Radfem empowerment
Radical Feminism is not about equality. It is about Power. Just look at their language; Empowerment, Patriarchy, Assertiveness Training. A child should be the chattel of its mother. In the same way as Marx wrongly thought that the central driving force in society is class, so radical feminists believe the central driving force in the family is power, rather than cooperation. There is a link, because generally Marxist Radical Feminists identify two new classes, men and women. The definition of Domestic Violence now includes normal parenting, particularly by a father.

Ivor Catt, 1 June 2011
Australian Federal MP George Christensen (Liberals) slams ideologically driven Family Violence Legislation passed the lower house by just one vote:

“I suspect that there is a strong feminist ideology driving these amendments. It is feminist ideology that has created this malicious code to rob men of their rights to be fathers. It is feminist ideology that has dressed up this malicious code to rob children of their right to have a father in their lives. It is feminist ideology that has dressed up this malicious code to create the illusion of acting to stop family violence.”

I suggest that he speaks for mainstream Australia.

Extended Federal Australian Parliament Hansard quote from the parliamentary debate on the Australian Family Law Legislation Amendment (Family Violence and Other Measures) Bill 2011:

Mr CHRISTENSEN (Dawson) (12:18): In addressing the Family Law Legislation Amendment (Family Violence and Other Measures) Bill 2011, I have come to understand how the citizens of Troy must have felt when they were greeted with the gift of a giant wooden horse, because this bill is not what it appears. It is a Trojan horse. Just like the giant wooden horse, full of Greek warriors, in Greek legend and like an insidious computer virus, full of malicious code, this Trojan bill is loaded with consequences that will undermine some of the most basic human rights for both parents and children, and particularly fathers.

Family law is a very difficult area to legislate. There is no escaping the fact that every family is different. To create legislation that caters to all circumstances is an unlikely quest. In most circumstances, there are no winners in family law. Family breakdowns are messy. They are hurtful. They are spiteful. They are emotional, irrational and painful. The holy grail of relationship breakdowns, the amicable divorce, is rarer than a kept Labor promise.

It is in this emotionally charged atmosphere that mothers and fathers interact and children are bystanders, often witnessing behaviour by their parents at their very worst. Make no mistake: I do not object to the face-value intentions of some of the amendments in this bill. We cannot question the need to hold a child’s safety in the highest regard when it comes to custody arrangements. But we can question why these amendments are being made.

The current act, introduced by the Howard government in 2006, created the ‘twin pillars’ of parenting provisions. These measures recognised two primary considerations for determining the best interests of the child. The twin pillars were: (a) the benefit to the child of having a meaningful relationship with both of his or her parents and (b) the need to protect the child from harm or from being exposed to abuse, neglect and/or violence—I repeat: the need to protect the child from harm. Safety concerns for the child are already in the existing legislation. It is one of two primary considerations—considerations that, yes, are given equal weight. But, in addition, the current act specifically states in section 60CG that a court must ensure that a parenting order:
(a) Is consistent with any family violence order; and
(b) Does not expose a person to an unacceptable risk of family violence.

Protection is already provided for in the act.

What this amendment proposes to do is to take a George Orwell approach to ranking considerations. When Orwell’s animals in his classic novel Animal Farm draft their legislation on the barn wall, they affirm that ‘All animals are equal’. The pigs then make an amendment: ‘But some animals are more equal than others’. The pigs, of course, had an ulterior motive and I fear that there is one at play here as well. What these amendments are saying is, ‘Yes, the two considerations are primary, but one is more primary than the other.’ What the bill does in reality is to retain child safety as a primary concern while relegating the child’s parental relationships to a minor concern. It sounds innocent enough, I suppose, but the Trojan horse here is a facade of enhancing child safety. The bill is dressed up as an attempt to protect children, which is a pointless exercise, because child safety is fully ensured in the current act.

What is inside this Trojan horse, the malicious code that will infect society, is an attempt to undermine equal access for both parents. This change would invite the court to ignore the requirement to consider the second pillar—the benefit to the child of having a meaningful relationship with both parents.

The Family Law Practitioners Association of Queensland is concerned about giving greater weight to the second of the primary considerations. In their submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee, they said: ‘Such a provision removes the court’s licence to assess in each individual case the degree of risk, its probability or, in the case of family violence, its context in terms of frequency, intensity and recency in the determination of the weight to be given to such risk or harm.’ This bill would mean that any inference of violence, proven or unproven, would have to be taken into consideration, however vexatious the claims may be. The potential danger of this change is apparent when viewed in conjunction with other changes proposed in this bill.

The broadened definition of ‘family violence’ would mean that a wide range of everyday activities could potentially be construed as violence. The broader definition includes as violence such things as repeated derogatory taunts. Under the proposed definition, much of what happens right here in the parliament would be construed as violence. Also included as violence is this little nugget: ‘preventing the family member from making or keeping connections with his or her family, friends, or culture.’ Under this broad definition, a parent could not prevent a young teenager from spending 20 hours a day talking to friends on Facebook, for fear of being accused of family violence. What happens when a parent acts in a way that a reasonable person would describe as good parenting? What happens when a father says to his 13-year-old daughter, ‘No, you can’t go to Julia’s party because there will be alcohol and no adult supervision’? I will tell you what happens. An upset teenage daughter talks to a vindictive mother, who then claims the daughter is a victim of family violence—and it is their right under this definition. Another child loses the right to have a meaningful relationship with her parent. Under this definition, a parent would be too scared to ground a child as punishment for bad behaviour, for fear of ‘depriving a family member of his or her liberty.’

The sheer magnitude of this definition presents two problems. The most immediate problem is that living an ordinary life can too easily be construed as family violence. Adding fuel to the fire will be the actions of hurt, emotional, and spiteful former partners in stretching the truth. Tripping over the family dog will suddenly become ‘intentionally injuring an animal’. Using a few poorly-chosen words a few times in an argument—which most families have experienced—will constitute family violence as ‘repeated derogatory taunts’. This definition would allow everyday actions to be seized, twisted, exaggerated and used as family violence weapons in the court. What this change does is broaden the definition of family violence so much that the word ‘violence’ loses all real meaning. That would be a tragedy, because it would also water down the perception of family violence.

I believe that violence is violence. Violence is cruel and harmful. It is a serious problem in some families and a serious problem in the wider society. But violence is not ‘grounding’ a child.. It is not protecting your child. Being a good parent is not being a violent parent. There is a simple solution to stop such things being interpreted as family violence. That is the ‘reasonable person’ test. Such a test demands that for an action to be deemed as violence it must be an action that requires a person ‘reasonably to fear’ for their personal safety and wellbeing. This is precisely the meaning and interpretation that this legislation strips out of the act.

Is this bill more than it appears at face value? Is it another Trojan horse? I say it is most certainly a Trojan horse.

On face value, the broadened definition of ‘family violence’ creates the illusion of providing greater protection against family violence. Yes, that is a lovely wooden horse but let’s take a look inside. Maybe not, because inside this Trojan is malicious code that gives one parent an arsenal of weapons to be misused in court to deprive the other parent of their right to be a parent.

Earlier in this debate we heard the Minister for the Status of Women tell this parliament that no-one uses claims of family violence in such a way. I have some very bad news for the minister: it actually does happen. It happens every day; and if she is not aware of it happening then she is gravely out of touch with reality. If the minister does not have any contact with her own constituents, perhaps she could spend a few minutes at her laptop doing some research. Here is the sort of thing that you can find in two minutes: the newspaper headline ‘Ugly feud fought on Facebook’. The article tells about a Family Court hearing late last year. At the end it says:

She had already strung the case out by falsely claiming her ex-husband had been sexually assaulting their children after one judgment went against her. Then she falsely claimed the father’s new wife had been assaulting them. ‘The mother has over the years attempted to manipulate the court system,’ Justice Barry said.

That is just one case that can be found with two minutes of Google research, and yet the minister came into this House and said that making false allegations of family violence and using family violence as a weapon in the courts is a myth. Do some homework, Minister.

The fact that this minister has told a lie to this parliament—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Ms AE Burke): The member will withdraw.

Mr CHRISTENSEN: I will withdraw, but I will say that the minister has told an untruth to this parliament. It is clearly not true to say that it is a myth. It is clearly not true to say—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member will return to the bill before him.

Mr CHRISTENSEN: I am, because the minister has told this House that it is a myth that family violence is misused by people in the Family Court. The fact is that it is not a myth and you can see that from a bit of research. Abuse of the system is why we have organisations like Lone Fathers, Dads on the Air, Fathers Online, Fathers 4 Equality, Men’s Rights and so on. If we look closely at these groups, there is a common theme. It is a theme that helps explain why this malicious code is being pushed into the act. These are groups set up by fathers.. We can talk all we want about custodial parents and non-custodial parents, but the truth is that most custodial parents are mothers and most non-custodial parents are fathers.

There are no winners in family law. All parents in family law become losers one way or the other, but some who are bigger losers than others. The current act helped to bring some equality to family law. It created the two pillars, one of which recognised the benefits to the child of having a meaningful relationship with both parents. These amendments are a backward step. They will strip fathers of their right to be fathers. These amendments will allow abuse of the system that will create another generation of stolen children.

I do not know where the government obtains feedback on the practicalities of family law and family law disputes, but I get my feedback from constituents. I talk to real people who are affected by real situations. I have conversations with fathers who are getting the roughest end of the pineapple. They are grieving fathers who have lost children through the courts. They are devastated and frustrated. They are good men who love their children and want to maintain a relationship with their own flesh and blood—something that should be a basic right.

Some of these men are on the edge. They are driven insane by the lack of justice in the system. They are left in the wilderness, robbed of basic rights and family and, with no support from our legal system, these fathers are driven to despair, driven to the brink of insanity. And if the minister wants to continue her research, she might discover what happens when fathers are placed in a hopeless situation where justice is lost through abuse of the system—which she claims is a myth. When fathers are driven to insanity, they do insane things. I can, in no way, condone the actions of men who, in the face of losing everything, choose to take everything. They do take their own lives and, very sadly, sometimes in the insanity that they are engulfed in, they take the lives of their children. I note that this is not purely a male response, given that there are numerous examples, including some recent cases, of non-custodial mothers doing the same thing.

Family violence is a terrible thing, but so are the actions of fathers driven to the brink. These amendments will do nothing to stop family violence—we already have good measures in place—but they will drive more fathers to the brink. If these amendments drive fathers to the brink, we should be asking who is at the wheel. Is the Minister for the Status of Women at the wheel? Is the Labor-Greens government at the wheel?

I suspect that there is a strong feminist ideology driving these amendments. It is feminist ideology that has created this malicious code to rob men of their rights to be fathers. It is feminist ideology that has dressed up this malicious code to rob children of their right to have a father in their lives. It is feminist ideology that has dressed up this malicious code to create the illusion of acting to stop family violence.

I note that included with these changes is one that repeals the ‘friendly parent’ provisions from the additional considerations for determining a parenting order. The friendly parent provision encourages amicable behaviour among parents. It fosters friendly relationships with all parties. Most importantly, the friendly parent provision assists a court to meet the first pillar of parenting provisions—the benefit to the child of having a meaningful relationship with both of its parents. This provision has helped more fathers maintain meaningful relationships with their children and, at the same time, it has discouraged parents from abusing the system.

But justice and maintenance of rights for fathers is an affront to this feminist ideology from this government. What a clever way to rob men and rob fathers of their rights! Surely no-one would vote against amendments aimed at protecting children and preventing family violence. But that is not what these amendments are really about. There is already protection in the current at. The fact is that these amendments actually trivialise what is a very serious matter—that being family violence. The broadened definition of ‘family violence’ waters down the meaning of violence and will, in effect, make family violence more acceptable—precisely the opposite of the purported aim of these amendments. These amendments should be seen for what they are. They are a Trojan horse, full of malicious code designed to deprive fathers of their rights. The best thing we can do to protect the safety of children and to prevent family violence is to leave this act as it is. (Time expired)

Ivor Catt, 2 June 2011.

There are a number of little known problems confronting attempts to reform the situation.

Two problems stand out. They relate to the incompetence of excluded fathers when they try to encourage reform.

More than a decade ago I pointed out that nowhere in UK law, European Law or United Nations law or declaration is a child’s right of access to its parent enshrined. Canadian Senator Anne C Cools pointed out that the same situation prevailed in Canada. Thus, excluded father try to press judges to enforced a law which does not exist. Excluded fathers remain totally indifferent when this is pointed out to them, and are not interested in contributing to effort establish such a right for children in law or in the UN Declaration. Under the United Nations Charter, Saudi Arabia is perfectly entitled to confiscate a child from its mother.

Similarly, there is no right for a parent to access its child. Again, indifference from excluded fathers.

• http://ivorcatt.wordpress.com/tag/right-of-access
• http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/2315.htm
• http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/y9gdecon.htm
• http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/0a108.htm
• http://groups.yahoo.com/group/euro-dads/message/9757
• http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sharedparenting/message/14230
• http://groups.yahoo.com/group/euro-dads/message/9842

“ …. …. it became established that children have the right to both of their parents and that the King will be the protector of that right. She then recounted a trail of decisions during which that premise became modified repeatedly until it came to mean today that children are the property of, and an adjunct to, their mothers, …. …. “

No excluded father is interested in this matter.

Fathers refuse to consider “The Retreat Strategy”. The extreme case was Matt O’Connor, founder of F4J, who said he had benefited from the strategy but never told any of his members about it.

• http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/2908.htm

All the four fathers who used it won their cases. All other fathers refuse to discuss it or use it.

The Government has failed to offer families a (divorce) system that works. You have to start by bringing the judges, experts and stakeholders on board to agree what sort of orders the Courts should make. That way, you know what you’re trying to deliver. Then you build a legal system to deliver it. The Government never did its homework. It forgot the foundations.

It’s the same old gerry-building: “Anything goes”, Theresa May, Shadow Minister for the Family, said at the Conservative Party Conference, 2004.

Theresa May is wrong. She does not know that the attack on the traditional family has been built over many years after extensive homework. The attack is spearheaded by a large number of activists in the Cabinet, strongly supported by the Prime Minister’s wife Cherie Blair, inconsistently, because she is a staunch Catholic. In a crucial vote two years ago, it was reported that when the Cabinet was split 50/50, her husband laid his casting vote against the family.

Most of the reasons for and strategy for the attack on the family can be read in radical feminist literature, much of it published by members of the Cabinet, by their co-authors, and by Judge Cherie Blair. Some of it is readily available, but not understood by journalists.

Our sex equality envoy in Baghdad.
The government has sent a “gender equality” officer to Baghdad to help emancipate Iraqui women, writes Maurice Chittenden from the (Sunday) Times. Patricia Hewitt, the trade and industry secretary and minister for women, has seconded an expert from her equality unit in Whitehall to the new Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) in Iraq (Sunday Times, June 15, 2003, p9.)

This initiative follows the American plan to put an American female general in charge of Baghdad. A year later, nearly all the young American and British soldiers dying in Fallujah and elsewhere fighting to give equality to Iraqui women are male. Do our objectives in Iraq include encouraging Iraquis to appoint female mullahs, in line with our female Bishops in England and the USA?

On page vii in the forward to her 1993 book “The Century Gap. 20th Century Man. 21st Century Woman.”, Cabinet Minister Harriet Harman wrote;

“Over the past twenty years Patricia Hewitt, Anna Coote and I have developed our ideas together.”

Both Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt are members of Tony Blair’s Cabinet, the small executive committee which governs Britain. On page 58, Harman writes;

“ …. Husband(s) …. must exercise within their homes the rules of common courtesy and respect which they practice at work.”

In 1982, in the middle of those twenty years, Anna Coote (1, 2) joined with lesbian Beatrix Campbell to publish their book “Sweet Freedom”. They wrote;

“Feminists have had to contend with some powerful myths. One is that sex is a purely natural phenomenon and therefore apolitical …. Another is that the natural expression of sexuality is what we know as heterosexuality. A third is that a woman’s sense of her own sexuality is natural, rather than something that has been constructed by social and economic factors. …. (p212) Conventional heterosexual practice – that bizarre mixture of myth and coercion – is defended more vigorously than any other precept on which our society is supposed to be founded. (p213)

Allegation that Domestic Violence inheres in the conventional family, and is always perpetuated by men, is the counterpoint to the belief that copulation is an unnatural social invention imposed by patriarchy on naïve and disempowered women. In Coote’s book we read;

“ …. Men regularly beat up women in the privacy of their homes …. The public had to face the fact that domestic violence was widespread and often severe. …. (p40) wife-battering is not the practice of a deviant few, but something which can emerge in the ‘normal’ course of marital relations. (p.41)”

Thus, the current campaign to drive fathers out of the family is to protect women from both violence and from copulation imposed on them by brainwashing and coercion.

Admittedly, I have not found a direct link with the High Priest of Radical Feminism, Catharine A MacKinnon, who helped to draft Canadian and also American laws. In her seminal book, “Towards a Feminist Theory of the State” (Harvard University Press, 1989, 1, 2), she writes;

“…. Rape, which by a conservative definition happens to almost half of all women at least once in their lives …. Over one-third of all women are sexually molested by older and trusted male family or authority figures …. (p142) About one third of all men say they would rape a woman if they knew they would not get caught. (p145), …. most women are raped by men they know …. (p146), a reality …. Women’s sex-based destitution and enforced dependency and permanent relegation to disrespected and starvation-level work …. The pervasive rape and attempted rape about which nothing is done, the systematic battery of women in homes, and prostitution – the fundamental condition of women ….(p242)”.

The first sixty pages of MacKinnon’s book are entitled “Feminism and Marxism”.

The important thing is not to decide on the truth of these assertions, but rather to think through what legislation and society such people would try to create.

The idea that women are oppressed, primarily by living within the married family, is at the heart of the dogma of what is now called the “Commentariat”, those who write and talk within the very narrow range of opinion that is allowed in the “free” media and politics in the UK.

Protest against it is what led the voting majority in the USA to re-elect a politician, President Bush, who showed recognition that western society is being dismantled at its core, the institution of marriage. Had he not done so, a rapidly escalating pro-family Fascist Party might have grown in the USA, as it is likely to do in Britain. Britain is vulnerable because libertarian and homosexual leadership blights the natural party of the Family, the Conservatives. It is noteworthy that in the confusion following Bush’s re-election, the Commentariat slipped into admitting that the voter linked Gay Marriage with the attack on the Family, a link they were successful in suppressing until now, although it would obviously influence voting.

The backlash against the political and media hegemony of a libertarian, intolerant, anti-family censoring Commentariat will be too late to save education from disaster. This can be seen by doing a “Google” search for “Curriculum Transformation”, which is by now very heavily funded. Primarily created and financed by a Radical Feminist-led Ford Foundation, “Curriculum Transformation” permeates academia in the USA. The content of every university syllabus is being replaced by radfem dogma. Study of “Curriculum Transformation” is very helpful if we want to study the roots of radical feminism, which controls the leadership of western societies, but does not control the voters, who will topple that leadership at some time in the future.

Erin Pizzey insists, and Catharine A MacKinnon seems to admit, that Radical Feminism is Marxist. Except for the original idea that normal copulation is unnatural, Radical Feminism is syncretic, stealing ideas from wherever it can. All that has been done with Marxism was to replace “Capitalism” with “Patriarchy”. On the other hand, there are strong indications that in Russia in the 1920s, Feminism was indistinguishable from Marxism.

(Britain and the USA are no longer democratic, but are controlled by tiny groups of extremist women. Democracy having been subverted, can it recovered?) The race is on to exploit outraged reaction between moderate Bush-style recapture for democracy, and a Fascist takeover when the “silent majority’ finally flexes its muscles. Continuing radfem censorship means that the choice between them will not be decided rationally by discussion and debate. Free discussion will be prevented by the libertarian Commentariat until well after the transfer of power.

Other reading on this subject:

• Ill Eagle 2001; Family breakdown; ManKind

“The evaluation strategy for Sure Start local programmes is two-fold – a comprehensive long term, wide ranging national evaluation (which will be completed in July 2008), and evaluations of particular programmes to look at shorter term outcomes for each individual community.”

The above is from the attachment in Whiston’s email to me; from a document produced by Hodge’s “Sure Start” controlling team and forwarded to me by Robert Whiston. Whenever Robert W, or Coe or others talk to their MPS, or are in committee with government – LCD or CAFCASS – they should cite this from Sure Start, and say that there is no reason for it having been avoided all these years by the Family Court System and by CAFCASS. Since Sure Start institutionalises accountability in this way, there is no reason why Family Court judges etc. should not be accountable by the same methods; statistical analysis of the later comparitive death rate etc. of children of divorce who pass through the hands of each judge. Also statistical analysis of outcome (teenage pregnancy, truanting etc.) for children subjected to parentectomy compared with those where contact orders are enforced. Children are the central element in the activity of both Sure Start and the Family Courts. If too high a percentage of the children who pass through the tender hands of Judge Munby later die, or become teenage pregnant, then Judge Munby might even get himself another job without being pushed. Once judges suspected that outcome was statistically significantly worse when they allowed a child to continue to have contact with its divorced father, they would cut off fathers in order to protect their own jobs as judges. As in Surestart, accountability is an accepted feature of virtually every other kind of employment, but not included in any of the roles in our secret family court system.

Ivor Catt 18nov03

UK Fathers – Working Together

We find that excluded fathers get muddled over various aspects of the family courts. I have a new point to make here.

More hangs on the issue of whether a criminal offence has been committed when it comes to allegations of domestic violence than in all other cases of criminal allegations, because in these other cases, the future of children is not directly involved. It follows that it is more important, not less, for the correct verdict to be made.

The English system is based on jury trial in open court by the defendant’s peers. It follows that anyone who colludes in supporting the family courts’ inroads into questions of criminal domestic violence would not be able to explain why they supported the jury trial in any criminal case. They have to agree that they oppose jury trials in all cases. If, however, they are in favour of jury trials, they surely must demand that a jury be involved in open court before recourse is made to a Child Contact Centre.

Ivor Catt 20feb03

This muddled writing about Child Contact Centres points to underlying misunderstanding.

I divorced my wife. When I took this action, I did not introduce third parties between me and my children. It is most important for excluded fathers to grasp this point. The State and its lackeys- lawyers and so on – have a right to intervene in the matter of my divorcing my wife. Like marriage, divorce is a public matter in which the state has an interest, because it may result in spouse or children becoming a burden on the state.

However, intervention by the state between me and my children was another matter. When a judge suggested that I go to a “Contact Centre” and my children do the same, he was acting totally outside his proper powers, which were to do with the initial contract of marriage and the current breaching of that contract.

The state’s interest in the marriage contract arises because children may result from that union, leading to parent or child becoming a burden on the state.

[It has never been alleged that the State is better at parenting than is a parent, so the State does not intervene between parent and child.]

Similarly, during divorce, the state has a right to have concern about provision for the children and for a parent of the marriage. However, putting parent and child into a special location with supervision has nothing to do with the state’s interests. In no way does a parent provide for a child by confronting it under supervision.

[Confronting a child under supervision apes providing for a child in the same was as a film about the war apes the war. It is not the same thing.]

This theatrical game has been added on without any legal justification by various bureaucracies intent on exploiting the situation to make money.

Baskerville (see my website) investigates the enormous financial gain from the kind of activity which is mushrooming around divorce. It is most important that excluded fathers be not tricked into supporting such attacks on parent and child by money-hungry bureaucracies and vicious radfems.

Ivor Catt 20feb03

More and more evidence of disastrous outcome for the child following parentectomy leaks out through a highly censoring media. I wonder at this indifference by all parties to the root problem. By default, that is what UN, the European Court of Human Rights, our own laws and practice, and so on through the whole many layered ranges of ‘protections’ for the English child, validate. If Saudi Arabia routinely cut off her children from every divorced wife, they would remain fully able to endorse all UN (and European and British) laws and declarations.

When we want to enable or stop anything else, we discuss legislating on the matter, or adding it to a UN Declaration. In the one case of parentectomy, we become increasingly concerned about its effects, but are totally indifferent to its root cause.

Anyone who is active ‘on my side’; that is, who wants every child to have the right of access to its parent, but is indifferent to my discovery, is actually against me and against possibly the most fundamental right of every child. You cannot do good with your brain switched off; you only get in the way.

Ivor Catt 12feb99

I see no sign of interest in this matter.

Ivor Catt 6feb00

I see a diminishing interest in this issue, which has been widely canvassed by me for some years now. There is absolutely no evidence that those who express concern about the Family, for instance FYC, are interested. This leads me to assert that a divorcing father would rather lose his home, his children, all his assets and his future income rather than think. Put more succinctly, a man would rather die than think.

Ivor Catt 3jun07

An important synthesis arose from discussion with E on 23dec98.

We begin with the all-important decision as to whether the nest-building urge inheres in the nature of men, or else, as Amneus tends to assert, it is culturally constructed. In his book The Garbage Generation, pub. Primrose 1990, he argues that the weak link in the traditional family is to the father, and that it has to be culturally maintained. For Amneus, matriarchy, where the man has no role in the family, is pre-civilization. The key feature of civilization is that the man is locked into the family. This unleashes the great engine of wealth creation. The married man’s income is 70% more than that of the single man, the single woman and the married woman, all of whom earn the same amount. It is the inculcation of the massive wealth creation of the married father that causes economic takeoff into the much higher standard of living that distinguishes civilization.

Those who have experience of our secret family courts know that a new culture is being nurtured at great expense to the taxpayer. Under this culture, the greatest threat to a child is its own father, who wants access to it in order to sexually molest it and to batter it. A man who is drawn into our family courts experiences deep culture shock. The careful inculcation of the idea that his future lies in marrying, working and providing for and caring for his children is contradicted by a new cultural norm. This new norm asserts that married men usually batter their wives and sexually molest their children.

The original inculcation is however relied on by the courts, which assure themselves that whatever barriers they put between father and child, he will struggle to surmount them in order to fulfil his learned duty under the earlier culture. This contradictory situation survives because of the secrecy of the courts and the censorship of their activities. However, a slow fuse has been lit. The message is leaking out, that our culture now regards a father as a threat to his children, and that his only positive aspect is his cheque book. This is why the marriage rate has collapsed, the remarriage rate has collapsed, and the birthrate has collapsed.

My loyalty is to the present crop of young men, who must be warned about the danger they are in.

Ivor Catt 31jan99

Ivor Catt 23jan99
In the course of her research for the second edition of her book Farewell to the Family?, Patricia Morgan came across the following passage from a feminist textbook on marriage The Ties That Bind (1984):

The idea of abolishing marriage may sound as attractive as the classical communist call to abolish the family, but such demands are probably as unpopular as they are unrealistic. It would be far more effective to undermine the social and legal need and support for the marriage contract. This could be achieved by withdrawing the privileges which are currently extended to the married heterosexual couple. [These include not vindictively exaggerating the statistics on stress within marriage. IC23jan99.] Such a move would not entail any punitive sanctions but would simply extend legal recognition of different types of households and relationships, and would end such privileges as the unjustified married man’s tax allowance. Illegitimacy would also be abolished by realising the right of all women, whether married or single, to give legitimacy to their children.

This plan of action has been put into effect with complete success. We are now struggling to cope with the consequences as can be seen in the government’s consultation document Supporting Families.

References:

• 

  Patricia Morgan - Farewell to the family? Public policy and family breakdown in Britain and the USA (2nd Edition, 1999)

  FAREWELL TO THE FAMILY? Public policy and family breakdown in Britain and the USA; by Patricia Morgan (2nd edition: revised & updated); 1999, 240pp Price: £5.00 (rrp: £8.00); Family & Youth Concern Publications; More details; Family Education Trust (Family & Youth Concern); Jubilee House, 19-21 High Street, Whitton, Twickenham TW2 7LB; UK; T 020 8894 2525; F 020 8894 3535; Email the Family Education Trust (Family & Youth Concern)

• Family Bulletin no. 94, winter 98/99, published by Family And Youth Concern

Also see:

• Farewell to the Family — Book Review – Fathers for Life
• A Review of Farewell to the Family? By Patricia Morgan. » Book review – Bill Muehlenberg’s CultureWatch
• New Statesman – The New Statesman Essay – Book review – Celebrate the new family

• Domestic Violence: Home Office Research Study 191; HMSO (1999)

Men are increasingly the victims of domestic violence, and are just as likely as women to be assaulted by a partner, according to Home Office research published yesterday. The men most likely to be attacked are in their early 30s and unmarried, but living with a woman.

The findings, from the British Crime Survey, show there are some 6.6 million incidents of assault in the home each year, evenly split between men and women.

But the research also shows that women are twice as likely to be injured, and are much more likely to suffer repeated attacks. They are also less likely to be in a financial position to be able to leave a violent relationship.

It also shows that the rise in domestic attacks on men by women is a 1990s phenomenon. In 1995 just over 4 per cent of men and women said they had been assaulted by a current or former partner in the last year. But 23 per cent of women said they had been assaulted by a partner at some time – compared with 15 per cent of men.

Women are at greatest risk of attack after a relationship has broken up or they and their spouse have separated. The researchers say women have a different emotional reaction to separation, and are less likely to use violence to express their feelings: ”Women’s violence against men is, therefore, more likely to be within the context of an relationship.”

The research was published as the Home Office Minister, Paul Boateng and the Leader of the Lords, Baroness Jay, launched Break the Chain, a domestic violence leaflet giving practical advice and listing telephone helplines, including a men’s advice line.

”Domestic violence wrecks lives. Much of it is literally criminal,” said Mr Boateng. ”All of it is unacceptable. But a basic shift in attitudes is required. We must work towards the day when such conduct is universally recognised as reprehensible.”

The study by Home Office researchers Catriona Mirrlees-Black and Carole Byron found that in most cases the violence involved pushing and grabbing, but in 47 per cent of incidents the victim was also kicked, slapped or punched. About half the attacks resulted in injury, most commonly bruising, but one in 10 involved cuts and a small minority broken bones.

Throwing things at each other happens in one in five cases, and in about a third of cases children in the home either witnessed the attack or were aware of it.

Only half of victims of domestic assault told anyone about it – normally a friend, neighbour or relative. The police were only told about 12 per cent of incidents.

For men and women, East Anglia has the highest level of domestic assault, followed by the North and Yorkshire/ Humberside. Assaults are below average in London and the South-east, and women in the East Midlands and men in Wales are at the lowest risk.

Domestic Violence. A third view.

To: Libby Brooks, Journalist, The Guardian
From: Ivor Catt 21jan99

I believe that I diverge the all of the Men’s Movements. I believe we are on our way out of the frying pan into the fire. You told me that a Home Office press release today “British Crime Survey” (which will be in the press tomorrow, including your report in the Guardian [in the event under the byeline of Alan Travis]), reported that violence in the family against men was larger than they had thought, and actually was about equal to violence against women. (Note in passing the dishonesty of the recent TV programme on the subject, (Dispatches ch4 7.1.99 9pm 50mins) where the woman pulled her punches by the give-away remark that although serious, violence against men was only 10% of violence against women. The producers of a previous programme were made under pressure from Whiston because they had done a programme on violence against women. The woman in charge then double-crossed him and blew it while appearing to give equal time. A dirty trick. It is not sufficient for her to reply that she did not have the statistics. The programme was three months in the making, and through Whiston she had access to the good statistics by George and Yarwood. (The programme had been postponed once already for the much more important subject of violence against animals!)) (Note in passing also the misbehaviour of Boateng, who recently did enormous damage by saying “Violence against men in the family does not exist.” Now look at what he seems to be quoted as saying in the 22jan99 report from his own department. The damage from his previous incompetent, anti-social behaviour remains, and is added to anti-social behaviour by so many other major figures. He cannot put it right now. He just bends with the breeze; slippery as an eel. The recent propaganda by Boateng and Jay implied that only men were violent, which the close reading of the 22jan99 report does not actually indicate they have retracted. They really are anti-social rogues.)

I made a breakthrough which is highly relevant. By chance, I was expertin the AIDS Industry (see my website), worth about $4 billions per year,and then came to the Global Warming Industry, also worth $4 billions peryear. Study of the build-up of racketeering vested interests (Jay took part in the AIDS racket) in each of these fields is called “Public Choice Theory”. The failure of the number of AIDS patients to increase threatens the job security of AIDS workers etc. so the clinical definition is ever expanded to increase the number of “patients” who can then carry the AIDS professionals and the drug companies. Exactly the same happens in the Global Warming Industry, where many jobs disappear if global warming is doubted. The scientific evidence is rigged. See p75 in the 1997 book “Climate Change” put out by IEA, tel. 0171 799 3745. The parallel between the AIDS industry and the Global Warming Industry is exact. The western world’s Domestic Violence Industry (DV) will presumably settle down to the same $4 billions per year. To do this, definition of DV has to be enlarged (and confused), as is being done. Thus, the anti-family lobby (radical feminists and homosexuals) will ally with the DV Professionals to inflate figures. Properly, UKMM should be in favour of the family, not of blackening women as much as men are being blackened. However, the innocent UKMM members did not go through my experience, of thoroughly studying the AIDS Industry and then turning to the Global Warming Industry, and seeing the common theme – Public Choice Theory (PCT). (For further analysis of PCT see the 1998 US book “Cancer Scam”. It analyses in depth the manipulation of public opinion in order to steer public money in particular directions. UKMM is totally ignorant of this theory.)

Ivor Catt 21jan99

I have eight years of experience, mostly representing myself, in litigation in English courts at all levels. I was much in the secret family courts. I sued my employers twice, once in the Queens Bench of the High Court. I myself was sued in Chancery in the High Court for £100,000, a further £50,000, etc. etc., where I represented myself.

Although I won cases, I concluded that the English courts today are hopelessly warped at all levels. A litigant needs to advance through them as quickly as possible. Only when he has exhausted the English ‘system’ is he allowed to proceed to Europe, where I assumed things would be better. Certainly, they could not be worse.

Recently, I read John Campion in the U.K. Men’s Movement website. According to him, the European courts are as politically correct, and show the same contempt for the law, as do our English judges in our secret family courts. If he is right, then it follows that today, all litigation is a waste of time for an Englishman, and should be shunned.

All of the above means that some of the most fundamental human rights have been abrogated in England today for some classes of people, even more so, and more routinely, than in Hitler’s or in Stalin’s empires. A key to the abrogation is the increasing secrecy of the English courts. Edmund Heward, Chief Master of the Supreme Court (Chancery Division), on page 117 of his book “Lord Denning“, pub. Weidenfield & Nicholson 1991, says that they act in secret in ninety per cent of high court work, something Denning opposed

In spite of the above, I plead strongly for continuing study, and understanding, of the national and international legal ‘system’, even though today, English judges have a contempt for it, or at least for the small part of it that they know and understand.

Some years ago, I discovered that nowhere, in English or in International Law, is a child’s right of access to its parent enshrined. It is often estimated that one quarter of children in England have lost all contact with their parent. This estimate separates us from the tyranny of Stalin or Hitler, which was selective. (Even though English judges would ignore such a principle, were it stated anywhere, it remains important that it should be stated.) [dec98. Article 26 of the 10dec48 U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26, clause (3), says; "Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children." After the depredations on our most fundamental concepts about social order by radical feminists, we need such a "default" statement by the U.N. that "A child has a right of access to its parent" before we can begin to retrieve society from its present acceleration towards catastrophe. Although our courts will show contempt for such a U.N. Declaration, at least we will then clearly know who is breaking the law - our judges. "The best interests of the child" argument for defying this U.N. statement must then be argued before a jury, in open court. That is the road back from ruin.]

The most likely place outside England, for me to find an assertion of a child’s right of access to its parent was in the 1989 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child. Lo and behold, it is not there, which astounded me. (Adrienne Burgess was misled by a text book summary of the Declaration. The original Article 9 has to be read, not second hand summaries, to see the point clearly.)

Lynette Burrows, in her 1998 book The Fight for the Family, discusses radical feminists from England who were very influential in the drafting of the 1989 United Nations Declaration. These neo-Marxist, destructive women replaced Capitalism by Patriarchy in Marxist dogma. According to Burrows, and according to Erin Pizzey, they want the state, not the parent, to own a child. Burrows goes further to say that the Children’s Rights campaign is actually a campaign to wrest children from their parents and put them under the control of the state, as did some totalitarian regimes. However, she hopes to discredit the small but politically effective Children’s Rights movement in the following way. Following a strongly hostile public attitude to paedophiles, paedophiles have been subsumed into the Children’s Rights movement. They then influence it to weaken parental control by such reforms as anti-smacking and reducing the Age of Consent in its various forms, thus easing access to children for paedophiles and homosexuals. (She says that whereas only 2% of the population are homosexual, 35% of child molesters are homosexual.)

Why is a child’s right of access to its parent not enshrined in various documents including the 1989 UN. Declaration? I feel that Burrows’ idea of a conspiracy by radical feminists, egged on by paedophiles, in its drafting, so as to make the state replace the parent, is unnecessary. In any case, radical feminists reject the traditional concept of parent, seeing the greatest threat to a child as its own father. That is, they have come to believe their own fraudulent statistics – that most sexual molestation and battery of a child is by its own father. Pizzey insists that most child molesters are women, and was correctly angry when I incorrectly countered by saying that women have more access to children. As she insisted, “A child molester is a child molester.” Millions of pounds of government and Foundation money goes to groups who generate false statistics for political reasons – for instance Joanna Foster of the BT Forum, but there is no money for objective scholars and researchers to establish the truth, and if they do, they cannot publish. Our media are under the control of bitter, sexual dysfunctional, power-hungry radical feminists, intent on falsifying the picture. Erin Pizzey said that all statistics in this field since the 1970′s have been falsified.

Let us analyse itchhy the 1989 UN Declaration only asserts a child’s right to “family life” [preamble], but omits its basic right, of access to its parent. Coming in the wake of decades of incessant father- and husband- bashing in all the media, it makes good sense. If the greatest threat to a child is its own father, then it follows that the UN Declaration should guarantee to the child only the “good” part of its family; that is, that part of its “family life” which will remain after the father has been excluded, as he now is in 50% of families in England.

Two points arise from this. The first is the critical importance of statistics over outcome. In spite of censorship, the horrendous statistics on outcome for a child cut off from its father are at least leaking out.

The second point is much more fundamental. Radical feminists have secured all the funding, and all the media. They have then used their position to promote numerous inversions, including the inversion of the incest taboo. They have “established” that, far from being a child’s chief protector and support, its father becomes the chief threat to a child’s safety. The New Witch, a chapter in my 1996 book The Hook and the Sting, discusses the full scale demonization of the father. This false inversion of reality is so fundamental that it over-stresses the conceptual framework of civil rights, which has never before been challenged at so basic a level. We will now have to structure the philosophy of civil rights more carefully than we did before society was attacked in such a fundamental way by these revolutionary feminists.

After the radical feminists, three layers of civil rights have to be defined for the first time. The highest level, unstated in law or in international declarations, would include the right to become the director of a company, the right to sell ice cream on the beach, and the right to put up a tent in a national park. These are superficial, questionable rights.

The middle layer of civil rights is enshrined in case law, statute law, European Conventions and UN Declarations, for instance on the Rights of the Child or the Rights of Women.

The lowest, most fundamental layer of civil rights was so obvious that they remained unstated. These include the right to an adequate flow of air to breath; the right of access to drinking water; the right of access to a parent. The upsets being promoted by radical feminism are so very basic that our law and our conventions provide no defence for society.

Radical feminism, although very destructive, is so inchoate that the very idea of a hierarchy of rights, described above, is beyond them. Although to some degree she is now a lapsed radical feminist, Adrienne Burgess’s July 1998 letter to me demonstrates an inability to distinguish between the rights at different levels.

To illustrate. A child has a right to access to education. It also has a right to access to drinking water. In the desert, with a child in your care and education and drinking water at the same distance, we all know that you take the child to the drinking water.

When obfuscating after her error in interpreting the 1989 UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child, Adrienne Burgess demonstrated an inability to distinguish between higher and lower levels in the hierarchy of rights. She suggested that a child should not have access to its father in case the father sexually molested it. She failed to comprehend the concept of a default position, that a child has a fundamental right of access to its parent – something not even discussible thirty years ago, before fatherhood was demonised, when our society had not yet begun to disintegrate – intellectually and morally as well as socially, as Adrienne Burgess’s letter demonstrates that it has today. She gave the keynote speech at the AGM or the IPPR, the think tank closest to Tony Blair, which published his books. It is highly significant that she is confused at such a fundamental level. She shows how far we have lost “the tacit dimension“, a phrase in Michael Polanyi‘s book, and the title of a series of lectures he gave, later published as a book.

The conjunction of the issue of a child’s right of access to its parent with the question of whether its parent is a good parent, illustrates the parlous state our intellectual elite has reached. We would rightly be appalled if Hitler or Stalin confiscated all children, only to be returned when each parent severally demonstrated his quality as a parent to a tribunal. Adrienne’s muddle is so profound that it is difficult to analyse. Further, her muddle is society’s muddle. The confusion she demonstrated is pandemic. For instance, with no proven charges against me, when I had sued for divorce and gained it, a judge asked me if I was willing to meet with my younger daughter under supervision. I refused, because to agree would have meant that I supported a re-definition of the nature of parenthood and the nature of the state, such re-definition obviously bound to lead to general catastrophe. It is elsewhere described as the state replacing the father as parent.

Patricia Morgan says that where such experiments have been undertaken, as in Israel and Russia, they have been abandoned.

The reason why the state is not able, except in extremis, to come between child and parent is so basic as to be difficult to analyse and discuss. This does not exclude the state’s ability, even its duty, to isolate or punish a small minority of parents who are delinquent, or a small minority of citizens who are members of criminal gangs. It is when, as in England today, the state undertakes to adjudicate in general over who may or may not carry out their duties as parent, that society collapses. This is because a state is the highest expression of loyalty and support. The loyalty bonds start, at their lowest level, between husband and wife, then between parent and child, rising through local community and local loyalty. The state is an amalgam of nuclear families amalgamated into extended families amalgamated into local and then into larger communities. By definition, if the state claims to claim general power to disqualify more than a tiny minority of parents, let alone one quarter of fathers as it does today in England, then the state is not a state, but rather the tool of a destructive vested minority which is using the state to destroy the state.

Polanyi writes, “We know more than we can tell.” Another subculture speaks of “From the known to the unknown.” It is the lack of any known; their lack of any clear contact with civilization as it has gradually developed, that puts radical feminists beyond the pale.

Let us illustrate the way in which radical feminism is outside our culture. Let us suppose that, using any criterion of success in later life – wealth, Nobel prizes, OBE’s, etc., it was found that if a child had its middle finger surgically removed, his life outcome was significantly improved, statistically. We would not surgically remove fingers. Without any discussion, we all know that unnecessary surgery on our children is a dead option. This is the kind of way in which radical feminists, using falsified statistics, destroy the conceptual framework on which society is based. The fraudulent statistic, that homosexuals are less of a threat to children than their own fathers, touted by radical feminists, goes to the very core of all our concepts. Thinking that these assertions are merely useful political makeweights, radical feminists know not what they do. They do not know that an array of accepted assumptions has grown up over the centuries. Their disagreement with one or more assumptions – for instance that a child is the responsibility of its parents – should have been overtly stated and then defended. What happened was just polemic and the tossing around of false statistics. It is the philosophical incompetence of radical feminism which makes it so destructive. Having no properly organized philosophical base, it will only be a short term aberration. But it will cause massive damage to two generations during its brief, discordant reign.

I will now attempt a further journey into the tacit dimension. When in charge of a child in the desert, with education and drinking water at equal distance in opposite directions, we all know that one takes the child to the drinking water. This does not negate the principle of the child’s having two fundamental rights – to education, and to drinking water. We all know that there exists a hierarchy of rights, and before radical feminism, these were all tacitly agreed.

The fatal flaw, which will finally destroy radical feminism, is their failure to provide any role for young men in their new Society. This will split feminists down the middle. The new 100 women Labour MP’s will split into two groups – those who have sons, and those who do not. The arrant absurdity of the sex war promoted by radical feminists is that many women have sons. How can one fight a war while at the same time giving birth to one’s enemy?

Although the broad rump of women remain indifferent to the escalating crisis, no amount of media manipulation will convince women that, reversing the ancient tragedy in China, they should only have daughters, and that they should abort their sons. So the days of radical feminism are numbered. The sooner we regain control of at least part of our highly feminised media, the less will be the damage done to our youth. However, I fear that two generations, not merely one, will be seriously damaged.

The Lords and Commons Committee on the Family, chaired by Lord Ashbourne, published an excellent report, Family Matters, on 23 July 1998. On its publication, the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, attended the Committee to comment on the report and also to make a major announcement. Before his visit, I pressed my friend Robert Whiston, who is a member of the committee, to try to get the Home Secretary to define the term “parent”. Robert countered by saying that firstly, they would try to get Jack Straw to give his definition of the term “family”. In the event, Straw did neither. However, the fact that even to define terms, as we now know, is Politically Incorrect, shows how rapidly, and how far, we have sunk into a morass of destructive confusion.

The correct way to handle a social or political issue is as follows. First, all parties debate and agree on the meaning of their primary terms. Then, objective research is undertaken, leading to statistical results to be agreed by all parties. Thirdly, policy alternatives are debated on the basis of the now agreed facts, described by the agreed terms.

In our present problem, the collapse of the family, this procedure is not followed. The party who is to be demonised and excluded, the father/husband, is subjected to a barrage of damaging polemic 24 hours a day in all the media. Polemic is easier if terms are not agreed and research statistics are unknown or falsified.

Connected readings:

• (1) Thoughts: All that blusters is not power, Ivor Catt, February 1998
• (2) Further thoughts: The Retreat Strategy, Ivor Catt, 13 October 1998

Ivor Catt
121 Westfields
St. Albans AL3 4JR
England

E-mail: ivorcatt @ electromagnetism . demon . co . uk

Ivor Catt 04dec98