No one took away fathers' rights: they gave them away says Sarah Carey
Fathers aren’t valued because so many women were left holding the baby they discovered they could get along without them, wrote Sarah Carey in a recent Sunday Times column reproduced here on her GUBU blog.
"..... I resent the notion that marauding feminists stormed the Dail and the Courts and stole rights from men," she wrote. "No one took away fathers rights: they gave them away. They ran off and came back to discover themselves surplus to requirements."
To see responses to her column, also published in the Sunday Times, click on the comments tag below (thanks mctavish).....
Related post:
Election Diary: Fathers Rights-Responsibility Party runs eight candidates
2 comments:
I thought you might consider it fair and balanced to have the following replies posted.Theses letters were printed in the Sunday Times, 3rd June 2007. Sarah Carey, for some reason, did not put these on her blog.
Men fight back for their rights
I ENJOYED Sarah Carey’s tongue-in-cheek stab at men, but over the past 30 years society has chosen to ignore a growing number of issues affecting men: e.g., suicide, homelessness, depression, alcohol and drug abuse, deaths from high-risk jobs, ineffective health provision, and gender cleansing from their families and their children (Do men deserve more rights? Comment, last week).
Carey gave a good example of how Bertie Ahern looked after himself when he was homeless following his
relationship breakdown. Yet he did nothing subsequently to help the thousands of men who, through no fault of their own, found themselves in a similar position. Men through nature and/or nurture tend to look after women and children, but are not so inclined to help other men. That is why men need the Fathers Rights-Responsibility party.
Sam Carroll
Swords, Co Dublin
LAW IS SUFFICIENT: I agree with Carey-there is enough legislation for men to improve their lot. The Equal Status acts of 2000 and 2004 specifically mention gender as grounds for discrimination, along with age and marital status. A young man who feels discriminated against by having to pay a high insurance premium because of other young men speeding, or drinking and driving, can make a complaint under this legislation.
However, it is not true to say that fathers have given away their rights; they have none. A mother becomes the legal guardian of her child at birth. The father becomes so only if he is married to the mother, or with the consent of the mother, or by a court order. Given that 40% of births in Ireland today are outside of marriage, how can these fathers give away the rights that they never had?
Carey is right that if we dislike the world, we can change it by utilizing the equal status acts. She is wrong to assume that because some men abuse their position of power, all men should suffer.
Cathal Garvey
Navan, Co. Meath
GENDER TRAP: Carey’s rather tepid attitude to problems in Irish family law will do nothing to defeat the alienation that is afflicting gender relations. The law can be used to destroy men’s wellbeing. We should also observe the growing phenomenon of mothers, single and separated, who solve their problems by killing themselves and their children.
Edward Stevenson
Rush, Co Dublin
MOTHERS’ WHIMS: The title FRP stands for Fathers Rights-Responsibility party and is at the core of the ethos of the party. Mothers and fathers have responsibilities to love, care for and provide for their children, and both require the rights to do so. Thus responsibilities are contingent on having commensurate rights.
The problem lies within the family law courts, where, effectively, fathers are “granted” rights at the whim of mothers.
This discriminatory treatment is culturally underpinned by an outdated and untenable presumption that fathers are innately incapable of joint parenting without the gatekeeping supervision of the mother. The FRP core mantra is “Putting fatherhood back into neighbourhood”.
Liam O Gogain,
Chairman FRP
SECRET COURTS: I recently joined the FRP and stood in Cork North Central in the election as the party’s values are important to me, even if they do not register on the radar of any of the state’s political parties. Fathers are routinely dispossessed of children and home in the so-called “family law courts”, which sit in secret and are not permitted to discuss any details outside the court. Suicide is at an alarmingly high level; four out of five suicides are male.
Every time male equality is raised, Carey and her ilk attempt to shout down the issue as “a joke”, and harp on about female inequality as a higher priority. She’s right about one thing: “If they dislike it that much, they can change it” .We don’t like it. We will change it.
Niall Brennan
Cobh, Co Cork
Thanks mctavish, I've added a reference to your comment to the body of the original post.
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