Compendium of feminist and dissident commentary on the events of Fall 2001 and aftermath, compiled at the time.

Reviews of September 11, 2001: Feminist Perspectives anthology from Spinifex Press published shortly thereafter.

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CB: I believe in most cases the property is divided up at the divorce. So, the ex-husband wouldn’t be paying the ex-wife’s mortgage after the divorce. In some cases, where alimony is paid, the ex-husband might be paying for the ex-wife’s home after the divorce.
Also, the husband might be paying the mortgage in an interim order.

The entire Criminal Justice System is flawed and I believe there are innumerable threats to Civil Liberties intrinsic to it that pose a greater danger than this particular aspect of New Jersey Law.

There was a thoughtful article by Robert Jensen about gender issues a week or so after the article I mentioned, but instead of honoring Domestic Violence Awareness Month with some serious coverage of the issue, Counterpunch could only bring themselves to publish two articles, one of which sought to deflect attention from the issue itself. The article barely addressed actual domestic violence and inflates the image of false accusations in much the same way that the MSM prefers to hilight false accusations of rape over actual instances of the crime.

Your second point seems to make quite a leap of logic. Since assumptions are being made about the author, people are biased and assume that women are always victims, men always perpetrators? Sadly, women hardly get the benefit of the doubt in this society, culture, civilization. Knee jerk reactions in the culture at large more commonly kick the other way in my experience. Any challenge to the status quo is met with a backlash that pretends that those with the most power are in fact an embattled minority in danger of being marginalized and victimized.

I’m astounded at the longevity of the backlash against feminism and “political correctness”. Especially because the reaction seems so out of proportion to the supposed threat, at least as that threat is usually framed. It is true that reworking the language is a powerful tool in reshaping cultural assumptions about the value of human beings regardless of gender, race, etc. and therefore is correctly identified as a threat to The System.

Are women “always” the victims and men “always” the perpetrators? Probably not. But come and sit, day after day and week after week, in Alameda County’s Domestic Violence Court (yes, they had to set up a special court to handle the volume of cases), and count petitioners and respondents and which are preponderantly men and which preponderantly women. I don’t understand what this sentence

I’m sure it’s easier for some to go to bed at night (especially if you’re a father) believing that there’s another evil asshole lawyer in the world than to think for a second that the whole family court system needs to be fixed.

means; it’s fathers who retain lawyers like Heleniak (whether evil assholes or merely venal), because those lawyers have the cold nerve to complain that some violent creep shouldn’t be subject to a TRO that separates him from his beloved pet. And those fathers are also the ones who believe, against all the evidence, that “the system” is biased against men.

First, Heleniak states that domestic violence IS a reprehensible problem in this country. The fact that Heleniak identified ANOTHER problem in this country does NOT in any way negate the reprehensible act of domestic violence. Read it again with that in mind.

Second, the assumptions about Heleniak and his motivations further support his point. People ARE biased. “Women are always victims and need protecting. Men are always the perpetrators, never victims.” I’m sure it’s easier for some to go to bed at night (especially if you’re a father) believing that there’s another evil asshole lawyer in the world than to think for a second that the whole family court system needs to be fixed.

But, regardless about what you believe or what I believe about Heleniak or anything else, any PERSON ACCUSED has a right to a jury trial. Your fate, your freedom, your ability to see your children, should not be in the hands of one single person. THAT was the point of the article.

Could be, or Heleniak might be a practitioner of family law with a particularly aggressive “father’s rights” edge and this article is basically trolling for clients. That would help explain the cynicism; Heleniak knows the difference between criminal prosecution and equitable relief, but his potential customers don’t, and he wants them to believe he’s as enraged as they are by the outrageous unfairness of it all. There used to be a similar lawyer in the Bay Area who routinely included, in his responsive papers, a claim that forcing his male clients to pay child support was involuntary servitude and hence prohibited by the 13th Amendment. It was nonsense, as the lawyer perfectly well knew, but the chumps he represented ate it up, and when the courts ignored it, that just reinforced their sullen conviction that “the system” is run by women and hostile to men.

This piece is liberal law at its MacKinnon-best: the disappearance of power that operates prior to the law and its replacement by abstract “equality.” Comparing men on the domestic abuse issue to the victims of post 9-11 islamophobia!!! Sheesh!

They have occasionally run a decent bit of feminist analysis, which always comes as a surprise to the reader (me, anyway). Jensen (R not D) occasionally gets some space there, and two or three times a year they may run an actual feminist article by (gasp!) an actual woman — though their favourite female contributors are, from off-the-cuff memory, the anti-Zionist K Christison (who writes in tandem with hubby Bill so she must be OK), and sex therapist Susan Block. Sorta places the goalposts for the acceptable field of discourse

CP definitely a boys-club, like most lefty web sites. What else is new?

So often with these “poor little men” articles one wonders whether a personal axe is being ground (on behalf of a buddy, perhaps)… the partisanship seems so ummm flagrant. The “beloved pet” trope just leaves me speechless… you can’t make this stuff up you know