it allows her to calm the storm “without,” and more important, to forgive the “unforgivable.” Her story is an inspiration to anyone who is at odds with a brother, a nation, or themselves.”
-Judith Garten, teacher and counselor of The 50/50Work© and a child of the WWII Holocaust

(As far as I got on this post July 2, 2009

Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up

July 1, 2009 at 8:09 PM

Posted in "Til Death Do Us Part" (literally), After She Speaks Up - Reporting Child Sexual Abuse, After She Speaks Up - Reporting Domestic Violence and/or Suicide Threats, Designer Families, Domestic Violence vs Family Law, Fatal Assumptions, in Studies, Lethality Indicators - in News, My Takes, and Favorite Takes

Tagged with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Cairo Speech, Christian male violence against women, domestic violence, Due process, Evan Bayh, family annihilation, Feminists, Honor Killings, Imaculee Ilibagiza, Indiana Mothers for Custodial Justice, Left to Tell, murder-suicides, No Safe Place, Nonie Darwish, Not a Chip off the Bayh Block, obfuscation, Phyllis Chesler, President Barack Obama, Rwandan Genocide, social commentary, Social Issues from Religious Viewpoints, Teaching men to dominate, trauma, Turned Down at Brown, women's rights

Experts Examine WHY Breastfeeding is best: We MUST Know!

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Sniffing Language

Cobblers notice shoes, hairdressers notice the other end of a person. I’m a domestic violence survivor, writer, reader, and I notice (sniff, I observe, I sense dynamic alterations in) LANGUAGE — the linguistic environment surrounding present and potential policies that might affect the personal survival, health welfare, and safety of my kids, me, or others I know and love, to be quite blunt about this.

I can detail about when and where this started to happen too. I noticed it, a shift in mental processing of things, a heightened sensitivity to the environment. This was odd — the less time I could dedicate to planning a rehearsal, or choosing a method or approach to a certain topic — because my life was totally dedicated to the safety and survival issues at hand, and seeking ways to ensure them, change the dynamics, and safely set a distance from a man that I simply couldn’t get the courts to give me a restraining order on, or enforce an existing court order of ANY sort, upon. Nor could I get any social group to communally put some pressure on the guy to get real, get a job, or get lost. Or, as I say here, “get honest” about any number of manners. So, I didn’t do the usual things I formerly was taught lead to good rehearsals leading to good singing. I had to get the general idea (as in, repertoire), get in there, go on instinct, respond to the singing I heard in the situation, and just lead.

The odd (and disturbing — at least to certain theories about how things work) about this was, they started singing better. Rehearsals were more dynamic, and skills and sound improved. In more than one group. Go figure! Hmm. . . . .

I came to understand that the habit of being dynamically sensitive to my environment, and little details in it, had carried over into the rehearsal situation. And in the arts, this is GOOD, because they come from the spirit and soul within. I had no time to be cerebral, cognitive and detached, I had to be present, open, and responsive. And that was EXACTLY what the job required!

The exact opposite of this approach to life and relationships can be seen in the detached, categorizing, labeling, and pronouncing language of some of the social sciences. I do not think the entire field should be tossed, but I think that there are serious loopholes when doctrine is made in a laboratory, without understanding that people (adults, children, and others) really DO behave differently under observation, for the most part, than when not. If the family law system acknowledged this, I think custody evaluators would probably be done away with. You can’t really evaluate someone who is doing a performance for you, come on! And if anyone is GREAT a “performance” it’s a family, or an individual, caught up in the cycle of abuse, incest, or domestic violence. Or, alcoholism, for that matter. The whole DEAL is about keeping up the pretense, not talking about it.

A woman’s or a child’s safety could be literally dependent upon how good a front she puts up for public, once the abuser knows he’s being looked at more carefully. I know about this.

For more on this hypersensitivity, see the book “Animals in Translation” by Temple Grandin, an autistic (or autims survivor?) animal behavioralist. I understood, after reading this, how my mind had begun to behave more like a deer in the headlights, after a few years post-restraining order, mid-family court, weekly-exchange of kids-wise. I had lost the sense of predictability in our daily schedule, and I had lost this because EVERY weekend, and leading up to it or recovering from it, I had to deal with a potential incident with the father of our children regarding picking up or, if I was able to, retrieving our children from exchanges. This was one of the most insane custody orders post restraining order I have EVER heard of, but it was all we had to deal with. This also relates directly to why I no longer work in a certain field, in which jobs happened on weekends. The two became so associated in my brain that engaging in in the one, to this day, reminds me of that trauma. This can be great on certain arts, and hell on the rest of life.

PREY animals notice more and interpret less. This is why sometimes horses wear blinders, when pulling a taxi in traffic, for example. Humans are designed to interpret more, and once they have got a label, enabling mental filing, notice less. However, a teacher (or conductor) must both keep the goal in mind AND notice, and reconcile the balance. They learn how to do this (for survival).

Theorists, on the other hand, may continue to get a government funding grant, whether or not their theories are true, work, or help or hurt people. There is a considerable distance between funding and performance. I notice, therefore, cognitive detachment in linguistic descriptions in some of these topics.

Sometimes this “noticing language” habit is entertaining and fun. Sometimes, it’s disturbing and annoying. HOWEVER, I think that society might do well, in general, to listen to some of the people on its outskirts. We are the canaries in the coal mine, and certain things we have to say might contradict (in fact generally WILL contradict) the experts.

Of course, the experts are the ones who have the platform, even when their opinions contradict each other — they seem to carry more weight than anyone whose degrees are not as high or deep (Ph.D.) as others. Remind me, next decade, to go get that Ph.D., maybe it will help…..

That’s one way of explaining that I happen to notice language. And there is a style of talking about basic human behavior (of which stalking happens to relate to hunting, which is sometimes followed by a kill, which is why I don’t like being the one followed, or told by people I report this to, you’re exaggerating. No, I’m not…. I trust the instinct in this one.) I’m almost getting to the point that I don’t trust language that doesn’t take into account some basic human instincts and realities –ONE of which is, soon after birth or after giving birth, making the nipple connection, and nursing — or allowing it to take place.

. . .

OK NOW….

Is there really a war on fatherhood? Or is it on motherhood? Where’s Mom?

Consider this word:

Breastfeeding,

When, where, how and why did it become so odd a human behavior that it required research papers to be published, to examine — or safeguard — it?

What is now called breastfeeding used to be (culturally, and universally) commonplace.

Trailer words associated with the fact that both a breast and getting fed happened to be involved, included:

Nursing, Cherishing, Protecting, Imparting,

Loving, Knowing,

Gentleness, Compassion, Confidence one is loved and wanted,

just being there and looking at each other, or nudging each other in a relaxed, nondemanding fashion,

were formerly normal, healthy human behaviors, and not only right after sex.

(If you’re unclear, see “google images” for some visuals)

I CALL THOSE GOOD THINGS.

Now the relationships between some of these must be studied, so as to better predict [and manage] outcomes

I predict that studying what used to be normal, healthy human behaviors (but have been dismantled by various institutions, and industries in “developed’ countries) will soon become the normal human behavior. It certainly appears to be a healthy way to make a steady income, healthier than most. these days, including producing food, if you’re a small farmer, or milking cows.

Asking, well, was it GOOD or NOT good? If it was good, WHY was it good? How can we duplicate it, or better yet, multiply it, without dismantling, if possible, some of the institutions that formerly dismantled, or put some pretty weird warps, in the human family situation.

Who funds these studies and poses these questions? Typically, a government, or a private foundation funding either the government, or some nonprofit, that has an agenda, or some combination of all of the above, as we find in the Fatherhood Movement’s cooperation between many entitities, casting its wide and technically superb (inter)net (presence) over the human, well, language, eliminating the usage of the word “mother” in order to restructure society into a different image. I am going to post another time about a former (not very reputable) campaign from the heart of Fatherland America, which trumpeted the virtues of “motherhood, virtue, patience, temperance” and so forth. And what they did to whoever they thought wasn’t promoting these.

WHY is Breast Best? Well for one thing, anything so many men are fixated on can’t be all that bad.

Just kidding — WHY is breastfeeding best? Why not ask a Mom? (Where did Mom go, anyhow??)

Nursing is normal. Did I know much about it before I began? Honestly, no. I just, well, there was this brand new kid on my tummy, and it seemed the right thing to do.

Seems to me that slavery was one thing that used to break up families, intentionally so. Hmm. SOME folks got educated, but others weren’t supposed to be. They were to be educated to the limit of their job prognosis. Hmmm.

I also predict that with the womb to tomb categorization of humanity, from the moment they are born, caught, extracted, or brought forth (depending on how literary you are feeling) and begin to wiggle, the measuring WILL not stop, we will forget what a normal human, bonding relationship WAS. We won’t have living examples of it to learn from.

Now that ATTITUDE worries me. I have been worried about this for many months, as I began to examine where my justice went, especially this last year. Where my children went had already been determined, and I had also correctly looked up that the correct label for the manner in which they went comes under the category “child-stealing.” The next question was, why was there no concensus on what the law already conceded, and what could I do to get them back? I looked around with wonder and amazement to see that with flip of the coin, what in one situation was a felony, in an entirely different one (see title of this blog) was interpreted as initiative to be rewarded with custody. SURELY a father who would love his children enough to steal them, and harass their mother with court case after court case must have been motivated by love and concern. And SURELy a mother who actually resisted this, and attempted to retain an emotional connection (let alone visual contact) with BOTH her children AND her livelihood (profession) through choosing an alternate educational arrangement must have an unnatural attachment thing going on. Now, I didn’t have one set of kids I DID nurse and one set I DIDn’t for comparison, but I do know that, even absent from them, there’s an attachment there, and it’s weird every day to have it suddenly aborted. Yes, I did use that word.

In my last post I looked at “Where’s Mom?” in a website representing our national direction, and suggested that the ship of state may have lost its moorings, possibly by ignoring the obvious: So far, technologically, you DO need a Mom to actually get a family, even if it’s dis-assembled shortly after birth.

Where’s Mom? is a very relevant question, I thought.

So, here’s an article that came across my (virtual) desk, my Inbox, on some astonishingly new and revolutionary perspectives on WHY breastfeeding is best, at least up until a judge decides she’s doing it for the wrong reasons, to get even with an ex. . . . . and sets a limit on how long this parental alienation can be permitted. The things judges must know these days . . . .

We noncustodial Moms (yes, we converse with each other about how and why that happened, and we research and blog, and vote and call our Congresspeople, and write, and support each other, because the court system sure ain’t…..) were happy to find one that counteracted some of this “father-absence” hypocrisy. YEAH, a lot of fathers are absent. Now let’s talk about WHY! and stop scapegoating an entire gender!

This article supports the premises that for an infant to have a bonding time with Mom growing up (which may or may not contradict our present government’s wish to push things in a different direction, send Mom to work and give us those babies; we have Ph.D.candidate Human Behavioralists needing a grant-funded slot at the local Head Start outfit, think about their job futures, OK? If they do not publish, they might perish! It’s your civic duty to produce low-income babies (or neglect staying home if you’re not low-income) for them to study.)

It IS interesting too, it talks about more than the nipples and what spurts out of them, it talks even about more than the cuddling. It looks at subsequent behaviors. So do I, at the bottom. I picked a few well-known names.

(Did I mention it’s written by women, also?)

Abstract

Research paper no. 43

Breastfeeding and infants’ time use (title is link)

Jennifer Baxter and Julie Smith

Australian Institute of Family Studies, June 2009, 48 pp. ISBN 978-1-921414-09-1. ISSN 1446-9863 (Print); ISSN 1446-9871 (Online)

Being breastfed during infancy is known to improve developmental outcomes, but the pathways by which this occurs remain unclear.

Research Paper no. 43: “Breastfeeding and infants’ time use.”

(More commentary on what governments are studying these days…..)

While I’m glad this study DOES support the concept that breastfeeding is good, as when judges in Canada and Australia have to decide on whether or not to agree with the obvious, or respond to the gentle tug on THEIR consciences from the “But Dads are Nurturers TOO!” demands, Moms (Noncustodial ones, through family court matters) were happy to read this, I still have to ask, WHY do we have to even ask? I mean, in what kind of world are studies needed of this?

Here’s what kind of world:

IN a world of ever-shifting psychological and spiritual plate tectonics, it’s only human to want to be oh so sure about the obvious. WHY do we need to be oh-so-sure? (Using the word “we” loosely, I am not in that mix)

WHY is how to develop and serve “humans” and “families” really necessary?? What are they, food?

Why not leave them alone to figure it out? Why not treat them as animate beings with spirit, soul, body, desires, individuality, and what’s more, hopes, goals, and a variety of pathways in which to wend their way through life, like their hunter-gatherer ancestors?

That is, FYI, what they are — not slabs of flesh, inanimate, passive, waiting to be directed, injected, detected, and projected upon the motion picture screen of some faraway government policy! Unless they (translation: WE — ALL — begin to see each other in this manner, the only logical consequence is more and more literally inanimate, and in fact lifeless (or is it comatose?) slabs of flesh, and there may not be enough slots to store us in. Please, PLEASE, remember Auschwitz, and the ATTITUDES that preceded this, and stop the stereotyping and detached, detached, well thank God it ain’t ME, emotional noninvolvement with other human beings, when it comes to running nations and large enterprises.

People have been born for many, many centuries and millennia. Nations (if not religions, unfortunately) and empires have come and gone.

(And these two are related).

With each new empire, history, and culture, is often re-written, by the winners.

They can crumble over germs or steel, over oppressing people so bad they simply well up and oust a regime, assassinate a dictator, and/or each other. Or assassinations, oustings and regime changes can happen for other reasons. In this world there are now, and have historically been famines, floods, fires, and wars; there is cruelty and prejudice, there is waste and greed. These are qualities that, as far as I can see, have been around a long time, and are not going anywhere soon. And I ABSOLUTELy don’t believe they are going away by government fiat, design or study.

Given that generic assessment of history, I have to ask, then what exactly are were DOING in this profession of Human Behavioral Sciences? What were its origins, what are its purposes and why are “we” doing these things?

I’m a researcher, in fact both my parents were too, one a scientist, the other a librarian. I’m a SEARCHER, I’m curious about causes.

One thing in my searchings I have come to conclude: some of the worst damages to human rights, and people, has been in the name of theories (or doctrines) similar to the ones I’m reading about now, in our country. I think it’s an ATTITUDE thing, to study human populace as if they were rats, or mice, or microbes. I’m not anti-medicine, nad I do appreciate knowing things about molecules, hormones, and, say, that what just happened to me when that stalker called, again, may relate to adrenaline or cortisol, and has some sense behind the chemistry of it.

However, I think in the social sciences, it’s gone off the deep end into crowd control. I think it is a clear indication of caste-maintenance, which ain’t supposed to be in the USA, but is.

Who’s developing this master race and utopia?

Didn’t we learn anything from Hitler, or any other genocides? Didn’t we get embarrased enough by the study of “phrenology” (measuring skull sizes, to assess intelligence) which to me has an uncomfortable sense of sociology.

Anyhow, this study may be supportive of more maternal time. Governments have already determined it’s Breast is Best, but what to do when a couple can’t keep it together til the kid is weaned? Then there have to be policies, judges have to decide, and these judges need experts. W ell, experts are just handy to have around.

Are there any MOMs around who have actually seen children grow up that they nursed (and haven’t been incarcerated for this on the basis of unnatural attachment theory)?

Isn’t smarter, healthier, loved and having been held by Mom at least several times a day enough to know? Apparently not. I tend to wonder if this isn’t because another artificial nipple, breast, nurture and cuddling experience is in the mix, and will need justification. OR, it’s been challenged, and then a study is needed to maintaing a semblance of nature in nurture of infants.

Given what I’ve been reading about our Present Administration’s Parenting Advice (yes, that spells “PAPA”), motherhood is no longer acceptable. It has a conflict with Early Head Start and propping up a seriously design-flawed educational system that neither nurtures nor educates adequately, and was based on producing factory workers who don’t take orders or think too much. Crucial to this is boxing them up, and mediating all experience through the teachers and textbooks (which are highly censored).

I just watched the video of Michael Jackson recently, being interviewed about his father’s severe abuse of all 5 Jacksons, including having them perform with him sitting in his hand with a belt, and ironing cord, using Michael, the youngest, as a role model to chastise the other children, mocking his facial features (you didn’t get it from MY side) and a fairly normal adolescent thing called pimples, about how he didn’t want to grow up (and the uncanny transformation of his own face into something that looks like his hero, Peter Pan), about how his dermatologist nurse (and another surrogate Mom) gave him 3 children, which were snatched at birth (never got to nurse a drop), although by agreement, and now they are going to live with — either Grandpa (that same one that would’ve/should’ve been arrested in our day and time) or Mom (who volunteered her womb and viewed human beings as presents, not people).

The most common sense reason for nursing I can think of is that it APPEARS to be part of the design plan for human beings, and a host of other animals also. Take it away, and they’re sucking down something else for a lifetime perhaps, substitute attachments. I don’t know. It just kinda makes sense. Give the Mom and baby a chance to sit together and make a physical connection. It works together, it helps her womb return to normal size right faster, it’s overall a good arrangement unless she’s been on something harmful which would get into the child. LIfe is rough. Give’em a break!

In the US, we have HHS.

IN Australia, it’s “AIFS”

Australian Institute of Family Studies.

And has these clearinghouses:

Research and clearinghouses

Like over here, they publish, they serve, they have resources, and they have events. That’s nice…

The natural human response, anyone with some spirit at least, is to resist being managed, and only put up with so much as is necessary to get by. People are MOST human and I say most happy, really, pursuing things — that they CHOSE to pursue. Ask an adolescent male. Ask a stalker. Ask a Mom or Dad going to night school. There’s something about the pursuit of it, not the having it served up in a soup line. There’s something about making one’s own personal goals, that brings out the best in a person, or when it’s in a community, that community. When it gets too large, we lose the human element.

There’s not much more intimate, at the start of life, than what’s now called “breastfeeding.” And there’s not much more tenderizing to a Mom, when it’s in a supportive environment especially, and producing a feeling of well-being, etc., than nursing. I do not mean to idolize this, but I do mean to call attention to this.

I think this term must have come up when other ways of feeding began to compete with it. It’s not just about FEEDING. It used to be called NURSING. Now, Nursing has become a profession (and a great one, I acknowledge), and I hear there’s a shortage of it too. Perhaps if we could give people better EMOTIONAL and PHYSICAL support near the beginning of their lives, they wouldn’t need so much – or go about getting so much in other, unhealthy ways — later on in life. Many diseases and compromised immune systems have origins, it’s coming out, not only in antibodies not received as a kid, but sometimes emotional abuse and trauma — the exact OPPOSITE of nurturing.

Abstract

Research paper no. 43

Breastfeeding and infants’ time use

Jennifer Baxter and Julie Smith

Australian Institute of Family Studies, June 2009, 48 pp. ISBN 978-1-921414-09-1. ISSN 1446-9863 (Print); ISSN 1446-9871 (Online)

Being breastfed during infancy is known to improve developmental outcomes, but the pathways by which this occurs remain unclear.

Well, God forbid the us not knowing by what pathways developmental outcomes can be improved? We are, after all, in the business of improving development.

One possible yet unexplored mechanism is that breastfed infants may spend their time differently to infants who are not breastfed.

Please — PLEASE tell me, some institute is not about to intervene with that Mom’s growing relationship with an infant, and either put a video in the home for later analysis, send a social worker with a note pad to take notes, or ask the MOm, self-reporting, to distract her attention from that little being, to documenther time use. Give them a break! They’ll be in school before age 5 (at least in the US) all right already.

This paper analyses infants’ time use according to breastfeeding status in order to help inform the debate about how breastfeeding leads to improved child outcomes.

“improved child outcomes”

OK, well that sounds desirable. I’m just not used to the terminology yet. It sounds odd on my tongue. It sounds like a process that might belong more in an auto assembly line.

Now me, I’m more practically minded. If it works, keep doing it, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That’s what my ex used to tell me when our children were sleeping, and I’d go to adjust something, make them more c omfortable, more covered, more something. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

If it works — keep doing it. If it doesn’t work — as, for example, pushing fatherhood on an entire nation as a response to violence against women and/or feminism, appears to be gettingi more women and children, and men, killed — THEN I’d think this should be closely examined. But why breastfeeding works ???

The analysis uses infants’ time use data from the first wave (2004) of Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC), derived from diaries completed by the parents of almost 3,000 Australian infants aged 3-14 months. It explores how much time infants spend in activities such as being held or cuddled, read or talked to, or crying, using data on whether or not infants were still breastfeeding, and taking into account other child and family characteristics. It also compares time spent in different social contexts. Finally, the paper uses the time use data to analyse which infants were still breastfeeding, and what factors are associated with differences in time spent breastfeeding.

The results show that breastfed infants spend more time being held or cuddled and being read or talked to, and less time sleeping, or eating, drinking or being fed other foods. {{Well, in America, Obesity is a major issue}}

They also cried slightly more, and watched television slightly less {{I’d say that’s positive}} than infants who were not being breastfed. Those who breastfed spent more time with their parents, and in particular, almost one additional hour a day alone with their mother compared to non-breastfeeding infants. {{This beats being ignored in a daycare situation. This gives baby and Mom some down time, which she could use also!}}

These findings have important implications for how children grow, and show the value of time use data in exploring pathways to development for infants and young children. The possibility that cognitive advantages for breastfed children may arise from their distinct patterns of time use and social contexts during the breastfeeding phase is an important area for future research using survey data such as from LSAC.

Summary

Being breastfed during infancy contributes to positive developmental outcomes, as well as to good nutrition and health. Expert guidelines for optimal infant feeding recommend that infants be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life (National Health and Medical Research Council, 2003) and, along with appropriate complementary foods, continue to be breastfed for up to two years and beyond (World Health Assembly, 2001).

{{I did this for one child. I couldn’t for the other, but there were intervening factors (like Dad hitting me, and I know this affected the hormonal balance) intervening. Neither child has ever had an issue with intelligence or obesity, and they were healthy growing up. They weren’t clingy and they weren’t overly aggressive either, until years later, and this was when they became property fought over, and in the light of this, they were institutionalized again — at least their education was. I know that in our case, this was not aimed to help their education, but to break their bond with me. I cannot speak for every case.}}

While being breastfed during infancy is known to improve developmental outcomes, the pathways by which this occurs remain unclear. Components of breast milk are known to be important to brain development, but an important question remains as to whether the observed developmental advantages of children being breastfed also represent unobserved differences in the early life experiences of infants who were breastfed compared to those who were not. For example, there may be aspects of the breastfeeding mother’s behaviour or her interaction with the infant that differ from the non-breastfeeding mother. {{I KNEW THAT!}} One possible yet unexplored mechanism is that breastfed infants may spend their time differently to infants who are not breastfed. Time use research provides a potentially useful tool for further investigation of this issue.

A possible link between time use and children’s outcomes has a basis in the literature on infant development – for example, attachment theory – which indicates that positive interactions with caregivers have implications for secure attachment and socio-emotional development.

CAREGIVERS are mother-substitutes. They are not in the original plan. If you believe in plans. The word is longer. The short word is “MOM.” or “MOTHER” (pick your language).

I know, from the family law experience, that my behaving as a protective or educated mother was not wanted by certain other parties. My children themselves did not have a problem with this until we went into court, which even the mediator documented. It was a manufactured problem. The mantra, the ostinato, the continual claim was that by refusing to worship the government education factory (based on its performance), I was a heretic, and eccentric, and those kids were going to grow up weird and isolated. It was viewed with suspicion, and it was STOPPED. I have often thought that is children were simply allowed to be in their families (and the families were not violent) for as long as the individual kid was ready, before going to schools, schools would be far better. They do not need to be clingy and run in packs and herds, hurting each other or (when older) their teachers, and vice versa. They might have a sense of identity and belonging, and being loved. Unfortunately, this is NOT part of the economic development plan for “developed” countries.

Children’s development opportunities may therefore be affected by who they are with across the day, and where they are. Further, associations between somewhat older children’s time use and their development have been explored, with some relationships apparent, which lead us to question whether such relationships may also be apparent for infants. In addition to exploring the association between breastfeeding and time use, this paper also provides a broader examination of infants’ time use, to help understand the possible development opportunities for these infants.

And so forth. You can read it. I would just like to end with, after breastfeeding has been properly explicated, I suspect the conclusion would be the same:

DO IT.

Just like after the interrelationship between domestic violence and custody in family law settings has been properly explicated, I suspect that the CORRECT conclusion would be, as to domestic violence.

STOP IT

and as to when this is mixed with custody

DON’T!

THERE IS A REBUTTABLE PRESUMPTION AGAINST CUSTODY GOING TO A BATTERER. BATTERING A WOMAN IS A POOR ROLE MODEL. BATTERERS DO NOT MAKE GOOD PARENTS UNTIL AND UNLESS THEY HAVE ADDRESSED THIS ISSUE AND CHANGED IT AND KEPT IT CHANGED. ONE HIGH MOTIVATION FOR CHANGING IS TO GIVE THEM A DOSE OF THEIR OWN MEDICINE, WITH EXPLANATION. THE ALTERNATIVE BEING, TO KEEP PROVIDING HIM OPPORTUNITIES FOR MORE OF THE SAME. THIS INCLUDES STRICT ADHERENCE TO THE RESTRAINING ORDER (ONE VIOLATION = IMMEDIATE ARREST). PART OF ABUSE, IN CASE YOU HAVEN’T BEEN THERE YET (LET’S HOPE) IS SETS OF MEANINGLESS, TRIVIALLY JUSTIFIED, AND EVERCHANGING RULES APPLIED TO THE TARGET PERSON, NOT THE PERPETRATOR.

(I’D BETTER STOP, THIS RESEMBLES MANY SCHOOL SITUATIONS).

I expect that after I’m a long gone (which I hope will be a long time away) that family law system will still be around, and attempting to dilute and explicate the truth, that it just don’t make sense to say a person can beat another person (or have sex with a minor child) and be a good enough role model for custody, let alone visitation, let alone supervised visitation. These things — giving custody, visitation or supervised visitation, to a person who has not addressed this problem, called criminal behavior within the family — are going to naturally confuse a child about what’s right and what’s wrong, not exactly something I’d like the next generation to be confused on.

I’d like to end with what I’d consider a common sense and practical outlook towards human development, both in the womb and immediately after birth: this is a healthy attitude towards onesself, I believe. It just makes sense:

While all these things are wonderful to understand, and be aware of:

List of tables

Can I summarize this?

Psalm 139

12Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.

13 For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.

14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.

15 My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

16 Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.

17 How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!

18 If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.

Those are the words of a man who understands he is in relationship with Someone who loved him, wanted him, knows him, and that he knew was constantly thinking of him, that would never leave him alone. What better model for this than, at the beginning of life, being held, loved, and nursed by a mother? That act of nurturing and loving is at times attributed to God who, although He is portrayed as a Father, has also these characteristics:

Isaiah 14: 1 Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name.

These are the words of someone who had a sense of purpose in this life.

2 And he hath made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand hath he hid me, and made me a polished shaft; in his quiver hath he hid me;. . . .

Isaiah 49

14-15 But Zion said, The LORD hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me. Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.

Nursing and compassion go together. It’s not just about the baby! It’s about the relationship. Not forgetting . . . Not having compassion for a child one has nursed MAY happen, but it’s not the norm.

Here’s another verse about “cherishing” like a nursing mother, Paul (who takes a lot of heat for his supposed views of women):

I Thess 1: Nor of men sought we glory, neither of you, nor yet of others, when we might have been burdensome, as the apostles of Christ. 7 But we were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherisheth her children: 8 So being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were dear unto us.

These are from before the days of Enfamil, and babies were nursed by another human being. For the most part. It wasn’t always Mom, but it was a woman. Why? because there weren’t factories, cubicles, etc., to the extent we now have them. And it was common knowledge that this was a cherishing, tender activity, and associated with it, the desire to give to that child, because the child was precious.

I understand this. I nursed my children. I don’t see them, I still would like to give, and have been prevented from doing so. Even though they’re almost grown, they were not full-grown when the sudden breakoff of that relatinoship (by a felony act called “child-stealing,”) was a radical disruption to what I was doing with my life which was called imparting good things to my kids. I do not think that I was inbred — in fact I was a practicing music professional in my communities, and as networked and integrated into other people’s and community institutions as most people are (if not more so, being self-employed). I most certainly had an independent soul, personality, and preferences — something I had to fight for during marriage (where this wasn’t welcome), and rebuild after it. I had close and long-term personal friendships, also.

But the primary one was with my children, because they were not yet grown up. They were not in college. And some crucial life struggles and issues were still in process. So, that’s what my life was centered around. This was part role model part provision, part demonstrating, by providing, that they were worth sacrificing for, but that a mother was not to be “used.”

A major part of this struggle (in our case) had been to assert a simple right to leave abuse, and as such, that this did not entail suddenly entering a childlike incompetence (in fact it was the opposite) and inability to make decisions, or face a challenge. . . . . An assumption was made that my daughters were a BURDEN that needed to be relieved, and dumped in a school, so I could get about my REAL life, which was not (as I had been at the time), a profession, but actually making sure I found a 9-3 job, (or a 9-5 job with daycare) and left the real education to the real experts. . . . Well, that was nonsense. The insult was that, I should view children as a burden to be dropped off. I found the attitude odd. And it was coming from people who did not themselves have kids. I have since come to the conclusion (or opinion, really), that these people, like I was at one time, were relationship-starved, despite all the art, all the literature, all the work, and all the adult friends they maintained. I think they were bored and lacked purpose in life. And I had the misfortune to come near their radar screen with children in hand. The assumption was that I could not POSSIBLY walk and chew gum, or work and have kids, and what was worse, HOMESCHOOL them too? This was based on an incredible ignorance of almost all the above topics.

And I was forced back onto the welfare state, needlessly, and told to be thankful. I’ll tell you how I feel about this. I HATE it because I know how it happened, needlessly. It’s abusive, it’s insane, and it communicates a pervasive distrust of me as a person, and bottom line assumption is of incompetence. Oddly enough, the factors driving me to this point also made the same assumptions.

I HATE having choice being so taken away from me, but whether to take a handout, or not, resulting in an unnatural relationship. I HATE the insanity that a government would come in and because of Food Stamps be forbidden to buy vitamins, toilet paper, or cat food, lest I might really be buying cigarettes or booze. I can go and buy candy and sweets or potato chips, til I get diabetic with the same money, so why not a little choice? the real reason is the need to have something to measure. At the same time, they do not take kindly to being measured themselves, lest they come up a little short.

Back to this topic:

Noncustodial mothers, and I know many, do not understand why there is such a national drive to disgrace us and scapegoat us individually, and collectively. Individually, we have some pretty good ideas why this happens, but nationally, I’m here to tell you, this thing ‘mother’ is important, along with “father.” Any version of “fatherhood” that cannot pronounce the word “mother” alongside it is a bastardized version of the real thing, a caricature. Good grief. We are cruel enough already, why add to this?

The word “nurse” in the last reference doesn’t mean the one in a white uniform with a crisp cap (and hypodermic in hand), but the mother (“her own children.”) It’s a noun used only once in the Greek NT, “trophos” (transliterated), but the verb it comes from “trepho”, means is “

A primary verb (properly, threpho; but perhaps strengthened from the base of trope through the idea of convolution); properly, to stiffen, i.e. Fatten (by implication, to cherish (with food, etc.), pamper, rear) — bring up, feed, nourish.

Here’s one more:

Matthew 23:37 (ERV)
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killeth the prophets, and stoneth them that are sent unto her! how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!

The image of Jesus as a mother hen is not, I admit, the most common one, but the gathering and healing/helping, soothing, stopping the fighting activity (see context) obviously was not..

These verses referring to this common activity: nursing, cherishing, being gentle, imparting, caring, not forgetting, wanting a person (to have a child be WANTED is a big deal!), gathering the kids together and settling the squabbles, before they kill each other ! is not in the competitive context and as opposed to females we find it today “Dads are Nurturers Too!” but was simply part of a natural part of being a complete human being.

These are from the psalms of David, who was a major figure in the Bible, Old Testament and new, whose exploit with giant-slaying (“David and Goliath”) as well as with women (“David and Bathsheba”) as well as his progeny (Jesus Christ is sometimes known as the “Son of David” although there were many generations between the two recorded) and he was able to overcome having to flee, and live in caves and dens, but then fulfil his destiny to become a king. Isaiah (the second quote) was also a key player, and Paul — who takes a lot of grief in some circles, in case you didn’t know — over the supposed, “woman shut up in church!” thing –and is heavily relied on for this same reason by a lot of churches that never see MY face any more — in practice, well, I just don’t seem him acting terribly dismissive of women in the book.

Another major figure in the Bible is Moses. His story is, during a time of oppression and state-mandated male infanticide to get rid of the potentially upstart slave population’s potential men (and rebels), the midwives were instructed to kill the males. They didn’t. Moses was hid by his parents, and as it goes, they sent him down the river where Pharoah’s daughter (wanting a son!) picked him up, and raised him as her own. Well, I guess she had a figure and a schedule to maintain, and a wet nurse was hired, which ended up being Moses’ true mother. That worked out neatly, and I will bet that sometime during those months or years in which she got to nurse her own son, she also talked to him, and let him know who he was, and his heritage. 40, 80 years later, he is a national hero, confronting his own (surrogate) father and leading millions out of slavery.

These major players in Bible history: in approximate order: God, Moses, Isaiah, David, Jesus, and Paul (most of whom have been portrayed in statue and paintings by artists also — in fact, I think Michelangelo did at least David, God, and Moses) — all freely referred to the characteristics of nursing, cherishing, caring and in short, the supportive bonding relationship as a human need.

I would quote from a different sacred script, but this happens to be the one I know best. Please feel free to comment, if you wish, and if you’ve got some additional (relevant) quotes, I”ll incorporate them into the post.

Nursing was taken for granted as part of human life, and verbs and adjectives were associated with both nursing, and the word mother.

How did these people do such great, history-changing things without expert analysis of WHY breast was best?

Can we say nursing is a good deal for both mother, child, and the rest of us? Yes, it’s not always possible or advisable, but i DO wonder what we’re in such a rush to get rid of it for (pre-, pre-, pre-school in the US) and then, from afar, examine, pronounce and compare it with something else (is there something else superior?) as if it were a foreign thing?

Let’s compare the language used to describe some of this one more time:

Psalm 13913 For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.

14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.

A soul that knows he has a place in this world and was KNOWN. Assurance, reverence, awe, and praise. This psalmist went on, being the youngest and often treated dismissively by brothers, and father, to defend and protect his sheep (he could nurture), to slay his giant, to also do music (the psalms), to survive being a fugitive from jealousy, and to go on to be king. When a prophet came to anoint the future king, the littlest one was ignored, not being thought worth a mention. Older, bigger, better smarter? ones were paraded in front of the prophet, but finally (as it goes) this one was brought out, and anointed officially, prophesied over, and then (apparently) the troubles and jealousy began. Oh well. Who would have predicted that? The best of predictions and analyses go wrong sometimes.

Was he himself breastfed? Did he have parenting time? Was he, as a shepherd, familiar with the life process of conception, child(lamb)birth, protection of young, leading, feeding, and staving off dangers from the flock?

Another thing, incidentally, he was famous for was humility — when caught in some serious wrongdoing (adultery, and deceitfully getting another man killed so he could have the wife) and confronted, he admitted it. This is called repentance, and was commended.

It’s all in the attitude.

Now, for contrast, a phrase from Study #43 on why, seeking to better perfect human growth patterns and predict, and, and, and . . . .

.These data are then used to investigate the central issue explored in this paper: are the days of breastfed and non-breastfed infants spent differently, to the extent that differences in how breastfed infants spend their time could explain their more positive developmental outcomes?

The analysis shows that infants who were still breastfed spent significantly longer in the day being held or cuddled (32 minutes more) and being read, talked or sung to (27 minutes more), after taking into account other child and parental characteristics. There was a small positive effect of breastfeeding on spending time crying or upset. Breastfed infants were more likely to have been reported to have spent some time crawling, climbing or swinging arms/legs, and some time colouring, drawing and looking at books or puzzles. Breastfed children, on the other hand, spent significantly less time sleeping (40 minutes less), other eating, drinking or being fed (54 minutes less) and watching television (9 minutes less).

Breastfed infants spent longer with their mother (57 minutes more) than infants who were not breastfed, including more time alone with their mother (45 minutes more). Breastfed children also spent somewhat more time with their father (15 minutes more), although this was related to time that the mother and father were together, as breastfeeding was not associated with a difference in the amount of time the child spent with the father alone.

(It’s a RELATIONSHIP THING, I told you!) I wish our countries (respectively) would get OUT of the business of designing (measuring, comparing producing, evaluating and predicting, etc.) families. I really do. OR, alternately, worshipping them as a national ideal. I think this can backfire, too.

As a word of explanation, I am not writing to discredit the authors, or the study. Their credits are below. My point was in the larger context of, my own wonder and awe not at, well, being fearfully and wonderfully made, but at the whole industry of studying human behavior with a view to predicting, developing, understanding, justifying, and possibly controlling it. This is actually a positive contribution to the understanding that MOTHERING is important. Not SMOTHERING.

In my readings about the history of some of the larger social institutions dedicated to studying children and families, it came up that one cause of this was the tremendous amount of orphans caused by war, specifically World Wars I and II. It was both a problem and a ready source of oobservation of what happens to kids without families.

Along these lines, and based on my experiences (and associations, readings, etc.) I am personally very disturbed by the nationalized, so-called “public education” system. Over the long haul — and my life is five decades long, plus some — I was an academic success in a public school, but some of the values problems, and the absence in this context, of solid human connections with more than a few teachers, of discussions about the meaning and purposes of life was absent Though smart, smart was not appreciated in our high school, in fact it was social detriment. Though smart as a kid, I was also picked on as a kid, and my main memory of elementary school was this. I’m not complaining, I’m thinking here. It never occurred to me to tell my mother (or father) about the bullying, which went on a long time; I was very young, and the entire schoolyard was involved at playtimes. I still remember. I had everything handed to me, excelled here and there, and came to life around high school because of music, and I know this was because of the communal experience of doing something worthwhile other than sitting in a classroom, bored, and waiting for the bell.

As to bonding with one’s children, there is a bond. I can’t help thinking about Michael Jackson’s 3 children, basically kids for hire, given up AT BIRTH (I don’t think any one of them got a single sip from their mothe’s breast, and the 3rd, he related, he took away right away, placenta and all, as soon as the cord was snipped. The stunned reporter, well, was stunned. Putting this together with Michael’s stories of his threatening domineering father (they practiced with him sitting by with a belt) and when relating it, Michael put his hand over his mouth. His features were mocked, blaming it on the Mom. Fantastic wealth, fame, and musical success, yet this person, I looked at him on TV, had tried to turn himself into Peter Pan, he did not want to grow up. What did he have for his mother — a woman who was as chastised as the Dad? His own children didn’t know mother, at all, and ALL of them are going to go now either to abusive grandparents (let’s hope that’s changed), or a mother who gave them up at birth and viewed them (the first 2) as a “present” for Michael. They might be fought over, they probably won’t be hurting for food (one never knows) but what would be their place in the world? And what identity?

I am also looking at all the GRIEF in my own home, and life — first the bastardized version of “fatherhood” and “headship” that I lived with in marriage, which entailed also being domineered and, when necessary to make a point, assaulted, in the name of this ideal– and then, after I left that, the closest handy male who himself ALSO had not become a father, or raised a family, tried to catch up on lost time, with the assistance of his wife, and united with husband to remove the children from my care on the basis that i CERTAINLY couldn’t run a life without a man’s direction. The real basis, I believe was their need as people, despite all success, to have a meaningful relationship with young people they were related to. It just so happened they were short two, and mine were on the radar, and basically, that was that.

I don’t mean to give a hard time to people who can’t or don’t keep children with them longer. It can work out.

I do believe, though, that when it comes to national policy, it would be suicide to practice the disappearing Mom act. It’s the beginning of life, and it sets a standard. Leave those children alone! And let them bond with their Moms. Support that standard, and many other things will do better — it might make for better mothers, too, if we allow them space and time to do it. NOW, I have got to say, I think that the educational system exists in relationship to the job system. They are intertwined.

And i think sooner or later when we look at educational failures, and human behavioral failures (which domestic violence, and associated things ARE), we have too look at conceptual failures to acknowledge some basic human truths. And one of those is that MOST of us don’t like being treated like cogs in a machine, or parts in an assembly line. MOST of us would like some decent relationship with a sane human being that knows us, appreciates us, thinks POSITIVELY of us (which many school programs, alas, do not), and does not have an ulterior motive – job stability, money, sex, power, fame, prestige — etc. in there competing with why we are being raised as we are.

Human beings need a raison d’etre, a purpose in life, too. A friend of mine likes to say, all we need is:

Someone to love
Work to do.

One way to be able to love someone else is to have some self-respect (skills mastery, accomplishment, service, function in a community) oneself. A sense that one is unique, not just a point on a bell-curve. Let’s have a little motherhood in here, it’s a great start to other endeavors. That nursing baby NEEDS Mom, and to be held. That Mother/baby situation NEEDS Dad to protect it, and enable this situation. If, however, Dad has become inappropriate because of violence, or absent by choice, or incarceration, then they need a little space to grow up. Neither of them needs to be around violence or poverty and no child certainly should be treated as a piece of property — which is EXACTLY how too many institutions are indeed treating them, no matter what the sign on the doors.

How complex is that? In this regard, I think many institutions have got it wrong in trying to give people what they might rather earn or learn themselves.

Sorry to be so long-winded today.

Here are the women who did the study; it’d be great to read the entire thing (link up top):

About the authors

Jennifer Baxter is a Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS), where she works largely on employment issues as they relate to families with children. Since starting at AIFS, Jennifer has made a significant contribution to a number of important reports, including the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA) Social Policy Research Paper No. 30, Mothers and Fathers with Young Children: Paid Employment, Caring and Wellbeing (Baxter, Gray, Alexander, Strazdins, & Bittman, 2007) and AIFS’ submission to the Productivity Commission Parental Leave Inquiry (2008). She has also contributed several Family Matters articles and had work published in other journals. Her research interests include maternal employment following childbearing, child care use, job characteristics and work-family spillover, breastfeeding, children’s time use and parental time with children. She has made extensive use of data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) to explore these areas of research.

Jennifer was awarded a PhD in the Demography and Sociology Program of the ANU in 2005. Her work experience includes more than fifteen years in the public sector, having worked in a number of statistical and research positions in government departments.

Julie Smith is a Research Fellow at the Australian Centre for Economic Research on Health at the Australian National University (ANU). She has published over 20 articles on public finance and health policy issues in peer-reviewed journals across several disciplines. She has authored two books on taxation (Taxing Popularity and Gambling Taxation in Australia), and received an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral (APD) Fellowship and Discovery Project funding for her research on the economics of mothers’ milk. She conducted a significant national survey of new mothers’ time use in 2006-07. Her research interests include: economic aspects of breastfeeding; the time use of new mothers <www.acerh.edu.au/programs/Time_Use_Survey.php>; non-market economic production and the care economy; taxation, tax expenditures and public finance policy; economics of the non-profit sector; tobacco control; and health financing. Julie was previously a senior economist in the Australian and New Zealand treasuries, and a Visiting Fellow in the Economics Program at the ANU Research School of Social Sciences. She was awarded a PhD in Economics (ANU) in 2003.

Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up

July 1, 2009 at 1:16 PM

Posted in Designer Families, Where's Mom?

Tagged with Australia, Breastfeeding, Education, Motherhood, social commentary, Social Issues from Religious Viewpoints, Studying Humans, To Nurse or Not?

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Posts Tagged ‘Social Issues from Religious Viewpoints’

This voice from the past (1989 to 2009 = 20 years!) —

1992

Have a nice weekend. Again, I’d rather see a sermon than hear one any day.

While this essay is music (the voice of logic, of common sense truth) to my ears, but it’s not a tune many people like these days. Because it actually addresses the impact of role-modeling and personal responsibility upon the next generation.

This was written Pre-VAWA and Pre-National Fatherhood Inititative, which one theme of this blog has been showing what these cost, and how they attempt to cancel each other out.

Wife Abuse and Child Custody and Visitation by the Abuser,

Speaking personally, the exchanges where were the problems occurred in our case. I asked (for YEARS) for help with this, and got none. Then finally on an overnight, I stopped seeing my daughters again.

Voices from the even further past, still valid today:

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Healthy Marriage Demonstration Grants

These funds are not just dollars, they practically have a life of their own:

They are going to:

BIRTH

NURTURE, and

SUPPORT the development of a . . .

HAPPY BROWSING:

Apart from the CHMC above — I hope there’s a no-competition clause in there somewhere, because it’s not the only one in California — my other favorite for scope of vision (if not clarity) is:

Office of Family Assistance Healthy Marriage Demonstration Grant

REGION 1 – (Simply substitute the number in the “URL” to switch regions) — one grant only,

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[Have been told to shorten the posts, too, not just the titles. Working on it!]

This post, July 2 (2 days before “Independence Day” USA) had been on hold. Unlike several women featured here, I added my voice to theirs, telling it like it is, then self-censored out of fear: I felt MY contribution was too radical, too out-spoken, and too indignant.

2006 – EVER TRYING TO RAM THROUGH ANOTHER BILL, FINE-TUNING & REDEFINING FATHERHOOD AND HEALTHY MARRIAGE

Dr. Phyllis Chesler:

Let’s Get Honest comments:

“LEFT TO TELL“

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Sniffing Language

Breastfeeding,

Nursing, Cherishing, Protecting, Imparting,

Loving, Knowing,

Gentleness, Compassion, Confidence one is loved and wanted,

were formerly normal, healthy human behaviors, and not only right after sex.

Where’s Mom? is a very relevant question, I thought.

WHY is how to develop and serve “humans” and “families” really necessary?? What are they, food?

Who’s developing this master race and utopia?

“improved child outcomes”

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Office of Family Assistance
Healthy Marriage Demonstration Grant