Men's Rights Activists

[Truckulentre]

I keep reading about MRAs inundating MN.

Never met one in real-life and the only ones in the media are F4J who are treated as a joke.

I've met a few Dads who want to see more of their children.

So are they just Internet warriors or do they really exist in real life?
And what are they after?

I don't think they have/had another option other than dress up etc and maybe get some promotion.
Their main concern is that of parental alienation yet all they get thrown back at them is "Some menz treat womenz bad that means all menz are bad"...everyone should be concerned about parental alienation and opposers of childrens rights should stop constantly referring back to some useless straw argument to make men look useless.

I'm rather conflicted on the whole F4J thing. On the one hand, it is undoubtedly true that their stunts did garner a huge amount of publicity for a significant issue. As much as I like (and have benefited from) Families Need Fathers, FNF has never managed to raise the profile of the issues surrounding child contact in the public consciousness as effectively as F4J did.

On the other hand, F4J's actions also backfired badly as many discussions surrounding fathers' involvement in child contact proceedings end up in a slanging match over F4J's actions. They're seen as extremist loons and that's not good for anyone.

The FNF members I've met have tended to be sad about losing contact with their children, maybe a bit angry at their ex and/or the courts, dubious about solicitors but overall desperate to increase contact. The two or three people I've met who I know were F4J members seem obsessed with their "rights" and verged on the conspiracy theorist viewpoint about secret family courts and CAFCASS bias. They talked more about their fight against the system rather than their children, essentially. I know that anecdote doesn't equal data so make of this what you will, but the difference in viewpoint is quite marked in my very limited experience.

Some good points Snorbs and would agree with you in the way some of their members behave like conspiracy theorists although I don't know how much their experiences have radicalised their views.

What astounds me are the blanket statements from some suggesting that all mra's are bad and that they are anti women. My experience of mra's are that they are a mixed bag and are not a homogeneous mass to be pigeon holed into one mindset.

As best I can see, Men's Rights Activism has got a bad name for largely good reason. The few websites I've seen that openly proclaim themselves as MRA use it as a hook on which to hang all sorts of deeply unpleasant misogynistic views. Maybe there are MRA information sources out there which do offer an inclusive, compassionate and balanced view of the debate. But I've yet to spot them amongst all the sexist bullshit. Do you know of any?

I personally don't see the efforts to do something about the deeply flawed family court system as necessarily anything to do with MRA in general. I don't see that as a men's rights or women's rights thing. It is about children's rights, and parent's responsibilities.

Yes, in many respects fathers are fighting an uphill battle when it comes to post-separation child contact but that's mainly due to the thousands of lazy male arseholes who can't be bothered to maintain contact with their kids. We're fighting against the legacy of generations of crap dads. It's not women, or the courts, who made those dads so crap. It was laziness and selfishness.

I know that there are way too many instances where the mother withholds or otherwise frustrates contact for her own twisted reasons and that's flat-out wrong. No-one should use their child as a pawn like that. But, honestly, I've seen way more instances where contact has broken down because the bloke simply couldn't be arsed than those due to maliciousness on the part of the mother.

Snorbs, I'd like to suggest a slightly different perspective, although I agree with much of what you say in general terms about generations of bad dads. You said its mainly due to the the thousands of lazy male a**eholes...

It isn't, unless of course the only way we know how to do this is to say the majority of group A were better parents than the majority of group B, therefore noone in group B gets to see their kids. Where do we stop that; are fat people worse than thin, are English people better than Asian, do people that have high IQ's outperform those that don't?

The law we have already says that the best interests of each child must be paramount but that is not what happens. Your comment above explains why, despite the law we as humans tend to try and box things into simple rules and it fails us miserably in the case of family law.

It doesn't really matter much if only 10% of dads were good enough to look after their child post split, if those were denied that would still account for many thousands of children. Far far too many. It's a little like society suddenly reversing the death sentence and saying it doesn't matter if a few get killed by accidental sentencing.

Either we have a binary system that says all mums are good, all dads are bad; or we look at each case individually and I'm afraid the hard evidence is that it by far the primary option that most courts and judges take. Hope this explains better the thinking.