September 13, 2003
Get Thee Hence To Typepad!
I made some new posts at my Typepad site today. Head on over. This site will slowly fade out as the other one catches on. Also, my template seems a bit narrow. I think it may be the .jpgs of the cats that did it. If anyone has a clue how I can make my template wider for my text, please let me know via e-mail.
posted at 11:19 AM by Trish Wilson | Link
September 12, 2003
Friday Cat Blogging
One of my cats, Oreo, had five kittens at o' dark thirty in the morning on Labor Day. She gave birth in our bedroom closet. One kitten was light grey. Two were white with grey spots, like Oreo's other kittens. This is her third (and last) litter. Two are dark grey/black. The dark grey/black ones survived. This Monday, they will be two weeks old.
Watching the other three kittens die was a horrible experience. It took them two days. I hope to God to never go through that again.
I still get very upset just thinking about it. I'm sure my s. o. made it this far in my post and he's moved on to the next one. He still gets very upset over the whole business. I haven't had much of a chance to talk to anyone about it. Oreo is not the healthiest cat in the world. She was the runt of her little. She is a tiny cat. I couldn't understand what was happening or why. Her other kittens, which we kept, turned out fine. The kittens that died didn't look all that great to begin with. I thought the light grey one was stillborn. They wouldn't suckle. They kept making this heart-wrenching cry that to this day I cannot get out of my head. Anyone who has had kittens die on them probably knows that cry. My s. o. and I tried feeding them kitten formula. One of the three drank some of it. It slept for awhile, woke up, cried out twice, and died. We both cried a lot. I couldn't sleep, and when I could it was fitful. I couldn't eat. My stomach was turning itself inside-out. I snapped awake at the slightest sound coming from that closet.
Things have calmed down considerably around here since then. One of the two that survived used to cry the moment it lost physical contact with Oreo, even if all Oreo did was move over a few inches to eat. He doesn't do that anymore. He and his sister eat and sleep -- the two things newborn kittens are supposed to spend all their time doing. They still have their umbilical cords. Their eyes and ears have not opened yet. They can barely crawl. Developmentally, they're right on schedule.
I found out both of them, especially the female, love having their bellies rubbed.
Here are some pictures. Oreo isn't a pissed-off cat, even though she looks like it. That picture was taken about a year ago. I took the pictures of the kittens last Monday, when they were a week old. I would have taken them earlier, but I didn't want to stress them out. Eat your heart out, Kevin Drum.
posted at 2:30 PM by Trish Wilson | Link
I'm Moving To Typepad
I signed onto Typepad (Thanks, Jeanne!) earlier this week. The above post about the cats is my first post over there. I'm going to phase out this site and soon blog only over there, so update your blogrolls and favorite places accordingly.
I'm still getting a feel for it. It's so much easier than plugging in all the HTML myself. It's like driving an automatic after years of using a stick shift. I feel like I skipped a few steps. Plus I now have something I've wanted for a long time -- a comments section!
posted at 2:30 PM by Trish Wilson | Link
September 7, 2003
Voting Machines and Fraud
Jeanne (Body and Soul) lives in San Luis Obispo (or SLO, as the locals call it), which sounds a lot like the small town where I live. This is a quaint coastal tourist town in Massachusetts. Most of the houses are about two or three hundred years old. We have beaches, fudge, lobster, and fried clams. There are no traffic lights. People leave their doors unlocked all the time. The most serious crime out here is probably some drunk pissing on the breakwater.
Like Jeanne, I live in a place where "nobody expects anything significant to happen."
Something significant happened in SLO.
Jeanne and other bloggers have written about problems with voting machines. She has had to deal with Diebold, which has already been thoroughly criticized. Nonetheless, "something significant" happened in SLO during the 2002 primaries:
I wasn't concerned about our local system, though, because we use optical scan machines. The machines are made by Diebold, which looks about as fair and balanced as Fox News, but there's a paper trail -- boxes of scantron cards that anybody could look at if there were any suspicions of fraud, or even honest error. What could go wrong?
Plenty. In the March 2002 primary election, the vote counts from our absentee and mail-in ballots showed up on Diebold's Web site in the middle of the afternoon -- four and a half hours before the polls closed.
What the hell was Diebold doing looking at our vote counts in the middle of election day? And how did they get those votes?
It was illegal for Diebold to have that information before the polls closed. As Jeanne had written, "whether or not the vote count was manipulated in this election (and there's no evidence that it was), this breach shows that Diebold clearly has the ability to manipulate an election."
Diebold not only has the ability, it has the intention. The CEO of Diebold said during a fund-raiser that he intended to help "Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year."
" The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
The Aug. 14 letter from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc. - who has become active in the re-election effort of President Bush - prompted Democrats this week to question the propriety of allowing O'Dell's company to calculate votes in the 2004 presidential election."
A few manufacturers of voting machines control about 90% of the voting in this country. One of those manufacturers is Diebold. Thankfully, Rep. Rush Holt has introduced legislation "to require all voting machines to produce a voter-verified paper trail."
posted at 9:55 AM by Trish Wilson | Link
Feminista! is Back
After a long hiatus, Feminista! is back.
A reminder: Expository Magazine is looking for articles, art, music, and reviews. Deadline for the next issue is October 1, 2003.
posted at 9: 55 AM by Trish Wilson | Link
September 6, 2003
Focus On The Family Comes Out Against Joint Custody
Fathers rights groups The Alliance of Non-Custodial Parents Rights (ANCPR - referred to below) and California Parents United are not happy with Focus on The Family's position paper against joint custody. Interestingly, FOTF has made many of the same criticisms I have made about the speciousness of Robert Bauserman's joint custody study. Bauserman's study is often cited by fathers' rights activists in support of joint over sole custody.
One major study praised by shared-parenting proponents as supporting the proposal is Robert Bauserman's review of the published literature on shared parenting. There are a number of problems with this study. In this study. Bauserman analyzed 33 studies that compare joint physical custody or joint legal custody with sole custody settings. However, 22 of these studies were unpublished, non-peer reviewed, ' William Marsiglio, Paul Amato, Randal Day, and Michael Lamb, "Scholarship on Fatherhood in The 1990s and Beyond'' Journal of Marriage and the Family, 62 (2000) 1373-1191. B Marsha Kline, Jeanne Tschann, Janet Johnston, and Judith Wallerstein. ''Children's Adjustment in Joint and Sole Physical Custody Families," Developmental Psychology, 25(1989)430- 438.
B Robert Bauserman, "Child Adjustment in Joint-Custody Versus Sole-Custody Arrangements: A Meta-Analytic Review," Journal of Family Psychology, 16(2002)91-102. closely arrangements.' academic aisserianons rrom graauaie or pusii- graduate students. Also, Bauserman commits a major flaw by lumping two custody categories together as one. He makes no distinction between children In Joint legal custody (where both parents hold legal, but not necessarily residential or physical custody) and children in joint physical custody (where children share equal time in two homes). He then compares that merged group with children in sole legal and physical custody.
This lack of distinction means that children spending as little as 25% of their time living with one parent were counted as joint-physical custody when in reality this time split more approximates sole-custody arrange Therefore, he confuses any benefits of sole custody with apparent benefits of joint physical custody.
The second problem is with Bauserman himself as a researcher. He is one of the co-authors of a very disturbing, pro-pedophilia study published in 1998 in the journal Psychological Bulletin. His article advocated that the term "child sexual abuse" should be changed to the value neutral "adult-child sex" or "age-discrepant sexual relationships" because, according to the study, some boys can actually benefit from having sex with men. Another study. published by Bauserman in 2001, defends pedophilia by stating that boys between ages 12-17 who had been molested by men had as much self- esteem and positive sexual Identity as boys who were not molested. Bauserman has also been published in Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia. Mark Chaffin, editor of the journal Child Maltreatment warns that Bauserman and his co- authors in these pro-pedophilia articles "used scientific data to stake an advocacy position... that went well beyond the data and could lead to it being misused by people for their own purposes."
Can Bauserman be seen as a champion of what's good for children?
This is another case of strange bedfellows. I and FOTF are about as far removed from each other ideologically as two entities can possibly be. I wrote about the group years ago for Feminista. It's interesting to see that we agree on how bad joint custody is for children.
posted at 4:05 PM by Trish Wilson | Link
More Criticism of the Braver Move-away Study
[Talk about strange bedfellows. A well-known fatherhood advocate disses Braver. He (and his co-writer) make many of the same criticisms I have made. Bold added for emphasis.]
Does Moving After Divorce Damage Kids?
By Norval Glenn and David Blankenhorn
Earlier this summer, newspapers across the country trumpeted a new research finding: "Moving After Divorce Damages Kids." The new study, by Sanford L. Braver and two colleagues at Arizona State University, claims that children suffer when the custodial parent, usually the mother, relocates to a new community following divorce. Even moving an hour's drive away from the noncustodial father, the report concludes, causes "significant" problems for children.
This research matters. The "move-away" issue is politically red-hot today -- especially in California, where important court decisions on the issue are expected soon, but also in other family courts across the country. The debate is quite polarized, with those who support the independence of divorced mothers pitted against fathers rights advocates who, based partly on research showing the importance of fathers, want courts to restrict the ability of ex-wives to move away with their children after divorce.
That's why any research on this issue needs to be solid. It's also why newspaper stories describing the research need to be precise. Unfortunately, the episode this summer failed on both counts.
The two of us disagree on the policy issues at stake here. But we agree that the Braver study is a weak one that provides no credible evidence on the effects on children of moving away after divorce.
In the fall of 2001, Professor Braver distributed questionnaires to about 2,000 students enrolled in an introductory psychology course at Arizona State. The questions covered 14 areas of personal well-being. The survey also asked students if their parents had divorced and, if so, whether both parents had remained within an hour's drive of one another after the divorce. On 11 of the 14 indicators, the move-away children of divorce fared worse than did the children of divorce whose parents did not move far apart. That was the entire study.
Academically, this is very thin gruel. First, the differences between the two groups were quite small. Moreover, in the most crucial areas -- friendship and dating behavior, substance abuse, and general life satisfaction - there were no significant differences at all between the two groups.
And what caused the remaining differences between the two groups? No one knows. Certainly the researchers do not know. They did not report, and presumably did not even collect, the background information on the students that would permit even informed guesses about the reasons for the differences between the two groups.
For example, it is highly likely that the move-away parents got divorced when their children were younger, compared to the divorced parents who stayed closer. In many cases, the issue of moving away is also linked to remarriage. Remarriage, in turn, often affects the ability and willingness of noncustodial fathers, who now typically have new dependents and new expenses, to provide financial support to their original families. Similarly, mothers who remarry, or who move away to take higher-paying jobs, may receive or ask for less financial support from ex-husbands.
So what is causing these (small) differences in some of these young people's answers to this one Arizona questionnaire? It is how old you were when your parents split up? Is it whether one or both of your parents did, or did not, remarry? Is it the level of child support and alimony your mother received? Is it how much your parents fought and quarreled before the divorce, or how well they cooperated, or failed to cooperate, after the divorce? Or is it whether your mother after the divorce moved an hour or more's drive away from your father? Or is it something else entirely? Again, no one knows for sure, and on the basis of this study, no one could possibly know. To their credit, the researchers acknowledge as much in what amount to the fine print of the study.
Which brings us to the media. The two of us have observed this scenario countless times. A weak and limited study is reported, sometimes with appropriate cautions and sometime not, in a professional journal. (In this case, the Journal of Family Psychology, a respected publication.) Then the university press office goes to work. They distribute a press release with a strong headline and without any of the reservations and attention to complexity that might have appeared in the professional journal. Then the journalists go to work. They interview the researchers, who often make sweeping statements that make the press release look tame, including expressing their long-held views on public policy issues that are only indirectly addressed, if even that, by the study itself. Finally, the headline writers go to work. The result? In this case, lots of headlines like "Moving Away Really Hurts Kids." The losers in this process are the public and policy makers, who are misinformed about important issues, and children of divorce, whose true interests are not served.
posted at 4:05 PM by Trish Wilson | Link
Family Law News
Arrest of Judge May Reopen Divorce Cases. - "The arrest of Gerald P. Garson, the Brooklyn matrimonial judge accused of taking bribes to show favoritism in divorce cases, has opened the door for a potential overhaul of the state's system of selecting judges, a process that could take years." More here. [I was told many of these cases involved allegations of Parental Alienation Syndrome.]
Australian article against joint custody - "Don't forget the third group vulnerable after divorce: children. Rebuttable joint custody is not the panacea for all battles over children of broken marriages."
Finally - a real case of a man falsely accused of abuse. Not only did the man (not woman) who made the false allegation accuse the other of pedophilia, he claimed the man's two children were not his.
The White Elephant of Justice. - (scroll down) "The Women's Rights Network of Wellesley College spent two years digging into the family court trenches, sampling the consumer experience of 40 mothers in 11 out of the 14 counties. Its report, "Battered Mothers Speak Out: A Human Rights Report on Domestic Violence and Child Custody in the Massachusetts Family Courts" was issued months before the Visiting Committee's. It found serious international human rights violations and grave civil rights infractions by Mass. family court judges and staff affiliates against battered women -- in fact, 15 of 40 participants lost custody and/or visitation with their children when they tried to escape an abusive relationship. Chief Justice Dunphy, Justice of the Probate & Family Courts, instead of vowing to investigate, disputed the findings."
posted at 4:05 PM by Trish Wilson | Link
Fathers' Rights Activists Linked To Bomb Hoaxes
Why does Wendy McElroy make excuses for fathers' rights activists who have sent more than 60 hoax bombs to family court offices around Britain? These disturbing attacks "mark a huge escalation in the tactics of radical fathers' rights activists who complain that they suffer discrimination at the hands of the family courts system. The Observer has learnt that the elite anti-terrorist police group SO13 has now been brought in to investigate the hoax campaign amid fears of more serious attacks in the future."
Targets of the hoax bombs included "Colchester, Ipswich, Swansea, Cambridge, Wrexham, Middlesbrough and Mansfield. There was widespread disruption, including the evacuation of part of Colchester town centre. In Wrexham shops and local businesses were closed down as the bomb squad was brought in. Scotland Yard declined to comment on the incidents. 'We are investigating a series of suspect packages but we do not comment on hoaxes,' a spokesman said." The bomb scare was aimed at Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass). A Cafcass spokeswoman said that this "is an unacceptable and criminal activity which puts our staff and the families and children who visit our offices at risk and, understandably causes them distress."
McElroy warns her fathers' rights readers that "violence is the worst possible "strategy" for anyone who seeks social reform. It is not only immoral and illegal, it is also counter-productive to the cause being advocated. The first time an innocent human being is injured, a movement using violence loses all moral credibility; it also creates a justified backlash of anger from the public and repression from authorities."
She refuses to see that her fans in the fathers' rights movement have already condoned similarly violent behavior by the Australian Blackshirts, a group of about 300 male fathers' rights activists dressed in masks and paramilitary uniforms who were accused of "making threatening phone calls, giving out accusatory pamphlets and broadcasting allegations against women by megaphone." These women included their ex-wives. States Attorney Rob Hulls had warned the group's leader, John Abbott, "against the distribution of abusive open letters, phantom phone calls and mysterious knocks on people's doors."
Hulls said that such "intimidatory and cowardly behaviour" was illegal.
No kidding. These men stalk and harass their ex-wives and other women.
Of course, these men claim that the courts are biased against fathers. Women file most often for divorce nowadays. John Abbott sees this as "evil. It is a sentiment that seeks to bypass the 1970s, when feminism first rocked the pillars of patriarchy. Then, women stayed home, and stayed in bad marriages. Now, they work and opt out of poor partnerships more frequently than do men. Some men, particularly those who are middle-aged and unskilled, have found this hard to accept. But, whereas many men's groups complain about it, the Blackshirts harass and intimidate."
The Blackshirts claim that they are only interested in preserving marriage. John Abbott feels he is "doing what needs to be done to stop divorce and reclaim the status of marriage and family." Has it occurred to McElroy that the kind of abusive and destructive behavior these men have engaged in probably led to the end of their marriages in the first place? Here's an excerpt from an article describing the Blackshirts as witnessed by the child of one of their targets:
Sandra thought the amplified voice drifting into her kitchen came from the gelato vans that trundle along her suburban Melbourne street on Saturday mornings - until her son yelled, "There are men in masks outside." Seeing the four black-clad men, their faces hidden under caps and bandannas, Sandra spirited Peter to his room, dialed the police and yelled "I've got terrorists outside." But the police were already close by. The masked men had just paid a visit to Wendy, who lives in the same suburb, and officers had a copy of the letter one man was now reading through a megaphone while his companions distributed copies along Sandra's street. "Dear neighbor," the letter read, "Sandra has petitioned for divorce without reason, shamed her family and introduced an immoral stranger to her son. We the Blackshirts will not let those who corrupt children rest."
McElroy inferred that the fathers' rights group Alliance for Non-Custodial Parents Rights (ANCPR) is a "temperate" voice. If that's the case, why did ANCPR founder Lowell Jaks blow off stalking and harassment of women engaged in by the Blackshirts? Rather than condemn the Blackshirts for harassing and stalking women, Jaks said that "what the government there, as well as the government here and in other so called "developed" countries don't seem to get is that people feel profoundly wronged when a contract is broken, and the person breaking the contract is rewarded while the person wishing to honor the contract is punished." Jaks minimized the "intimidatory and cowardly behavior" of the Blackshirts, saying "[m]any of you on this list [the ANCPR mailing list] would use the same terms to describe the threatening letters they regularly receive from child support enforcement agencies."
The obvious question: why the hell would these men "regularly receive" letters from child support enforcement agencies? Because they have not been paying child support, often for many months! These are not dads facing hard financial times who are unable to pay. These refuse to pay. They don't want to give the bitch one thin dime, and if they do, they want an accounting of every penny. Willful refusal to follow a court order to pay child support is what lands these guys in jail, if they end up there. It is a fathers' rights perpetrated myth that debtor's prisons are alive and well in America today, and that "beatdead dads" who cannot pay end up in jail.
Fathers Are Parents Too! also excuses the Blackshirts' violent behavior. Australian fathers' rights activists Lindsay Jackel sent several articles about the group to the FAPT mailing list, along with this comment: "The group is organised and in your face. They are Dads who have lost everything, have received no justice or fairness at the hand of a feminist (family and magistrates) court and legal (government) system (when they were taught in school that they would if innocent), have nothing to lose and are frustrated and angry. Their hopelessness has turned to despair and to depression. The Blackshirts offers them community and hope. John Abbott, their leader, is known to me. He is both angry and committed. He will not be deterred and, if necessary, will no doubt be prepared to be a "martyr" (jail) to the cause."
ANCPR and FAPT do not believe these men should be held responsible for their actions. They are "victims" of "the system." John Abbott is a "martyr." Blame the bitch, the feminazis, and the courts for supposedly driving away dads. That's why these women and their children are stalked with megaphones and hate mail. That's why court houses receive hoax bombs. McElroy described angry and violent fathers' rights activists as "revolutionaries," which means "they have given up on the possibility of reform and, so, wish to sweep the system away -- a process that does not require consent." Her message is that if dads aren't allowed to "be part of their children's lives," then we shouldn't be surprised that they may do things like make bomb threats. She blames women and the courts for male violence.
You are deluding yourself, Wendy. Men who engage in tactics like bomb hoaxes, stalking, abuse, and harassment are not interested in reform. Neither are men who keep their ex's in court in a never-ending churn of frivolous litigation. Neither are men who violate protective orders, claim their ex's have "parental alienation syndrome," blow off their own abusive behavior with cries of being falsely accused, refuse to pay child support or petition for joint physical custody hoping to lower their court order, and demand in court "equal parenting time" that they were not interested in while married to their children's mothers. They are abusive and sometimes violent control freaks who are angry that they are unable to have their unreasonable demands met. They are also not extremists within the movement. The use of intimidation by fathers' rights activists seems to be increasing. Some judges have seen their names and addresses posted to the Internet. The Equal Parenting Council has "named and shamed" several Cafcass officials on its web site. Men and fathers' rights organizations who minimize or condone these activities do not represent good dads. They certainly do not have the welfare of children in mind.
Why does McElroy create excuses for these abusive jerks? Why does she side with fathers' rights activists who do not condemn abusive and violent behavior like stalking, sending hate mail, and creating hoax bombs? These men, angry that they do not get their way in court, resort to more abusive tactics, sometimes violence. And fathers' rights activists sympathize with them. Hold them up as heroes and "martyrs" for "the cause." As usual, it's the bitch's fault. If blaming her isn't enough, blame the court system that these men claim is biased against fathers.
posted at 1:52 PM by Trish Wilson | Link
September 3, 2003
What I'm Reading Today
Calpundit links to a new study on whether variations in intelligence are due to genes or environment.
Skippy's back from Alaska!
The four bloggers who subbed for Atrios have their own group blog now. Stop by Corrente and say "hi."
Ted Barlow at Crooked Timber aptly demonstrates why the Cruz Bustamante/MEChA-is-racist story is bullshit.
Abuse At A Distance: "The Montana Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a man did not need to touch or even see his partner to be guilty of abuse. Counsel for Kenneth Vukasin Jr. had argued that he could not be convicted of abuse, since his girlfriend remained behind a locked door during his drunken rage. But the court upheld the conviction on the grounds that his partner's reasonable fear of injury proved abuse ..."
Any Dark Age of Camelot or EverCrack addicts out there? Here is the link for you! [via Jane at The Daily Rant and Michelle at A Small Victory.]
Remember my comments yesterday in my "war on boys" post about the over-diagnosis of ADD/ADHA and how Ely Lilly financially benefits from sales of Ritalin? With that in mind, read this.
I haven't had much to say about the recent removal of a two-ton monument of the 10 commandments from the Alabama Judicial Building, but I have wondered one thing the Fundies rare discuss: which version should be displayed? There are Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic versions. Not all have 10 commandments. Exodus 20: 1-17 and Deuteronomy 5: 6-21 have seventeen while Exodus 34: 1-26 has nineteen. It would be a kick to see the Exodus 34: 1- 26 version on display. I wonder how the court would enforce the 19th commandment, "do not cook a young goat in its mother's milk"? My favorite is the the 4th commandment. Anyone who knows my AOL screen name knows why -- "Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherah poles." I've always wondered why the "one true God" would feel so threatened by lesser regional gods that he demands total obedience from his human followers and the destruction of all worship of those other gods.
posted at 12:20 PM by Trish Wilson | Link
New Bush Administration Rules Favor Corporations, Screw People
The Bush Administration has killed the Hypocratic Oath. As of November 1, new rules will make it more difficult for patients to obtain emergency care at hospitals. This rule will also make it more difficult for some patients to win damages in court for injuries caused by violations of the federal standards. [via Atrios.]
EPA lifts ban on selling PCB sites: "The Bush administration has ended a 25-year-old ban on the sale of land polluted with PCBs. The ban was intended to prevent hundreds of polluted sites from being redeveloped in ways that spread the toxin or raise public health risks. The Environmental Protection Agency decided the ban was "an unnecessary barrier to redevelopment (and) may actually delay the clean-up of contaminated properties," according to an internal memo issued last month to advise agency staff of the change." [From a poster in Atrios's comments section.]
Clean Air Act Gutted: A new EPA rule, " revision of the 1977 "new source review" provision, allows the nation's most polluting power plants to upgrade equipment without implementing new emission-control measures. Scientists and officials have criticized it as the biggest rollback in the history of the Clean Air Act, saying it could boost pollution in New York City and around the country, costing billions and threatening the health of many Americans."
posted at 12:20 PM by Trish Wilson | Link
September 2, 2003
Who Unlocked The Cages and Let The Monkeys Out?
I have been getting some weird feedback lately. A guy e-mailed me in defense of Warren Farrell. If you recall my recent posts, Farrell had made pro-incest statements for Penthouse in 1977. This guy wrote "Even if everything you say about him regarding his view on insist [sic] is true that does not mean his other views or opinions do not have merit."
I had to pick my jaw up off the floor.
Old Warren Farrell/Penthouse noise is getting smacked about on an AOL non-custodial dads board. One of my friends sent me the link. I don't post anymore, but it was interesting to see all the Farrell white noise now that he's running for Governor of California.
Some fathers' rights advocates have infested Ampersand's message boards. Bean told me about it. Some idiot there included a link to his/her web site devoted to bashing me. Whoever created it was too chicken-shit to identify him or herself. I've never seen this site before. I don't know if it's new or old. I got a kick out of it. I thought it was telling that the first thing one of the father's rights advocates bragged about was his unsuccessful attempt to eliminate child support. That makes it so clear that fathers' rights advocates are not concerned with children's needs. I agree with Bean. I must be doing my job right if the anti-feminists throw a hissy fit.
And finally, the most bizarre of all. I've been getting hits from the Freeper message boards. At first, it made no sense. The Freepers were gnashing their pointy little teeth over a lesbian couple who had protested after a Catholic school had denied the entry of their 4 year old daughter. Someone with the ridiculous name "I_Love_My_Husband" included a link to my blog with these comments:
Her leftie blog.
THIS IS AN ACTIVIST ATTACK BY Homosexual Agendaists!
Uhm.... It is??? I am???
A few more searches cleared up the matter. Apparently, the lesbian parents are named Lee Inkmann and Trish Wilson. I_Love_My_Husband (Oh, dear God that makes me chuckle. I don't feel a need to justify my relationship with my s. o. by announcing it in a screen name.) didn't do a proper Google search. Here are more comments:
Name of mothers:
Lee Inkmann and Trish Wilson (not sure about Trish). KC said this was a planned activist attack against the Church, and I believe this is true. Trish Wilson has a website called The Women's Network, and Lee Inkmann gives seminars and used to own a dealership.
MORE RESEARCH IS NEEDED ON THEM FREEPERS!
*****
I take that back.
According to the Eugene Public Library
Lee Inkmann & Trish Wilson
They gave money.....TOGETHER! They are the lesbian ACTIVIST couple!
There are several Trish Wilson's on the web. If Freepers want to master their smear campaigns, they need to learn how to properly conduct a Google search. I feel like that poor woman who was incorrectly identified as the Kobe Bryant rape victim. Not that I mind. I'm getting more hits from the mistake.
Ain't nothing quite as enjoyable as yanking a Freeper's chain.
posted at 6:21 AM by Trish Wilson | Link
Here We Go Again -- More "War On Boys" Blather
When I see a headline like "Girls Get Extra School Help While Boys Get Ritalin," I am offended. It is more of the same old backlash complaint that girls are doing well at boys' expense. I already addressed this nonsense in a previous post.
You see, I have a son. He is in high school. Garbage like that op-ed doesn't help him at all.
I'm not surprised that it's unsigned. I wouldn't want to attach my name to all that baseless invective, either.
A boy's parents filed a complaint after learning that at upper middle-class Franklin High School, where he was enrolled, "three of the four students who tied for valedictorian were girls. Among the National Honor Society members, 76% were girls. And girls comprised 85% of the students on Franklin's 4.0 honor roll."
The superintendent of schools found that "the skewed performances by gender at [the school] pretty much mirror the imbalances across the state and the nation." The op-ed writer warned that a drop in male salaries is one possible detrimental outcome of this supposed war on boys. "Workers with only a high school diploma earn $20,000 a year less than those with a bachelor's degree." It's too bad that the op-ed writer didn't point out that some women with degrees earn less money than men with only a high school diploma. Labor analyst Russell Signorino sees "job prospects for young noncollege men as better than those for young noncollege women." Signorino's comment was buried in an article bemoaning the war on boys, no less.
"Skewed performances by gender" are not the problem. Schools do not focus on girls to the detriment of boys. In fact, while improvements have been made, both boys and girls continue to be overlooked by schools. Pitting boys against girls is not going to solve anything.To go down that backlash route is going to cause greater harm to both boys andgirls.
The editorial writer claims that "[i]nstead of pursuing sound solutions, many educators merely advocate prescribing more attention-focusing Ritalin for the boys, who receive the drug at four to eight times the rate of girls, according to different estimates. "Too often the first reaction to an attention problem is 'Let's medicate,'" says Rockville, Md. child psychologist Neil Hoffman. "Some schools are quick to recommend solutions before they've fully evaluated the problem."
While I agree that some children may have ADD/ADHD, I think that it is over-diagnosed. ADD/ADHD seems to be an American phenomenon. The drug is made by Ely Lilly, an American company. American children account for the vast majority of prescriptions There has been plenty of criticism that Ritalin is prescribed mainly for the benefit of teachers and parents who are either not interested in or incapable of dealing with boisterous and aggressive boy behavior. Of course, Ely Lilly financially benefits from massive sales of Ritalin. Boys have been labeled by teachers and doctors as problems in need of special control or assistance. Normal, active, age-appropriate behavior and inappropriate aggressive behavior that is socialized in boys has been deemed a "problem" that needs to be "cured" with pills. Some boys diagnosed with ADD are quick to pick up on this attitude, and they use ADD as an excuse for their actions. To reduce medicating boys in this manner to a problem caused by too much school attention paid to girls does a grave disservice to boys.
The op-ed writer noted that "teachers at the middle school feeding into Franklin received training on how to reach out to boys. And high school teachers will continue the gender-sensitivity classes they began last school year" without point out that Franklin is an upper middle-class high school. Many high schools are not fortunate enough to have the funding for such programs. Budgets across the country have been cut. If "gender-sensitivity" means shortchanging girls in favor of boys, the op-ed writer will make a bad situation worse. Yes, boys need to be reached, but not at the expense of girls. Michael Kimmel wrote in 2000 that there were "zero dollars for new public school programs, the dearth of school bond issues that have passed, the absence of money from which might have developed remedial programs, intervention strategies, teacher training. Money which might have prevented cutting school sports programs and after-school extracurricular activities. Money which might have enabled teachers and administrators to do more than "store" problem students in separate classes." The economy is much worse today than it was three years ago. There is much less funding available for public schools now. Budgets continue to be cut.
Even today, girls continue to be socialized by their parents and others to be docile and "nice." They follow the rules. They are praised for their neat penmanship rather than the content of their writing. Schools encourage this behavior. On the other hand, boys are raised to be active, aggressive, and independent.You've heard the description before -- "boys will be boys." They get to school are are suddenly expected to be quiet and to conform. Talk about mixed messages.
Kimmel points to outdated views of masculinity that contribute to difficulties boys have in school. "Pollack notes, boys become more confident, even beyond their abilities. You might even say that boys find their voices, but it is the inauthentic voice of bravado, of constant posturing, of foolish risk-taking and gratuitous violence. The Boy Code teaches them that they are supposed to be in power, and thus begin to act like it. They "ruffle in a manly pose," as William Butler Yeats once put it, "for all their timid heart." What's the cause of all this posturing and posing? It's not testosterone, but privilege. In adolescence both boys and girls get their first real dose of gender inequality: girls suppress ambition, boys inflate it."
Boys don't acquire this attitude in a vacuum. It takes years of training and encouragement. I found these same harmful views described above posted on a Freeper message board. The following are some comments about this very same op-ed. It's no wonder boys have problems, considering the attitudes of adults who claim to advocate for them. Note the fear of "feminizing" boys. That's a prevalent theme of those who claim there is a war on boys. The Ritalin statement below is especially scary. The child in question was only in kindergarten.
Annyokie: Dodge ball? Us dudes would find the far field (away from nanny 'monitors') and play "Kill the guy with the ball"
StatesEnemy: Hah! That was an actual activity for my brother's gym class! Who can forget kickball? If you were good you could really nail those kids you didn't like!
States Enemy: We called that "Smear the Queer", which is also horribly politically incorrect. I think it was a great game for the boys.
thoughtomator: It sis a crime that Ritalin is used to feminize boys, who naturally have alot of energy, and god forbid, testosterone.
CherylBower: We called that "Smear the Queer"... Same here, and there was always some kid that could throw the ball close to the speed of light (I still hate that guy).
Pro-Bush: There was a kid in my daughter's class last year. He is on Ritalin. Sweet kid too. He was truly overmedicated. He would walk into the class and fall asleep. He came out of it around 11, just in time for lunch. He would bounce off the walls until 2 when he got his next dose. He would then fall asleep before pick-up at 3. The parents would carry him out and liked it this way. He is repeating kindergarten this year.
Pro-Bush: They have structured the schools so that a boy can not grow into a man. Boys must now accommodate female learning styles and adapt to a female environment .That can only be done by medicating normal male behavior. I raised 5 boys.. When my youngest was around 9 he was getting picked on because he was small for age, I told him that if the kid hit or pushed him again he had my permission to punch him. Needless to say I was called in for a conference after the confrontation was over.The teacher said they "like" students to come to the teacher for mediation" . I told her he did exactly what his mom had to him to do and now the problem was solved and it was.
RnMomof7: They have structured the schools so that a boy can not grow into a man. Boys must now accommodate female learning styles and adapt to a female environment. No good. Glad your 9 yr old popped em' one!
Even though schools encourage children to "be good" and "be quiet" and "play nice," boys continue to get most of the classroom attention.
According to "Failing At Fairness," by Myra and David Sadker, "when teachers are asked to remember their most outstanding students, boys' names dominate the list. Teachers say males are brighter, better at science and math, and more likely to become the nation's future leaders. When students are asked to choose outstanding classmates, they also name boys. But boys are also on another roster. When teachers remember their worst students -- the discipline problems, the ones most likely to create a classroom disturbance or to flunk out of school -- they still list boys. As one teacher at a workshop put it, "Boys at school are either in the process of becoming the Establishment or fighting it. Either way, they are the center of attention."
My son is on the quiet side. He's not the type to act up in class or pick fights. He also isn't comfortable speaking up in class. He doesn't like to be in the limelight. The boys described above overshadow him and the girls. It took a lot of work over the years to get him to open up, but he's doing very well. He excels at computer technology -- one of the subjects in which girls and women continue to be underrepresented. Considering all the computers, programs, games, and gack we have around the house, I'm not surprised he does so well with computers.
The point is that shortchanging girls won't help my son. Teachers who spend too much time controlling the rowdies won't help my son. Labeling my son with ADD won't help him. It had been attempted once and I fought it, knowing damned well that he did not have an "attention" problem. Misguided carping about the "feminizing" of schools and boys won't help my son. Cutting school funding won't help him. What has helped him is seeing him as an individual, keeping in touch with his teachers, helping him keep his work organized, keeping the lines of communication open, and giving him encouragement -- helpful and successful suggestions that you don't hear from the "war on boys" crowd.
More articles on the subject:
Don't Blame Girls, Women [For jaw-dropping comments from the Freeperati on this article, go here.]
The Problem Isn't Little Boys, It's Little Minds
Boys' Education? Both Genders Shortchanged
Update: Here's another article, from Womensenews: Girls Gains in School Don't Subtract From Boys.posted at 6:20 AM by Trish Wilson | Link
