Men and Boys Deserve Better
Boys and the Boy Crisis
MenHealth – Men die on average over 4.5 years earlier than women, commit suicide 4 times more often than women, for all 10 leading causes of death, have higher death rates than women, yet our government focuses on women’s health and ignores men. We have 4 offices of women’s health in the Department of Health and Human Services, and none for men. Prostate cancer receives only a third of the funding of breast cancer from the National Institutes of Health, but kills as many men as breast cancer kills women. Funding for male specific health research is less than one half of the funding for female specific research. We need equity. Our government needs to help both men and women. More info
Circumcision – Over a million infant boys are subjected to painful, sometimes dangerous and life altering surgery each year without their consent. The American Medical Association tells us that routine circumcision is not medically necessary, that this procedure is invasive, painful, and is known to diminish sexual pleasure later in life. Our country has laws that protect little girls from this sort of procedure but has nothing to protect our little boys. More info
Domestic Violence - Although the department of Justice tell us that 835,000 men are victims of domestic violence every year these men have no services or shelters. Actually research clearly indicates that it is women who initiate domestic violence more often than men yet the feminist driven domestic violence industry does its best to make people think that men are but a tiny fraction of the victims. Billions of dollars have been spent for the aid of women who are victims. Don’t you think it is time to care about both men and women? More info
Paternity Fraud - With the advent of DNA testing we can now easily prove paternity. The shocking truth is that so far, of those tested who were questioning paternity, 33% have found that they were not the father! This indicates that paternity fraud is likely a profound problem which leaves many men paying for and in some cases forced to pay for children which are not actually their own. Up to this point we have trusted the mother's word about paternity. The wisdom of this assumption is now rightly being called into question. More info
Selective Service – Our young men must register for the draft or face stiff fines and possible incarceration, along with a denial of benefits and opportunities which are available to young women without further requirement. Our boys can be forced to serve their country and die if necessary. Our girls have no such responsibility. Is that fair? More info
Family Courts – Fathers are being removed from their children and families against their will and through no fault of their own. False accusations of domestic violence or child abuse are commonplace in an effort to insure custody goes to the mother. Men are then subjected to a system that forces them to pay lawyers they didn’t hire and pay child support without any system of gurantee or audit to make sure the money they pay for the benefit of their children is actually used for such. The system then refuses to enforce their ability to see their own children. More info
Education - After decades of shifting educational environments to help girls our boys are left to school environments that are hostile to their nature. Their more active nature is being pathologized and medicated. A striking example of this is that the recess period is now being eliminated from schools all over America. Our schools are becoming more and more unfriendly to boys. While the girls are encouraged to claim their power the boys are getting the message that they are defective. They are responding by dropping out at higher percentages than girls, failing more often, graduating less often, less likely to attend college, and, sadly, committing suicide six times more often. Our boys are very bright, traditionally outscoring girls on both math and verbal parts of the SAT’s. Their intelligence is excellent; it’s the anti-male environment that is causing the trouble. Our boys need our attention and help now! More info
Criminal Bias - Gender is the most significant biasing factor in determining whether or not someone will be charged, prosecuted, indicted and sentenced, as well as determining the severity of the sentence. Simply put, men get longer sentences for the same crime and are 20 times more likely than women to receive the death penalty when convicted of murder. If you are a man you will be treated more harshly by our court system. More info
False Accusation – 270,000 men and fathers are victimized each year across America by unfounded and false child sex abuse reports. This number is pushed much higher when you include false accusations of rape and domestic violence. Being accused of any of these crimes is often decimating to a man’s life. Even though he is proven innocent (which is often required for him not to be found guilty, in contradiction of the right of presumed innocence) he will still carry the scars of this false accusation and the damage to his reputation and psyche. The false accuser is often allowed to remain anonymous and usually is permitted to remain without responsibility for her false accusations after the fact. More Info
Reproductive Rights - Men have no reproductive rights. Women can choose to have the baby, or an abortion, or put the baby up for adoption. The man has only one option if the woman chooses to have the child: pay child support. If a woman has the right to "opt out" of a pregnancy via abortion or adoption why shouldn’t a man also have this right? Many are suggesting "paper abortions" as a means to give men a similar right. More Info
Wage Gap – The "Wage Gap" disappears when factors such as maternity leave, overtime hours, and educational levels are taken into account. Women tend to choose occupations that allow them choices in their time with family and options such as school or leisure. Men tend to only work full time. This difference leads many to erroneously assume that men make more for the same work. This assumption is a media sweetheart and is proclaimed loudly. It will be put to rest with the publishing of Warren Farrell’s next book on this topic.
Introduction
For thousands of years men and women have lived with roles that governed their behaviors. Women cared for children, centering their focus on the “hearth”, while men provided for and protected women and children and focused on protecting the hearth's perimeter. In these basic gender roles both men and women were responsible to care for others but in different ways. The women often cared more by nurturing and tending while the men cared more by protecting and providing. Both men and women were and continue to be encouraged by both nature and nurture to fulfill these roles.
Children benefited from this arrangement by having both parents feel responsible for their welfare. The women benefited by having the men feel responsible for their welfare. But what about the men? There is no one who is genetically or socially programmed to care for them! They are left without any group charged with their care. We sometimes wonder how our world would be different if there were a third gender that was charged with caring for men. However, this is not to be. Men are left to their own devices to take care of themselves and their needs. Most men are happy to tell you that that is fine with them. They prefer to be "independent".
This difference plays out in today’s world in a myriad of ways. Since there is no third gender looking out for the men’s needs, our legislators, who have traditionally been a predominantly male group, have largely focused on caring for women and children. As a male that is what they are programmed by society and often also by disposition to do, to look out for the welfare of women and children. You don’t have to look far to see many examples of this. We have four federally funded commissions for women’s health but none for men. Our mental health system is geared to harmonize with the woman’s modes of coping and pays little attention to the unique masculine path. Our newspapers are filled with articles about a woman or women in need of help and assistance but have nearly none about a man or men in similar need. We have the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) which helps women who are victims of domestic violence but utterly ignores the needs of men. We have laws built into our system that guarantee the reproductive rights of women while men have no such laws-- only obligations and responsibilities, enforced often at gunpoint. We have men who are being separated from their children against their will through no fault of their own and yet the great mass of people remain utterly silent or willfully ignorant of this tragic injustice. On the other hand we have men who are forced to pay for children who are not their own, and again, few raise voices to complain (except of course the victim, who gets little or no sympathy). In academia we have thousands of women’s studies classes but only a handful that bother to look at men, and then usually not in an attempt to understand men but to categorize and denigrate them. Our public schools are bastions of feminine values and increasingly unfriendly places for boys. Our boys are routinely genitally mutilated at birth but there is federal legislation prohibiting such procedures on little girls, providing stiff penalties for those who violate it. Our boys are charged with serving and when ordered to, dying for their country, while our girls are not. And on and on it goes.
It is going to take a quantum leap for our leaders to begin to realize the profound sexism that currently exists in many of our laws and institutions. It will take courage to move beyond the knee jerk response of thinking about taking care of women and children to the exclusion of men's rights and interests and moving into the more compassionate realm of considering the needs of all parties to a circumstance. This is really the essence of this booklet. It is meant to point out the manner in which anti-male sexism has been woven into far too many of our lives, laws, and institutions but goes totally unnoticed by most people.
Will you have the courage to see these problems? Will you have the courage to bring fairness to our present unbalanced situation? We hope so, for your sake, or for that of your sons, brothers, and fathers.
Matt Campbell
Brett Freeman
Tom Golden
Marc Roemer
June, 2004, Washington D.C.
Boys and Education
By Joe Manthey
HOME
Our boys need our help.
- Boys are less likely than girls to be enrolled in advanced math and science, graduate high school, go to college, or graduate from college
- Boys are more likely to drop out of school
- Boys are three to ten times more likely to be diagnosed with attention deficit disorder
- Boys are six times more likely to commit suicide
- Boys are typically 1.5 years behind girls in writing and reading by high school
- Boys score higher than girls in standardized testing like the SAT yet consistently get poorer grades in school.
boys.
A boy, on average, is going to be more impulsive, more aggressive, more fidgety and less verbal. And let's not forget that he's also hard-wired and acculturated to not ask for help. But instead of giving him special care academically, we put him in a female-centered environment (86 percent of elementary teachers are female) where neatness, conformity, stillness, verbal skills and fine motor movements are what is valued. That's a
classroom set up for the female brain.
Because the female brain has a larger corpus callosum -- the bundle of nerves that connects the brain's left and right hemispheres -- girls out-perform boys in reading, writing and speaking. The male brain, which is more focused on spatial relationships and activity, tends to be more complicated and academically fragile than the female brain.
And just how academically fragile are boys? A boy is more likely than his sister to be diagnosed with a thought disorder, a brain disorder or a conduct disorder. He is more likely to be enrolled in special education, more likely to receive a "D" or "F" grade, more likely to drop out, and less likely to go on to college.
Our schools have become feminized to a fault. Cooperative learning and other female-centered pedagogy and curricula prevail. The biggest attention deficit disorder of all is that of educators not even acknowledging that boys, as a group, are being shortchanged academically.
Every boy wants a challenge. When a girl is told she "can be anybody you want to be" -- from a CEO to a stay-at-home mom -- we are sending her a clear message that she has inherent value. But a boy has a hidden psychology that tacitly tells him he needs to earn his worth. He has no blueprint to follow in order to see his inherent value. All the while we assume that he is meeting his own emotional needs.
We are failing our boys for not seeing their fragility, or, if we do acknowledge such, it's often minimized because of the myth that they are "inherently flawed." Just as girls were once told they would never be good in math and science, boys are often sent indirect and direct messages that tell them they're defective, if not just plain bad.
Interesting how we want to help the girl when we perceive her fragility but not the boy.
What can be done?
- Write to your local Board of Education and let them know you think boys deserve better
- Encourage staff developments for Educators that help their understanding of gender difference in learning
- Talk to your sons or to boys you know about their school experience, ask them if they like school and why
- Demand that the government incent men to get involved in teaching. Australia is paying for scholarships for men to get into teaching. Encourage your legislators to do the same
- Support single sex education as an option.
- Inform yourself with books on this topic like "The Wonder of Boys" by Michael Gurian or "Raising Boys" by Steve Biddulph.
The author is the director of Kid Culture in the Schools. He has appeared at The Wonder of Boys Conference featuring keynote speaker Michael Gurian at Sonoma State University on May 8, 2004. For more information, visit http://www.joemanthey.com/
Gender Bias in the Issue of
Domestic Violence
Who's Ever Heard of a Battered Men's Shelter ?
By Dave Burroughs
- A 1998 Department of Justice study found that 834,000 or 36% of the 2.3 million victims of domestic violence are men. Over 100 other studies support that finding.
- According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence there are over 2,000 shelters in the United States serving female victims of domestic violence.
- There are two known to provide shelter to male victims.
- The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence advertises itself as a feminist organization and in furtherance of that political agenda deliberately and purpose- fully promotes the false myth that only women are victims of domestic violence
- Under rules promulgated by the Department of Justice's Violence Against Women Office, organizations seeking funding to serve male victims are denied eligibility for the four billion dollars provided under the Violence Against Women Act to end domestic violence and assist it's victims.
- Because of the pervasive dominance of the bias National Coalition Against Domestic Violence and it's state chapters on the issue of domestic violence state agencies, law enforcement and state sponsored domestic violence councils are locked into the feminist based model of female victims/male perpetrators.
- The result of this bias and of the denial of funding for male victims is a near total absence of shelters and services for male victims and their children, of law enforcement and judicial training specifically designed to deny the existence of male victims and of men left feeling they have nowhere to turn.
Until a decade or so ago domestic violence was society’s dirty little secret. It was frequently condoned and almost always excused. Largely by the efforts of some dedicated members of the women's movement society has begun to seriously address the scourge of domestic abuse . Unfortunately, it is the very fact that the issue was left to be advocated by the women's movement that the issue has been colored by a gender based world-view . The language and discourse on this issue is almost uniformly framed in the context of men as perpetrators and women as victims . But this contradicts the reality and the research.
In Delaware, where the Forum for Equity and Fairness in Family Issues is most active, the Delaware State Police Statistics Division reports that of all criminal domestic violence cases, in 32% of the cases men are the victim. In non-criminal cases the figure jumps to nearly 50 %.
Nationally, the U.S. Justice Department reports in a study released just this past November that of the 2,335,000 persons abused annually by their opposite sex partner, 835,000 or 36% of the victims are men. Further, all of the 54 english language studies that have included both men and women have found that women use violence in their relationships more often then men and at every level of severity. In the May/June issue of the respected progressive-liberal magazine Mother Jones, reporter Nancy Updike reports that the U.S. Justice Dept. will soon release another study authored by Psychology Professor and researcher Terri Moffitt that confirms these studies. Ms. Updike opens her candid article with the words , " After 20 years of domestic violence research, scientists can’t avoid hard facts….women report using violence in their relationships more often than men." But how can that be when the statistics on people filing for Protection From Abuse Orders reflects that 82% are women? And of course who has ever heard of a Battered Men's shelter? Or Battered Men's Syndrome?
In a study of several prior research projects, Barbara J. Morse of the Institute of Behavior Science, University of Colorado clearly established that women commit acts of violence against intimate partners with the same frequency as men. The only significant difference is, due to obvious biological differences in size, women suffer greater physical injury. But likewise for the same reason women use deadly weapons more frequently. Specifically, the National Youth Survey (NYS) which surveyed 1,725 individuals periodically over 17 years starting in 1976 found that women commit acts of violence toward intimates at a rate slightly higher than men. Moreover many other researchers such as Straus & Gelles (National Family Violence Survey) established the same fact. This fundamental fact is reconfirmed in the exhaustive research of Philip W. Cook in his recently published book, " Abused Men: The Hidden Side of Domestic Violence".
In a society in which little boys are taught from early on to " take it like a man ", that "men don't cry " and that to be a "sissy" is to be avoided at all cost, it comes as no surprise that men do not seek protection in the Courts or at shelters. Worse our society daily sends the message that female violence against men is acceptable. In a three week period during April of last year this writer observed four different promos on television for upcoming sitcoms which, in 30 short seconds, showed a man being slapped or hit by a woman. In the April 13 issue of Newsweek magazine the American Greetings Card Co. attached to a full page ad a copy of a greeting card featuring on it's cover a sketch of a woman and the words, " Men are always whining about how we're suffocating them. " Inside the card are the words " Personally, I think if you can hear them whining, You're not pressing hard enough on the pillow ". Imagine such a card being displayed in a national magazine if those words were being expressed by a man about women.
Despite these realities the Violence Against Women Act, with it’s $ 3,000,000,000. in annual funding, has created and sustains a nationwide system of shelters, advocacy organizations and counseling programs that operate upon and promulgate the false and destructive idea of females as victims and males as perpetrators exclusively. Not only have we abandoned the 1/3 to 1/2 of the victims of domestic violence who are male by opting for a Violence Against Women Act, rather than a Violence Against Intimates Act, but we have literally established a network of government and private organizations dedicated to denying their suffering. On behalf of those 835,000 men that the U.S. Justice Dept. acknowledges are victimized annually, F.E.F.F.I. pleads with Senator Biden to re-title and redirect his pending V.A.W.A.II to embrace and support all the victims of domestic violence.
There need be no debate that many women suffer abuse at the hands of angry and dysfunctional male partners. But to deny the reality that domestic abuse is committed by both men and women is to deliberately skew the issue to support the popular view. The result and perhaps motivation is that the millions of government funds allocated toward stopping domestic violence and aiding victims is nearly exclusively targeted to benefit one sector of our society. Further, the propagation of this gender oriented view of domestic abuse permeates the law enforcement and justice system in a way that views men as perpetrators and women as victims. Causing male victims of abuse to not even recognize they are victims and, when they do seek help, to find themselves not being taken as seriously as a woman claiming victimization. When was the last time anyone saw a public service message on domestic violence in which a man was shown bruised and battered and clutching a child to his breast ?
Of equal concern is the affect of this bias on women. For as long as women are absolved of culpability for their violence we not only put men at risk but stoke the fires that so often result in injury and death from domestic violence. When a women is physical with a man because she believes that it is OK for a women to hit men she only contributes to a situation that can often end in her suffering serious injury.
This writer and survivor of domestic violence applauds the efforts of those who have struggled to raise the level of social concern about domestic violence . However, no serious social issue can be effectively dealt with from false premises. As long as we as a society ignore the reality that domestic abuse not only crosses all economic and educational strata but gender as well we will only be putting a Band-Aid on a hemorrhaging problem . It is time we began to talk about the other dirty little secret of domestic violence - that women do it too - and begin to address the problem as one of people not gender .
SOLUTIONS FOR SECURING
EQUAL PROTECTION FOR ALL
- The re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act due in 2005 should be re-titled to the Intimate Partners Violence Act and specific language should be inserted mandating that funding under the act is to encompass sheltering and services for all victims of domestic violence regardless of their gender and providing for a 10% set aside to fund affirmative action at the state and local level designed to educate male victims and the public as well as law enforcement and the judiciary on the issue of male victims of domestic violence
- States should be mandated under both the Intimate Partners Violence Act and the Family Violence Prevention Act to take affirmative action to remedy the bias that has permeated state and local policies and funding against male victims and be prohibited from discriminating on the basis of gender.
- Under the Legal Aid legislation organizations receiving government funds should be required to proactively promote their legal services to male victims of domestic violence and be prohibited from discriminating by either policy or application against male victims of domestic violence.
- All agencies of the Federal government such as the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Justice's Violence Against Women Office and the Department of Defense should be directed to cease discriminatory policies that deny male victims of domestic violence equal protection and/or equal recognition as a class.
David R. Burroughs is the Chairman of the Forum for Equity and Fairness in Family Issues (F.E.F.F.I.). He is a member of the Cecil County Maryland Family Violence Coordinating Council. and a member of the Delaware Domestic Violence Task Force (inactive). He has authored several locally published articles on domestic violence and has been a lecturer/Presenter on the issue of male victims at several national conferences. He is a graduate Widener University School of Law and authored a law school thesis for U.S. Senator Joseph R. Biden titled, State Discrimination Against Male Victims of Domestic Violence and Congress' Authority Under the Fourteenth Amendment to Prohibit Such Discrimination.
Men's Health
- Men die 5.7 years earlier than women
- Prostate Cancer kills as many men as breast cancer kills women but receives only 1/3rd the funding.
- Male specific health research gets only 1/2rd the funding of female specific health research
- We have no Commission for Men's Health, but have eight for women's health
- Men commit suicide six times more often than women
When Men's Health Doesn't Count
By Diana Thompson and Glenn Sacks
By Diana Thompson and Glenn Sacks
This column first appeared in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot (10/9/02)
Congress is sending a message to American men: men's health doesn't count. The disturbing health and mortality disparities between American whites and blacks are well known, but most people do not realize that the health and mortality disparities between women and men are just as great. For example, the gap in life expectancy between whites and blacks is six years, while the gender gap is 5.7 years. Adjusted for age, men are 1.6 times as likely as women to die from one of the top 10 causes of death, and blacks are 1.5 times as likely to die from them as whites.Despite this, it is women's health, not men's, which continues to receive government attention and funding. For example, the National Institutes of Health--the federal focal point for medical research in the U.S.--spends nearly four times as much on female-specific health research as on male-specific research. And though the average man is as likely to die from prostate cancer as the average woman is from breast cancer, the Department of Health and Human Services' National Cancer Institute spends three and a half times as much money on breast cancer research as on prostate cancer research.
In fact, prostate cancer makes up 37% of all cancer cases but receives only 5% of federal research funding. In addition, the breast cancer postage stamp has raised over $25 million for breast cancer research since it began in 1998, while a 1999 bill proposing a similar stamp for prostate cancer research was unsuccessful.
When Congress formed the Office on Women's Health in 1991, its goal was to improve women's health by directing and coordinating women's health research, health care services, and health education. Since then men's health advocates have been trying to create an Office of Men's Health, with the goal of duplicating the OWH's success. Yet while a new bill which will help to make the OWH's funding permanent was just passed by the House, the Men's Health Act of 2001 (H.R. 632) remains trapped in the House Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on health. If not rescued soon, the bill will die when the 107th Congress adjourns this fall. [Ed. update: This bill died in committee when the 107th Congress adjourned and has been re-introduced in the 108th Congress. Currently it languishes in the House as HR 1734 in the Energy and Commerce Committee, Subcommittee on Health and as S. 1028 in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.]
According to Tracie Snitker, director of public affairs for the Men's Health Network, "the number and quality of federally funded women's health education projects is outstanding. But while outreach programs teach women about breast cancer and cervical cancer, there are few if any programs which educate men about their own gender-specific health needs.
"We want to do for men what the OWH has done for women," she adds. "Men need education about the cancers which disproportionately affect them, such as prostate cancer, skin cancer and colorectal cancer. Young men need education on testicular cancer. Most importantly, we need to teach men to seek preventative health care."
Part of the reason an Office of Men's Health has been so long in coming is the common but nonetheless false perception that the government and the scientific community have paid more attention to men's health than to women's. In 1990 Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) made national headlines by citing the fact that women-specific health research comprised only 14% of the budget of the National Institute of Health (NIH). She called it "blatant discrimination" and led the successful campaign for the creation of the OWH. What Mikulski and many in the media who publicized Mikulski's claims did not understand was that only 6.5% of the NIH's budget went to male-specific research--the vast majority of the NIH's research was gender neutral.
Today the disparity in favor of women in NIH research has grown, as has the gender disparity in enrollments in non-gender-specific studies. According to the Government Accounting Office, one ofthe few areas where men comprise the majority of research subjects is in initial trials of experimental drugs. These are the trials undertaken to ensure that the drugs are not lethal or seriously harmful.
First, drugs are usually tested on rats and monkeys. If there are no adverse effects, they are then tested on people--usually men. If the men also show no adverse effects, the drugs advance to larger trials, where women comprise the majority.
Considering Congress' repeated refusal to act to help men's health, one can't help but wonder--is men's health as important as women's, or is it merely more important than monkeys'?
What Can You Do To Help?
- Support the Men's Health Act and specifically request that your Senators and Congress men co-sponsor this bill.
Diana Thompson is a founder and executive director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children (http://www.acfc.org/). She can be contacted by e-mail at DThompson2232@aol.com. Glenn Sacks writes about gender issues from the male perspective and hosts "His Side", a radio show addressing men's issues (http://www.hisside.com). He can be reached at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.
Criminal Bias
back to the topHOME
- Males Get Longer Sentences than Females for the Same Crime
- Men are 20 times more likely to receive the death penalty
- Gender is the most significant biasing factor in determining whether or not someone will be charged, prosecuted, indicted and sentenced, as well as determining the severity of the sentence.
This article first appeared in the Los Angeles Daily Journal (8/1/01).
by Marc Angelucci, JD
When Etta Ann Urdiales was murdered in Colorado, two completely different juries convicted two different people of the crime. Both juries believed there was only one murderer. One convicted Bobbie Hogan, a woman. The other convicted Jess Jacobs, a man. She got 10 years in prison. He was put to death. This case is just one example of the rampant discrimination men face in criminal courts throughout the United States. According to Pradeep Ramanathan, past vice president of the National Coalition of Free Men, an all-volunteer, non-profit organization that has explored and addressed men's issues since 1976, "All the research clearly demonstrates that gender is the most significant biasing factor in determining whether or not someone will be charged, prosecuted, indicted and sentenced, as well as determining the severity of the sentence."
And Ramanathan is right.
Department of Justice figures show that being male increases a murderer's chance of receiving a death sentence by more than 20 times. The data repeatedly confirms that men receive higher sentences than women for the exact same crime.
One study, published in Justice Quarterly in 1986, examined 181,197 felonies in California and found that, for the same crime, being male increased the chance of incarceration by 165 percent. Being black, in comparison, increased the chance of incarceration by 19 percent.
Another study, published in Crime & Delinquency in 1989, examined non-accomplice crimes and factored together the number of charges, convicted offenses, prior felony convictions, as well as the race, age, work history and family situation of the accused and found that "gender differences, favoring women, are more often found than race differences, favoring whites."
In yet another study, published in the International Journal of the Sociology of Law, researchers Mathew Zingraff and Randall Thomson found that being male increases sentence lengths more than any other discriminatory variable.
The bias applies to victims as well as the accused. When Edward Glaeser of Harvard University and Bruce Sacerdote of Dartmouth College examined 2,800 homicide cases randomly drawn from 33 urban counties by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, they found that killing a female instead of a male increased sentences by 40.6 percent. Killing a white instead of a black, in comparison, increased sentences by 26.8 percent.
Even when the exact same type of crime is accounted for, the disparities still persist. For example, a drunk driver who kills a black male receives an average sentence of two years. A drunk driver who kills a white male, four years A drunk driver who kills a white female, six years.
To those who recognize the problem, gender stereotypes are a major culprit. In a 1991 National Coalition of Free Men (NCFM) report titled "Gender and Injustice," researchers John Ryan and Ian Wilson suggest the problem stems from stereotypes about women being more innocent, more reformable and less dangerous than men. Barbara Swartz, former Director of New York's Women's Prison Project, called it the "chivalry factor" and says, "If there were more women judges, more women would go to jail."
Others attribute the problem to the devaluing of male lives.
But addressing the causes does little good when the public does not even recognize the problem. One reason we don't is that the task forces we appoint to investigate the problem are just as biased as the legal system they are supposed to monitor, so a full picture of the bias never gets drawn.
In 1980, the National Organization for Women and the National Association of Women Judges formed the National Judicial Education Program to Promote Equality for Women and Men in the Courts (NJEP). In 1986, they wrote "Operating a Task Force on Gender Bias in the Courts: A Manual for Action," which became the manual used by gender bias task forces nationwide. The manual opens by stating that gender bias operates more frequently against women and that it is not a contradiction for task forces to focus primarily on bias against women in courts.
As one might guess, this is exactly what the task forces do.
"None of (the commissions) study bias against men," said Ramanathan.
For example, even though men are more likely to get prison and women to get probation for the same crime, a New York task force claimed that it is women who were discriminated against because - get this - they receive longer probation periods.
One commission recently justified giving women shorter sentences because women are often custodial parents. But the sentencing disparities persisted in the above studies that took family situations into account. So even if custodial parenthood justifies a shorter sentence, courts are giving men longer sentences than women even when neither (or both) are custodial parents. Needless to say, when a father commits a crime, the courts have no trouble calling him an unfit parent and removing him from his kids.
The gender bias in our courts and in our gender bias task forces is not just an injustice to the victims; it is a tragic betrayal of public trust. In fact, as embarrassing as it sounds, we may need to create task forces to investigate the gender bias of the task forces that we created to investigate gender bias in the first place.
The author is a public interest attorney in Los Angeles and is the Los Angeles Chapter president of the National Coalition of Free Men (http://www.ncfmla.org/).
False Accusations
back to the topHOME
- "Approximately 270,000 men and fathers are victimized each year across America by unfounded and false child sex abuse reports" - Dean Tong, Forensic Consultant & Author
False Accusations of Abuse: Past, Present, and Future
Well-Meaning but Misguided Legislation
By Dean Tong
Without a doubt, the single-most devastating issue to men and fathers over the past 35 years has been that of false abuse accusations. While most if not all of us agree that genuine abuse has been and will continue to be a problem in America, and we believe there must be a system in place charged to protect children and women from physical and sexual abuse, the rise of unfounded and false accusations of child abuse and domestic violence is unconscionable. The year 1969 witnessed the passing of the Equal Rights Amendment and that of No-Fault (No proof - No evidence) Divorce in California. Generally speaking, now all states enjoy No-Fault Divorce. Knowing that women file first for divorce in 80% - 90% of all cases and are adjudged custodial parents 85% of the time in contested cases, and can allege anything from adultery to mental cruelty to spousal abuse without having to prove the same to obtain the equitable relief they are seeking, creates a rich environment for the making of abuse accusations.
Later, 1974 witnessed the single-most impactful federal law that has aided and abetted the child abuse establishment. Known as the Mondale Act or CAPTA (Child Abuse Prevention & Treatment Act), this well-intended legislation charged CPS (Child Protective Services) to protect our most precious resource - our children. CAPTA, which has been re-authorized by both the Clinton and Bush administrations, allows for the government to investigate complaints that are made anonymously, and at times reports that are made in bad faith - open invitations to malicious slander. Few states mete out prison-type penalties (Florida is one that does so - F.S. 39.205(6)) for promulgating malicious false child abuse accusations. In addition, CAPTA immunized governmental child protection state agencies nationally from being sued for monetary damages as they enjoy sovereign immunity under the 11th Amendment.
The last 30 years have witnessed stiffer legislation against child and domestic abusers. The Adoption and Assistance Act of 1980, the VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) of 1994, Megan's Law, and the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 were intended to take children and women out of harms way. In doing so, they have placed men, fathers, and children in jeopardy.
The Era of Source Misattribution Errors
Sadly, the 1980's and 90's witnessed an epidemic of false child abuse Salem witch hunt-type cases. From Jordan - Scott County, Minnesota, to McMartin in California, to Kelly Michaels in New Jersey, to Amirault in Massachusetts, to Little Rascals in North Carolina, and to Wenatchee in Washington, et al, America witnessed a craze of he said - she said - and what young children said-types cases. Some of these cases were representative of actual abuse where the government caught the wrong perpetrators, but most were errors born out of naivete and ignorance - what we now know to be known as source misattribution errors. These mistakes have caused scores of non-abused children to be treated as truly molested and abused victims.
A lack of education and training in child suggestibility, memory and linguistics, child development and child pathology for child protective investigators, sex crimes detectives, sexual assault nurse examiners, guardians-ad-litem, therapists, attorneys, and judges is ever-present in the rise of false attributions, nationally. Misdiagnoses are legion. A systemic failure to examine alternative hypotheses is pervasive. Errors and mistakes made by professionals in the field in real time are commonplace. In fact, of the 2.9 million reports of alleged child abuse and neglect in 2002, approximately 2 million of the same were unfounded or without foundation. Of those 2 million unfounded reports, approximately 2% - 5% were allegations made with motive, method or opportunity to exact harm on another person.
It is well known that the SAID (Sexual Allegations In Divorce) Syndrome has been coined "divorce's atomic bomb" - "the ultimate weapon." Typically, men and fathers are on the receiving end of SAID allegations and because child sex abuse is such a reprehensible crime when it does happen the same are presumed guilty. The author require all of my male clients accused of abuse to submit to expert psychosexual and psychological testing. This process is dehumanizing, and very expensive. It seems abuse and domestic violence are the only crimes that require fathers and men to prove their innocence - to prove innocence, , the opposite maxim to our Constitutional right of presumed innocence until proven guilty applies.
Proposed Solutions
There is no quick-fix solution to remedying the problem of unfounded and false abuse accusations. As a society it is our legal and moral duty to protect children - to protect women. That said, in the process there will be collateral damage. Sadly, most of the collateral damage has affected men, fathers, children, and families. In our headstrong attempt to keep children and women safe we have created a reverse backlash.
In an effort to improve matters, the author proposes:
1. Create a national task force to examine all of the science, data, studies and statistics relative to child abuse and domestic violence over the past 30 years.
2. Repeal CAPTA with the goal of making it more family friendly. Eradicating the government's absolute immunity, requiring all child abuse reports to be made confidentially not anonymously, and imposing stiffer penalties against false accusers should be considered.
3. Establish higher standards of education and training not only for our child protectors, but also for our attorneys (defense litigators and prosecutors) and judges that tackle these cases in courts all across America.
4. Create VAMA (Violence Against Men Act) to neutralize the damaging legal and personal effects of VAWA (Violence Against Women Act)
5. Change the legal standard of a "preponderance of evidence" to "clear and convincing evidence" in both juvenile and family courts across America.
Dean Tong, author of three self-help books including his critically acclaimed <Elusive Innocence: Survival Guide For The Falsely Accused (Huntington House, 2002) and forensic legal consultant, has been retained by parents and attorneys in contested abuse and custody cases from 40 states. An expert in false sexual child abuse cases, Tong consulted on the high-profile Elian Gonzalez case and has been seen on ABC Primetime Thursday, MSNBC, Court TV, and CNN. His website is http://www.abuse-excuse.com/
Reproductive Rightsfor Men
back to the topHOME
30 Years After Roe v. Wade, How About Choice for Men?
by Glenn Sacks
On January 22, 1973, the United States Supreme Court eliminated a checkerboard of state laws on reproductive freedom and guaranteed American women choice throughout the country. Thirty years later, American men are still waiting for the same rightWhen a woman gets pregnant she has the right to decide whether or not to carry the baby to term, and whether to raise the child herself or to give it up for adoption. In over 40 states she can even terminate all parental responsibility by returning the baby to the hospital within a few days or weeks of birth. Yet if she decides she wants the child, she can demand 18 years of child support from the father, and he has no choice in the matter. When it comes to reproduction, in America today women have rights and men merely have responsibilities
Certainly nobody should be able to dictate to a woman what she can and cannot do with her own body, thus the feminist slogan "My Body, My Choice." Yet our current laws allow a woman to dictate to a man what to do with his body. The average American father works a 51-hour work week, one of the longest in the industrialized world. It is men, overwhelmingly, who do our society's hazardous and most strenuous jobs, and nearly 50 American workers--mostly men--are injured every minute of the 40-hour work week. Can anybody deny that the sacrifices required to pay 18 years of child support take a heavy toll on a man's body, too? Where's his choice?
Feminists are legitimately concerned that, if abortion were banned, the government would be exercising control over a very intimate and important part of a woman's life. But when a woman forces a man to be responsible for a child only she wants, and when the state child-support apparatus takes a third or more of his income and jails him if he comes up short, isn't the government exercising control over his life?
The "Choice for Men" movement seeks to give fathers the right to relinquish their parental rights and responsibilities within a month of learning of a pregnancy, just as mothers do when they choose to give their children up for adoption. These men would be obligated to provide legitimate financial compensation to cover pregnancy-related medical expenses and the mother's loss of income during pregnancy. The right would only apply to pregnancies which occurred outside of marriage, and women would still be free to exercise all of the reproductive choices they now have
Advocates of Choice for Men note that over 1.5 million American women legally walk away from motherhood every year by either adoption, abortion, or abandonment, and demand that men, like women, be given reproductive options. They point out that, unlike women, men have no reliable contraception available to them, since the failure rate of condoms is substantial, and vasectomies are impractical for young men who plan on becoming fathers later in life. Since there are long backlogs of stable, two-parent families looking for babies to adopt, there is no reason why any child born out of wedlock to unwilling parents would be without a good home. In addition, if women knew that they could not compel men to pay to support children they do not want, the number of unwed births (and the social problems associated with them) would be reduced
Some of those who fought for women's reproductive choices support choice for men. Karen DeCrow, former president of the National Organization for Women, writes: "If a woman makes a unilateral decision to bring a pregnancy to term, and the biological father does not, and cannot, share in this decision, he should not be liable for 21 years of support ... autonomous women making independent decisions about their lives should not expect men to finance their choice."
To date, courts have refused to respect men's reproductive rights even in the most extreme cases, including: when child support is demanded from men who were as young as 12 when they were statutorily raped by older women; when women have taken the semen from a used condom and inserted it in themselves, including from condoms used only in oral sex; and when a woman has concealed her pregnancy from her former partner (denying him the right to be a father) and then sued for back and current child support eight or ten years later. The National Abortion Rights Action League (renamed "NARAL Pro-Choice America" on January 1 of this year), has been in the forefront of the struggle for choice for women for over three decades. They explain that "the essence of America is the right to determine the course of one's life, to make one's own choices and shape one's own destiny. A woman's freedom to choose is integral to that concept of liberty." Fine words, but is there one of them which does not apply equally to men? Shouldn't men have a choice, too?
This column first appeared in the Mail & Guardian, published in Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa.
1. Write letters to the editor of local papers in response to article on abortion or the abortion debate pointing out the lack of reproductive rights and options for men.
2. Ask your representatives and senators to introduce a bill giving men the right to a three-month limited term paper abortion option wherein they may legally disclaim any right or responsibility of any kind for a child they are purported to be the father of within the first three months of having been informed such was the case by whatever means.
3. Contact the FDA in support of the approval of the "male pill", currently under test in Britain but not in America. It is important to show support for such reversible, reliable chemically-based male birth control because of the great false assumption that men are not interested in such a thing or would not take these pills if they were available. [See http://www.askmen.com/love/dzimmer_60/72_love_answers.html for information and http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ to search the FDA's database of clinical trials.] FDA may be contacted at http://www.fda.gov/comments.html
Glenn Sacks is a men's and fathers' issues columnist and a talk show host on KMPC AM 1540 in Los Angeles. His columns have appeared in dozens of America's largest newspapers. Glenn can be reached via his website, at http://www.GlennSacks.com or by email at Glenn@GlennSacks.com
The Selective Service: Discrimination. Tyranny and Genocide Against Males
by Chip Gibbons
back to the topHOME
I walked into a local post office to send a stuffed animal to my newborn niece. There, I found a brochure that explained how males who are 18-25 are required to register for the Selective Service System. Inside, under the question "Will I Be Drafted?" the brochure said, "The fact that a man is required to register does not mean that he will be drafted. No one has been drafted since 1973. No one can be drafted into the military unless ordered by the Congress and the President. A draft would most likely occur only in the event of war or national emergency." [emphasis mine].
We are constantly bombarded with propaganda that we are a free country with equal opportunity and treatment regardless of race, religion, sex blah, blah, blah. You are only free if you have choice. The sexes are only equal if they have equal freedoms and responsibilities.
If you can be ordered to do something that puts your life in danger, you are not free. Why are only men ages 18-25 required to register with the Selective Service System? Why not women? Why are women free from a possible order to fight for freedom when they are obviously the only sex that is free from threat of being forced to fight? Shouldn't those who are free be the ones who have to defend their freedom?
Forcing ONLY young men to register with the Selective Service System is clear evidence that our society considers males second-class citizens whose lives are less important than female lives. Men can be required to sacrifice their freedom and also their lives by Congress and the President. Women cannot; they are protected.
If males do not register they will pay a price. The Selective Service System web site (Selective Service System: Registration Information) says that males who fail to register can be fined up to $250,000 and sentenced to a maximum of five years in prison or both. The Soloman Amendment (1982) made registration a requirement for Federal Student Categories of Financial Aid which include: Pell Grants, Supplemental Education Opportunity Grants, College Work-Study, National Direct Student Loans, Guaranteed Student/Plus Loans, and Some State Student Incentive Grant Programs. Women can have all these things without the threat of being drafted.
The Thurmond Amendment (1985) requires registration to be eligible for Federal jobs in the Executive Branch. The same is true for most jobs in the Federal Government and the postal service, including temporary and summer jobs. Women can have the jobs without the threat of being drafted.
Eligibility for job training under the Workforce Investment Act is only available to males if they are registered for the Selective Service. Registration is also required of immigrant males seeking US citizenship. Women can get the training without the threat of being drafted.
In addition, many states, local government agencies, police departments and state bar examiners also require registration for males. Women can have these opportunities without the threat of being drafted.
Where is the equal opportunity and equal responsibility in the Selective Service? Only men have to sacrifice their freedom and possibly their lives to have all those government benefits. Women get it all for free.
Is it any surprise that on average women outlive men by seven years and men commit suicide at four times the rate of women? Is it any surprise that males are enraged? No rational male can reconcile the Selective Service, which should be called Selective Tyranny and Genocide Against Males, with the notion that we live in a free country with equality of the sexes.
My niece was lucky to be born a girl because she is free. Male babies are born into slavery.
- Voice your support of HR 487 "To repeal the Selective Service Act".
- Voice your opposition to HR 163 and S 89, the "Universal National Service Act of 2003" that would expand the draft to include women and also allow the government to draft people to serve in non-militarypositions.
- Write letters to the editor of local papers voicing your concern for the move toward re-instituting the draft in any form it takes as a clear-cut abrogation of the civil liberties of the people in general and of men in particular.
Originally published on the author's web site on 9/11/2003 at http://binarycircumstance.typepad.com/bc_blog/2003/09/the_selective_s.html The author maintains a blogsite based at http://www.chipgibbons.com/
The Anti-Father Police State
December 23, 2003
December 23, 2003
byStephen Baskerville, Ph.D.
(This article was originally published at lewrockwell.com in response to an article written by Cathy Young)
back to the topHOME
Columnist Cathy Young is known for her even-handed attempts to cut through the pretensions of both the left and right. She has also shown considerable courage by delving into what for many journalists is a no-go zone: divorce and fathers' rights.
So it is a little awkward to find myself cast as one of her combatants, with my own views and others' whom I typify characterized as "extreme." In the December issue of Reason magazine, Young sorts out, with her customary balance, a debate between proponents of Clinton-Bush family engineering schemes and those of us who take a more laissez-faire attitude toward government intervention in family life.
Actually, it is not my positions that are extreme but my "rhetoric" – specifically, the words I use to describe how government is systematically destroying families and fathers. "Political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible," wrote George Orwell. "Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism." If my language seems direct, it may be because euphemism currently obfuscates the most indefensible politics of our time.
That a writer as informed and astute as Young has difficulty grasping the larger trend at work here validates Orwell's observation about the power of language. Clichés about "divorce" and "custody" do not begin to convey the civil liberties disaster taking place. We are facing questions of who has primary authority over children, their parents or the state, and whether the state's penal apparatus can seize control over both the children and the private lives of citizens who have done nothing wrong. Rephrased, the question is, Is there any private sphere of life that remains off-limits to state intervention? Bryce Christensen of Southern Utah University (and not a fathers' rights activist, extreme or otherwise) has characterized fatherhood policies as creating a "police state."
Developments in only the last few days amount to government admissions of Christensen's charge. Under pressure from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, judge has just freed some 100 prisoners who had been incarcerated without due process for allegedly failing to pay child support. The fathers were sentenced with no notice given of their hearings and no opportunity to obtain legal representation. Fathers relate that hearings typically last between 30 seconds and two minutes, during which they are sentenced to months in prison. ACLU lawyer Malia Brink says courts across Pennsylvania routinely jail such men for civil contempt without proper notice or in time for them to get lawyers. Lawrence County was apparently jailing fathers with no hearings at all. Nothing indicates that Pennsylvania is unusual. After a decade of hysteria over "deadbeat dads," one hundred such prisoners in each of the America's 3,500 counties is by no means unlikely.
Also last week, a federal appeals court finally ruled unconstitutional the Elizabeth Morgan Act, a textbook bill of attainder whereby Congress legislatively separated father and child and "branded" as "a criminal child abuser" a father against whom no evidence was ever presented. "Congress violated the constitutional prohibition against bills of attainder by singling out plaintiff for legislative punishment," the court said. The very fact that a bill of attainder was used at all indicates something truly extreme is taking place. Bills of attainder are rare, draconian measures used for one purpose: to convict politically those who cannot be convicted with evidence.
So do these decisions demonstrate that justice eventually prevails? Hardly. In both cases, the damage is done. Foretich's daughter has been irreparably robbed of her childhood and estranged from her father. Moreover, millions of fathers continue to be permanently separated from their children and presumed guilty, even when no evidence exists against them.
The Pennsylvania men will fare worse. For many, the incarceration has already cost them their jobs and thus their ability to pay future child support. As a result, they will be returned to the penal system, from which they are unlikely ever to escape. Permanently insolvent, they are farmed out to trash companies and similar concerns, where they work 14–16 hour days. Most of their earnings are confiscated for child support, the costs of their incarceration, and mandatory drug testing.
This gulag recalls the description of the Soviet forced-labor system, described by Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski in their classic study of totalitarianism: "Not infrequently the secret police hired out its prisoners to local agencies for the purpose of carrying out some local project…. Elaborate contracts were drawn up…specifying all the details and setting the rates at which the secret police is to be paid. At the conclusion of their task, the prisoners, or more correctly the slaves, were returned to the custody of the secret police."
New repressive measures against fathers are enacted almost daily. Last week, Staten Island joined a nationwide trend when it opened a new "integrated domestic violence court." The purpose of these courts, says Chief Judge Judith Kaye, is not to dispense justice as such but to "make batterers and abusers take responsibility for their actions." In other words, to declare men guilty.
Anyone who doubts this need only look to Canada, where domestic violence courts are already empowered to seize the property, including the homes, of men accused of domestic violence, even though they are not necessarily convicted or even formally charged. Moreover, they may do so "ex parte," without the men being present to defend themselves. "This bill is classic police-state legislation," writes Robert Martin, of the University of Western Ontario. Walter Fox, a Toronto lawyer, describes these courts as "pre-fascist," and editor Dave Brown writes in the Ottawa Citizen, "Domestic violence courts…are designed to get around the protections of the Criminal Code. The burden of proof is reduced or removed, and there's no presumption of innocence."
Special courts to try special crimes that can only be committed by certain people are a familiar device totalitarian regimes adopted to replace established standards of justice with ideological justice. New courts created during the French Revolution led to the Reign of Terror and were consciously imitated in the Soviet Union. In Hitler's dreaded Volksgerichte or "people’s courts," write Friedrich and Brzezinski, "only expediency in terms of National Socialist standards served as a basis for judgment."
Even more astounding, legislation announced in Britain will require the police to consider fathers guilty of domestic violence, even after they have been acquitted in court. Fathers found "not guilty" are to be kept away from their children and treated as if they are guilty. As Melanie Phillips writes in the Daily Mail, "This measure will destroy the very concept of innocence itself."
These are only the most recent developments. Young herselfhas written eloquently on the practice of extracting coerced confessions from fathers like Massachusetts minister Harry Stewart. In Warren County, Pennsylvania, fathers like Robert Pessia are told they will be jailed unless they sign confessions stating, "I have physically and emotionally battered my partner." The father must then describe the violence, even if he insists he committed none. The documents require him to state, "I am responsible for the violence I used. My behavior was not provoked." Again, the words of Friedrich and Brzezinski are apposite: "Confessions are the key to this psychic coercion. The inmate is subjected to a constant barrage of propaganda and ever-repeated demands that he ‘confess his sins,’ that he ‘admit his shame.’"
G.K. Chesterton argued that the most enduring check on government tyranny is the family. Ideological correctness notwithstanding, little imagination is required to comprehend that the household member most likely to defend the family against the state is the father. Yet as Margaret Mead once pointed out, the father is also the family's weakest link. The easiest and surest way to destroy the family, therefore, is to remove the father. Is it extreme to wonder if government is quietly engaged in a search-and-destroy operation against the principal obstacle to the expansion of its power?
Dr. Baskerville teaches political science at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He earned his Ph.D. in political science from the London School of Economics.
MND archive http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/a-b/baskerville
Visit his website. http://www.stephenbaskerville.net
Infant and Child Circumcision
By Ryan McAllister, Ph.D and Dan Sisan, Ph.D
In the United States, circumcision is the most commonly performed surgical procedure. Though this operation is performed more than one million times per year, few of us have seen or thought about circumcision. Consider the following facts:- Circumcision of infants is never medically necessary, according to the American Medical Association, Council on Scientific Affairs.
- Circumcision has serious risks. These include infection, hemorrhage, scarring, shock, penile disfigurement, penile amputation, and even occasional death. The complication rate for this unnecessary procedure is estimated to be 2-10%.
- Circumcision confers no proven health benefits. An intact penis is easy to clean and care for. Some studies show that it increases risk of infections or disease transmission. The few studies that indicate some health benefits all have serious flaws in terms of population selection.
- Circumcision permanently changes the way an infant will later experience sex and sexuality. It removes several square inches of functional, healthy tissue including 10,000-20,000 nerve endings. Removal of this many nerves and this much tissue damages the ability to feel sexual pleasure. Problems later in life can include lack of sensation, chafing, lack of arousal, frustration, and problems due to insufficient lubrication.
- Circumcision is painful. It involves tearing away and amputating highly sensitive tissue that was physically attached to the head of the penis. The procedure causes excruciating pain and can send infants into shock. Babies who have been circumcised are significantly more likely to have problems breast-feeding, and they demonstrate heightened pain responses months later.
- Circumcision hurts everyone. There is evidence that female partners of circumcised men experience less pleasure during intercourse, and may be subject to more frequent vaginal tearing and urinary tract infections.
- Although circumcision holds a traditional place in Jewish and Islamic culture, today's hospital circumcision bears little resemblance to religious ceremonies. Some Jewish individuals are opting for alternative ceremonies that do not require genital alteration, called "Brit Shalom".
- U.S. infant circumcision validates female circumcision here and abroad. The belief that male circumcision is valuable for hygiene reasons mirrors statements that female circumcision is necessary to keep women "clean" and "acceptable" for their husbands. In fact, there is no hygienic justification for removing healthy tissue in either gender.
- There is already a federal law protecting female children from genital cutting, modification, or piercing of any kind. Boys have a right to the same protection.
- Involuntary circumcision violates human rights. Every individual has the right to an intact body, and should not be subjected to body modifications without his/her consent. Infants require special protection because they cannot speak for themselves.
- A child who is not subjected to circumcision will fit in just fine with his peers. Circumcision rates in the U.S. are falling, down from 90% in the 1970s to 60% today.
In countries where circumcision (male or female) is performed, most people have been told that this surgery provides hygiene or health benefits. In reality, genital surgeries do not clearly or substantially reduce the chance of infections or diseases, and the operations are associated with significant risks, including the danger of hemorrhage, infection, severe deformation, and even death. Circumcision of infants interferes with parent-child bonding and can have damaging consequences for personal well-being that last a lifetime.
Personal Action Items:
- Encourage friends and family to get the facts on circumcision before they have children. Comprehensive information about circumcision is available at www.NotJustSkin.org .
- Encourage open discussion about circumcision, acknowledgement of the wounds it has produced for some men, and the need to protect children from unnecessary surgeries.
- Sign the Ashley-Montagu petition to end genital cutting worldwide: www.montagunocircpetition.org.
- Potential Legislation:
- Medicaid Defunding: Write/call/email your State and Congressional representatives to end Medicaid funding for infant or child circumcision. Medicaid should not fund any unnecessary procedures, and either the state or the federal system can ban coverage for this surgery.
- Appropriate Care: Doctors and health care professionals should not be allowed to encourage child circumcision, since surgery that has no medical justification cannot be considered appropriate care for a child.
- Equal Rights: Female children have been protected from any form of genital alteration by a 1995 Federal law. Male and intersex children deserve equal protection.
- Informed consent: Before parent(s) consents to circumcision, they should be provided with complete information about the risks of the procedure, the kinds of nerves and tissues removed, and the absence of proven benefits. They should be encouraged or required to see a circumcision before consenting to have it done to their child.
- Continuing education. Physicians, medical professionals, and caregivers who work with children should be taught the functions and care of the intact penis. Specifically, they should be taught that the foreskin retracts gradually as children age, and should not be forcibly retracted --- this is painful and can lead to trauma and infection.
Ryan McAllister, Ph.D. is the Executive Director of NotJustSkin.org, and Dan Sisan, Ph.D. is a Board Member of NotJustSkin.org Both work as biophysicists and study several topics, including the development of the nervous system.
NotJustSkin.org is dedicated to providing scientific information about questionable medical procedures and advocating for human rights.FAQ on Circumcision
What is Paternity Fraud?
By Carnell Smith
back to the topHOME
Paternity fraud is when the mother of a child lies about which man is the biological father of her child (intentionally and unintentionally). Typically, without advising him, government officials, or the courts that someone else could also be the father. It comes in two flavors, marital and non-marital paternity fraud. There is no law requiring full and truthful disclosure of all material facts to the alleged father.
Other Fraud
Courts have forced mothers to name the soon to be ex-husband as the father when he is not the father. Including husbands that were estranged at the time of conception.
Where is Paternity Fraud being practiced?
Everywhere, Paternity fraud is not discriminatory. It is practiced by rich and poor, educated and uneducated, married and single women across various age groups in most, if not all states.
What are some courts saying about Paternity Fraud ?
In my home state of Georgia, The Appellate Court and was upheld by the Georgia Supreme Court, said "Once non-paternity is scientifically established, courts cannot ignore such fact by relying on policies developed when no such proof was possible. To create a fiction in this matter does not make the male the biological father of the child; it simply makes him the victim of the law".
How can Paternity Fraud be exposed and stopped ?
- Increased public awareness about causes/effects of paternity fraud
- Legal remedy and consequences for perjury, misrepresentation and fraud.
- DNA testing to get truthful information on all birth certificates for both parents.
All children and men deserve to know the truth.
See www.CarnellSmith.com Carnell Smith, Board President Executive Director of National Family Justice Association (NFJA)
Carnell A. Smith, non-marital paternity fraud victim, founder and executive director of the United States Citizens Against Paternity FRAUD, was the driving force behind the landmark Georgia paternity fraud legislation that became law on May 9, 2002.
Smith is a nationally recognized expert on paternity fraud. He has testified in favor of paternity fraud legislation from Florida to California, has made numerous radio and television appearances (CBS Early Show, ABC World News, Abrams Report), on America's paternity fraud crisis and has been frequently quoted in major newspapers (USA Today, Washington Times, Orlando Sentinel, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Star Tribune).
4TRUTH IDENTITY INC and Carnell Smith provide legal DNA Identification Services all over the United States and abroad. You can get a legal DNA paternity test with or without the mother in many states. Visit 911DNAtest.com or call 404-289-3321.
from here
No comments:
Post a Comment