shame | TALKING BACK to restraining orders

“Parental alienation is the ‘programming’ of a child by one parent to denigrate the other (targeted) parent, in an effort to undermine and interfere with the child’s relationship with that parent, and most often occurs within the context of a child custody conflict. This includes the ‘legal abuse’ of parents who have been disenfranchised from their children’s lives subsequent to sole custody and primary residence judgments. Within an adversarial legal process, non-custodial parents are often subjected to shame and stigma, lack of access to their children, and devaluation of their role as parents. And those who speak about the pain and woundedness in their lives are subjected to a mean-spirited cultural response, where their talk of woundedness is mocked.”

—Edward Kruk, Ph.D.

Here’s child and family social worker Edward Kruk corroborating that parents may be the targets of “legal abuse”; that they’re subjected to shame and stigma, and to alienation from their children; and that they’re ridiculed and regarded with contempt for complaining about it: “The Impact of Parental Alienation on Parents: Post-traumatic Stress in the Rupture of Parent-Child Relationships” (2013). There are mothers who endure this, make no mistake, but as Dr. Kruk observes, “Most alienated parents are non-custodial fathers.”

Members of both genders (parents and non-parents alike) have reported on this blog that they’ve experienced (or are in the throes of) PTSD consequent to abusive legal contests, and it’s not the intent of this post to discount the plaints of mothers who face this torment. It must be emphasized, however, that the “mean-spirited cultural response” Dr. Kruk notes is predominately, if not exclusively, directed at men, and it’s because fathers’/men’s plaints are so roundly and effectively denounced and dismissed that mothers’/women’s plaints also lack a sympathetic audience.

(Feminists would prefer that female victims of legal abuse quietly recede into obscurity and accept the role of martyr for “the cause.”)

The “mean-spirited cultural response” is broad but includes highly influential voices, including law professors and esteemed advocacy groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has equated men’s and fathers’ rights representatives with hate groups, asserting that they’re on a par with the Ku Klux Klan.

No kidding.

To vehemently complain about being treated prejudicially by the courts and alienated from your kids is to be caricatured as a racist wearing a bedsheet and brandishing a torch. (Few in the mainstream press, moreover, scoff at this rhetoric.) For moms (and women in general) who’ve been victimized by legal abuse to be heeded, the demonization of men’s and fathers’ advocates as mere “misogynists” must first be controverted.

Last year, a post on this blog reported the award of a $500,000 grant to a female law professor to “debunk” the claim that court procedures are abused to alienate parents from their children, and it’s this sort of (government-funded) social science research that marginalizes voices like Dr. Kruk’s.

It provides fodder to bloggers and other commentators, and it’s used to “train” judges how to rule.

The selective orientation of feminist social science ignores competing (and compelling) findings like these Dr. Kruk cites:

Suicide rates are reported to be of epidemic proportions among parents, fathers in particular, who are struggling to maintain a parenting relationship with their children (Kposowa, 2000; Kposowa, 2003); and legal abuse has been noted as a key factor in these cases.

A recent post on this blog referenced the suicide of a father who’d undergone years of legal hell and couldn’t face any more. He bled out—emotionally, morally, and financially. Feminist advocates stress the consequences and “rampancy” of domestic violence—focusing narrowly on female victims—while denying that the effects of legal abuses are grave. They trivialize those effects and often deny legal abuses occur to any extent worthy of attention or redress.

The devaluation of family and the curtailment of lives aren’t trivial.

“Men are bastards!”

“Women are cun[ning]!”

I could end this editorial here, and I would have summed up the problem, which originates with hearts but owes its infinitude to different organs entirely.

Predictably, since most restraining orders are sought against a member of the opposite sex, online forums about dirty divorces, domestic abuse, treacherous lovers, vengeful exes, predatory or parasitic whackjobs, etc. often boil down to cross-gender sniping and “team camaraderie.” Women just want to be pissed with men and bitch about them with other women, and men just want to be pissed with women and bitch about them with other men.

Both genders have limitless potential to suck; sex is beside the point.

Those who profit politically and monetarily by the misery inflicted through court processes that are easily abused by the “morally unencumbered” love all this conflict and misdirected rage, which only ensure that these corrupt processes continue to thrive.

They’ve already hummed along without a hitch for over 30 years. In fact, they’ve gained momentum, despite reasoned and articulately critical pans from distinguished members of the legal, journalistic, academic/philosophic, and public policy communities.

Not only does cross-gender bitching by victims of state abuses distract from the actual source of the problem, which is bad laws; it makes those victims sound like the cranks and nuts everyone else is glad to assume they are.

True, the person who betrayed you and lied about you should be subjected to medieval punishment. True, the judge you got may be worthy of the same for his or her cruelty or carelessness or cluelessness. But…the reason either was entitled to abuse and humiliate, rob and defame you was THE LAW.

Except for the statutes that authorized your injuries, those injuries wouldn’t have been possible.

Passive aggression isn’t going to accomplish anything. I can’t imagine venting even makes anyone feel better for very long.

Aggressive aggression holds a lot more promise. If you’ve been wronged, tell your story, and tell it in a way that will count. Sign a petition and add a comment about your own circumstances. You don’t even have to expose your name. Sign several and tweet them, too (a few are below). Start a petition of your own. Tweet that also and post it here. Start a Facebook page. Connect and consolidate forces.

STOP FALSE ALLEGATIONS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

THE SUPREME COURT: FEATHER FOR THE FALSELY ACCUSED

RESTRAINING ORDER LAWS ARE DANGEROUS AND UNFAIR TO MEN

This may seem unthinkable to you, especially if your wounds are fresh, but appreciate that the impulse to conceal shame only potentiates that shame. If you’ve been wronged, the shame isn’t yours. Re-channel your emotions in constructive ways. You’re not alone.

No one wants to do this. No one should have to. I wanted to write humor for kids. Though not a big dream, it contented me, and I think I would have been successful at it by now and that other doors would have opened. I was dragged from my interior world and away from the life I might have enjoyed. Not only am I not a political person; I don’t even like board games.

I do, though, hate bullies, especially ones with gangs behind them.

Recognize that the ringleader of the gang that assaulted you isn’t that petty lowlife you mistakenly invested your trust in; he’s an invisible man who’s represented in posters wearing red, white, and blue, and his gang is everybody.

The only way you can beat him and attain some satisfaction is by taking away his gang and making it yours.

TALKING BACK to restraining orders

THEY’RE NOT JUST ABUSED BUT ABUSIVE

Tag shame

“Shame and Stigma” and the “Mean-Spirited Cultural Response” That Efforts to Cast Them Off Provoke: Procedural Abuse and Parental Alienation