Rachel’s Musings

I’ve come across two disturbing newsarticles in the last week or so: A BBC report on a study of children’s responses to questions about partner-violence and a report that despite falling homocide rates, women are increasingly being killed by their partners.

According to the BBC report, kids apparently find it okay to hit someone because she was late with making diner. This sounds so much like the standard excuse from a batterer it is very scary. The study of 11- and 12-year olds also investigated attitudes toward gender roles. It’s as if feminism had never happened! The aspirations are as sexist as ever. Plus, girls seem clear that they have to censor their own career goals because it’s not right for a girl to be a doctor. Now, this study is small – 89 pupils were asked – so maybe this is a rather skewed sample. But it was followed by a report on an uptick in domestic violence. Interestingly, it is very difficult to verify if this uptick is real because the FBI is not tracking domestic violence homicides separately. Apparently domestic violence is not a hate crime… Or a crime worth tracking separately. But as the article reports, organizations that fight domestic violence and help its victims are seeing a marked increase in requests for help. If we put these two reports together, I am wondering if the increase in domestic violence is not only due to the economic strains but also due to tolerant attitudes. After all, if he’s unemployed, it’s understandable that he’d beat up his wife because he’s just under so much stress – or however the societal excuse might go. Plus, sexist attitudes also reinforce the idea that a man has lost his manhood if he looses his job – and a way to proof that he’s still a man is to beat up his wife/partner. Apparently, we need to start plastering all over the place again: There is NO excuse for domestic violence!

(Hat tips go to the Feminist Philosophers blog for the BBC report and the AtMP blog for the WeNews report.)

Cognitive dissonance is that feeling that we get when we believe something contradictory. It arises – to use the example from a textbook – when you think you should be on a diet but devour a huge bowl of chocolate mousse. You then start justifying your choice to minimize the dissonance.

Recently, I have been thinking about a specific cognitive dissonance: Ethical dissonance. Working at a large financial institution (FI) during the financial “crisis” is creating a lot of ethical dissonance for me. Already the fact that I put the crisis in quotes is a symptom of that: On the one hand, the higher ranks in the big FIs have profited greatly from their own disastrous decisions because the public bailed them out. None of the banksters had to give their bonuses or earnings back to right their wrongs. Then on the other, the real crisis is not in the financial services sector – it is amongst all the unemployed and former homeowners. It is amongst the rest of us who didn’t profit from scrupulous financial “innovation.” And that “innovation” continues, together with the profiteering off the backs of the rest of society. So, I think all that – and then I get paid by one of the FIs. Granted it’s not one of the worst (first attempt to minimize the dissonance). And I have to make a living somehow (another one). Plus, I am not working on any of those “innovative” products (piling up the anti-dissonance arguments). But, the bottom line is: I cannot get out of the ethical dissonance. Somehow I know that if all of us who are feeling this dissonance would quit, we could change this society that is so build around the adoration of the size of the paycheck (hmmm, I wonder what that replaced ). And I also know that to really remove the ethical dissonance, I would have to quit my job. In some ways, though, that feels like self-sabotage but maybe that is just another excuse I conjure up to relieve the dissonance without doing what is right.

The Alternatives for Marriage Project has been fighting to get marriage promotion out of TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) for years. Unfortunately, it looks like the new HHS Budget not only continues with this practice from the Bush era but increases the funding:

The Budget includes an extension of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant and related programs, including the Contingency Fund and Supplemental Grants, through FY 2011. The Budget also includes $500 million for a new Fatherhood, Marriage, and Families Innovation Fund. The fund will provide competitive grants to States to conduct and rigorously evaluate comprehensive responsible fatherhood programs, including those that incorporate healthy marriage components and demonstrations geared towards improving child outcomes by improving outcomes for custodial parents with serious barriers to self sufficiency as a mechanism for improving outcomes for children in these families. The Budget also includes an increase of $2.5 billion for the TANF Emergency Fund for FY 2011 and makes several program changes focused on strengthening States’ efforts to enhance employment related assistance to low-income families.

Let’s stop this nonsense because letting them eat wedding rings does nothing to reduce poverty! Help get marriage promotion out of TANF!

As the rainy season starts in earnest, the thought that the fight for equality pushes us singles out into the rain becomes even more real. Many of us supporters of going beyond conjugality have had trouble with the single issue fight for the right to marry for people in the LGBT community. On the one hand, exclusion from marriage is clearly discriminatory. On the other hand, this fight implies a normalization, which is scary, and prevents us from questioning marriage itself and thus enshrines it even more into our culture. I have fought against Prop 8 because I felt it violates the separation of church and state (interestingly enough, as I was calling people to confirm their participation on election day, many backed out, including one person who was getting married while she could). But there has always been some unease because I felt that I was fighting to have the red dividing line between the married and unmarried moved, rather than removed. Ultimately, I felt, I was pushing myself out into the rain.

With this as background, it is even more disturbing to read about the pro-marriage rhetoric from the Prop 8 trial (the link brings you to a create commentary by Nancy Polikoff). Mind you, it is not coming from the religious wrong, from where I usually expect it. Rather supporters of same-sex marriage are spouting the same old myths about marriage. It is no longer a fight against discrimination. It is a fight for the perpetuation of the glorification of marriage. These leaves out all of us who are not married because we choose not to, which would include a large number of people in the LGBT community could they make that choice. Ultimately, this feels like a white upper-middle class fight. It is not about getting fairness, it is about access to privilege. If it were about fairness, the fight would move us beyond conjugality, which would value all forms of families, no matter what constellation they take. Ultimately, this would value all people, as individuals, respecting and supporting our choices.

Mindy put out a call to action for us single mothers: It is time for a change in how we single mothers are treated! We demand this change through open letters posted to our blogs. I will follow Samantha’s lead and address my open letter to more than President Obama.

To The Many Of You That It Concerns:

Single mothers have been blamed for everything from the (non-existent) increase in crime to the collapse of the family. Be that as it may, many of us are single mothers. No matter how you despise us, we are a reality. And it’s time that you respect that reality, start listening to our plight, and inspire changes in policy. If nothing else, do it for the children, do it for the future of our country.

Here is my story. Financially, I was able to support my son and me rather well thanks to good education, which was a good thing because the child support my ex-husband was ordered to pay amounted to mere peanuts. About $140 a month. Yupp. He did pay it like clock-work. But it only paid about half of my attorney’s fee for an hour of her service. And I needed a lot of her services. Instead of paying more child-support, which he claimed he couldn’t afford, my ex used the legal system to continuously harass me. I couldn’t move to further my education – and increase my earnings potential – without getting the court’s approval since my ex told me I couldn’t move. Heck, I couldn’t even take my son to visit his grandparents in Germany without having a court order that it was okay for me to go on vacation. My ex had claimed that I’d stay in Germany. It didn’t matter that I had a job here in the US and had no intention of leaving that for nothing. The court had to intervene.

I have been accused of so many things by my ex, I’ve lost track. He has promised me so many times to throw me into jail, I stopped counting. What did he accuse me of? Child abuse primarily. Several police officers can attest to the fact that there was no child abuse going on (was, not because there is some going on now but because my son is no longer a child; he is an adult now). Why did he want me in jail? What was the crime I committed? It’s hard to tell but it might be that I filed for divorce. Or maybe he thinks that I created the chasm between his son and him. The chasm that my ex tried the courts to close not accepting that he is the only one in the world who could close it. He could close it by treating his son with the respect he deserves. And maybe even listen to him for a change. But of course that chasm is my fault. Exactly how I am supposed to have created it is beyond me but I do know that I lost more money defending myself against these unfounded charges than I lost in the October 2008 stock market bubble bursting. Maybe I could’ve bought a house with that money. Instead I spent the years my son was in high school protecting us from a mad court case that accused me of undermining the relationship between father and son. The case never actually saw a day in court – except when the lawyers met with the judges – so I never had a chance to prove that it was my son who chose not to have anything to do with his dad. The chasm was there without me doing anything.

Why am I writing this to you? Because the current family law does everything to protect the family even if that hurts the child. A child, especially a teenager, should not be forced to maintain a relationship he or she has no interest in anymore. Yes, even a relationship to a parent. Biology should not trump respect. Children have no rights in family law, they might be protected by the “in the best interest of the child” clause but that protection is unreliable because it depends on the adults’ interpretation. And adults seem to think that the best interest for a child is served by maintaining relationships to the parents no matter what. No matter how much the parent disrespects the child. No matter how messed up the parent is. No matter how bad of a role model the parent is.

This has to change. Children need to have real protections. And they should be taken seriously. If they say, they don’t want to go, the default assumption should be that they have good reasons why they don’t want to go. Sure, there are rare cases where children were manipulated but the parental alienation syndrome is a myth perpetuated by the sexist and anti-child “father’s” rights movement. Respect the children enough to believe that they cannot be manipulated!

This has to change. Single parenting is hard enough. It shouldn’t be made harder through a court system that can be used to harass the other parent. There should be safe-guards in place that can short-circuit the abuse of the court system. Instead of spending more than $150,000 in legal fees, it would have helped to have the court take a stand and stop taking my ex’s accusations seriously. The judge could’ve ended the case by simply talking to my son. But the judge couldn’t do that because he had to follow procedures which seem to be set up to enrich lawyers more than to serve justice. While the judge followed procedures, my son grew up. Case over. The child is no more. Welcome to absurdity.

In a previous post, I remarked that choosing to be single feels like a rather uppity thing to do. I promised to explain.

According to the Urban Dictionary “uppity” means (ignore the other two definitions!):

Taking liberties or assuming airs beyond one’s place in a social hierarchy. Assuming equality with someone higher up the social ladder.

As a single person, I am at the bottom of the social hierarchy. The hierarchy that starts with singles, then unmarried couples, then married couples. I am supposed to move up to the top by marrying someone. Instead, I dare to choose to be single and demand that I am equal to married folks. I want the hierarchy demolished but I am expected, socially, to respect it. And on top of that, I am not sad about my single status and don’t do anything to change it. In fact, I am happily single and would like to stay this way (both happy and single ).

Now, I also commented that this is uppity even for a feminist. Although many feminists have questioned marriage, a lot of them don’t. In fact, there are feminists who marry (amongst them Gloria Steinem). Feminism can incorporate marriage as a possibility by working toward egalitarian marriages. Something I find actually rather appalling. So, my choice to be single implies my critique of marriage as an outmoded, patriarchal institution that I don’t want to be a part of (well, not again, since I’ve been married before). Instead of attempting to create egalitarian marriages, my choice is to demand we find different ways of relating to each other, where relationshipse go beyond the dyadic. Thus, it is also demanding equality in the male-female hierarchy but also a call for questioning more than the equality of pay, for example, or equal access to everything, though this is also extremely important.