Agenda, much?

[Malificence]

I don't usually wander onto the MN facebook page but I was pretty horrified to find what looks very much like an MRA agenda posted on there.
I'm trying very hard to see what relevance the photo used for their site has regarding the voices of unheard children. Looks more like how they would like to see their women to me.

www.facebook.com/#!/mumsnet?sk=wall

I'd expect nothing less it does make a good sob story when you hear his side of it, the unfortunate thing is that most of it isn't actually true.

For some reason, RealWinter has copied and pasted SAF's post... Not sure what he's trying to say by doing so. They're a strange bunch...

Thanks ThisIs.

The first claim made in the video is very ambiguous, 200 kids separated from their dads every year in secret family courts. 73k sounds about right for the number of contact cases which end up in court, but IIRC a good chunk of cases that go to court, end up being resolved outside of it. As was pointed out, only a tiny minority of contact cases end up with the NRP being told they can't ever see their child. So yeah, false claim.

4 million children or 1 in 3 have not 'lost their dads'. I'm sure the millions of NR fathers who see their kids on a regular basis and have a good relationship with them would be bemused to hear that F4J consider their kids 'fatherless' simply because the mother has primary physical custody. Would a child who lives with its father but sees its mother on a regular basis, be classed as motherless? Of course not. This stinks of misogyny, it harks back to the bad old days when a child would be classed as an orphan because its father had died, even though the mother was still alive.

strange indeed...

Thing is, I am a single mother ie not in any kind of couple-relationship with my son's father. Our family works fine. DS dad sees him at least twice a week, stays over in our house, we even have family days out from time to time.

This is because DS' dad is not an arsehole. The two of us just don't want to live together or have a couple-relationship. I am hugely in favour of amicable co-parenting. I'm just not in favour of arseholes demanding access to DC that they only care about as tools that can be used to punish a woman who dared to stand up to an arsehole.

Exactly SGB. DD's dad doesn't live with us but they have a close and consistent relationship. I put this down to him not being an arsehole. A state of being that he seems to find quite easy to maintain.
Not sure why some men find it so difficult tbh.

They're still harassing Gingerbread.

From their Facebook page:

Today Jolyon Maugham, the Chair of the Fatherhood Institute, has clearly taken offense to us questioning Gingerbread about their unfounded claims. He has asked me if I take responsibility for fathers harassing and threatening Gingerbread staff. I am flattered that he thinks I have such power as to control all fathers in this country, but in reality I can't take responsibility for you all, no more than Mumsnet can and will take responsibility for all those mums who harass and threaten dads by denying contact, or no more than Gingerbread take responsibility for all those single parents out there who steal off the tax payers by "forgetting" to inform the benefits office that they have a new boyfriend or girlfriend living with them and carry on claiming the benefits of a single person.

I can't imagine why anyone would hold them responsible for the harassment of Gingerbread staff?

From their Facebook page:

CALL GINGERBREAD TOMORROW - The Gingerbread Single Parent Helpline 0808 000 0000 get calling and ask them to help you because they claim they have the evidence to support the claim that family courts act in the child's best interests but they wont publish that information and your children need it.

(I changed the number)

copied and pasted my post where?

haven't been following all the drama - just popped in and wrote my response to their claims on the video.

I can't believe that they have rallied their members to call Gingerbread and jam their helpline, and then say that the calls have nothing to do with them

I simply do not understand that.

Does that mean that they believe that criminal acts of incitement do not exist? How can they think that telling members of their group to do that has nothing to do with them?

They are utter turds aren't they.

I can't think of a single other organisation with a greater collective capacity for shooting itself in the foot. Even the BNP occasionally manage to convince daft old farts that Your Local BNP candidate will see about getting the bins emptied and the streetlights maintained and not just run around being racist. But if you look around or ask around, it's impossible to find anyone who isn't a whiny, self-obsessed woman hater who has a good word to say for F4J.

They are more in love with the idea of fighting for the cause than they ever were about the cause itself.

I think they're both stupid and horrible. Have they forgotten the London riots where people were jailed, not for being part of the riots but for organising riots on facebook.

The message they posted earlier re. trolling gingerbread was pretty unambiguous. If they were advocating their members do something illegal, like, phone this women's refuge - phone number 0800 321312414 (made up number), and tell the people there you want to rape and beat them, that would be considered incitement to commit a crime. No mealy mouthed excuses of ''but but but, I don't control these people'', would be accepted as a valid excuse.

They don't have a cause. A tiny minority of men are denied contact in the family courts. A tiny minority of men find themselves in the unfortunate position of being mucked around my their ex's re. contact and access. F4J make out that this is an endemic problem and a symptom of a completely corrupt system. It's not, most separated parents are satisfied with contact arrangements.

I can't believe that F4J will ever be taken seriously. Targeting a charitable organisation like gingerbread? Using downright lies and dodgy statistics in their promotion material? Not to mention their intimidating tactics - threats/ flour bombs/ handcuffs. Shame on them.

They don't have a cause - I am fully in favour of co-parenting - agree totally with SGB above. So are the family courts - they believe in a continuation of parenting after the breakdown of a relationship is in the child's best interests and so do most parents.

In that article Matt O'Connor, having thought about it for about one second, admitted that his wife was right to minimise access to his children after their break-up - he admitted it because he knew he had problems with alcohol. Yet still moments later, he states that he thinks the courts should have given him equal access - why? Because his rights as a man and a father mattered more than what was best for their children.

Shame on him.

It's pretty much ''I don't give a shit what the actual needs of my kids are, I just want to make sure that they don't spend one second longer with their mother then they do with me''.

The MN logo colour change for International Women's Day jars a bit in the context of this thread, doesn't it? As does the "We Believe You" campaign.

I'm feeling sorry for MNHQ now.

They screwed up. They said so. I assume they have been banning people because certain characters have not reappeared, and they have deleted posts calling us bigots etc while leaving all our reasonable ones about F4J. They have clearly got some thinking to do behind the scenes about how to move forward now but I for one am not questioning MNHQ's commitment to feminism or to the campaign right now.
I will wait to see what emerges. If they are all 'la la la, everything's fine, please continue to report all personal attacks' I will take this back but this time I don't think it's going to be.

ruh roh, F4J are taking legal advice this morning

I posted continuously on this thread on Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning, and was here for the 'Justine Moment.' I was impressed with Justine's admission of 'We got it wrong,' and it confirmed to me that MN is a different beast than other talkboard sites.

However the activities that were permitted on this thread and on MN on Tuesday were bloody disgraceful.

I do agree with Tunip that it's the aftermath of this awful episode that needs to be handled right - and very robustly - to keep the trust.

Sorry, SAF, they've copied several comments from here onto the F4J facebook page, in the comments of the post where Nadine kindly sent them this way... Yours was the only one I noticed yesterday, but when I scrolled back, there had been some I'd missed.

We've had this so many times with the MRA's. So many times.