The Red Pill Page #6

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So I had six months worth of

statistics to show consistently

that every time he was with

his mom for a few days,

he'd come back weighing

three to four pounds more,

and then he'd lose it

while he was with me.

So they had, you know,

how much he was upset

about the problem,

they had his physician

being upset about the problem,

and they had the proof

of where the problem lay.

So the judges' decision

was, um, that father

should no longer

be allowed to weigh the child.

Problem solved.

After 14 years,

my body gave out.

And I got sicker

than I've ever been.

I realized I'm gonna die.

That's not

gonna do anybody good.

I've gotta give up the fight.

So I gave up custody,

and so I don't

see my son anymore.

He hasn't been

in my house since.

- Um.

- I'm so sorry.

So I did lose him.

Just like a dream

you're like a guiding light

shining in the night

Fred claims that during

his 14-year custody battle,

he spent the equivalent

of five years

of his gross income

on legal fees, mediators,

and child support payments.

I was really

in his life a lot longer

than most fathers

would have been.

It's something

most fathers can't afford.

You are so beautiful

Ito me

we generally know that fathers

don't get as good a deal

in family court

and we don't really

complain about it

until it happens to us,

and even then,

a lot of men don't.

Many men's rights activists

come into being

men's rights activists

as a result

of getting a divorce,

wanting to be equally

involved with the children,

and realizing that women

have the right to children

and men have to fight

for children.

When your family

courts run on the supposition

that mothers are more fit

to be custodial parents

and that fathers are more fit

to provide a check every month

and to become what we like

to call "uncle daddy,"

where they visit...

Visit their children,

to me, that's one of the greatest

obscenities in the world,

the idea of visiting

your own children,

where you get to see them

for two hours

on Wednesday night,

and you get to have them for x

amount of hours every other weekend,

and you have no say

in how they're brought up.

You know, I can't tell you

how many men

have been in this office,

in that chair,

in tears because they can't

see their kids.

Yeah, and some of this stuff

ends up in horrific

consequences.

Like this gentleman here,

that's his little son.

They found him dead...

Not the son, but the young man,

in the desert

with a bullet in his head

the day before the family court

where it became known

that he was gonna get to see

his little guy even less.

And of course,

he'd be falsely accused

one time after another

after another.

It had destroyed his life.

It had bankrupt him,

driven him into debt.

It caused him to miss work.

He was about ready

to lose his job.

He was at the end of his rope,

so he just decided to end it.

The unfairness

in the family courts,

the unfairness

in the way child support

is so often structured,

it's commonplace,

and it's everywhere,

and the more you start

to become conscious of it,

the more you realize

that it's there.

I started to research

some father's rights issues

and came across

some harrowing stories,

like this man in south Carolina

who found out his

only daughter was adopted away

by the mother without

his knowledge or consent...

His daughter was with

an adoptive family

in California,

so he began his fight

to get his daughter back.

Adoption is for children

without families,

not children with a willing

and capable family.

And this man in Colorado

who lost his daughter

when the mother left the state

to give birth in Utah

where he wouldn't have

legal rights to his child.

He fought for

four years in court

and finally won

visitation rights...

Only visitation.

I can't explain the

emotion, the happiness...

This hard fight,

and what this means to me...

And then there's

this heartbreaking story.

The 2o year old

father never left her side

until he was forced to give her

to adoptive parents this week

after Kaylee's mother decided

to put her up for adoption.

In order to keep Kaylee,

Colby needed to file paternity

action, an affidavit,

and a commencement notice

with Utah's vital records

a day before the mother signed

the adoption papers

relinquishing her rights.

But in Colby's case, the mother

only gave him a few hours notice

of what she was going to do.

I would like her back.

Men in the men's movement

are not upset

about having to be fathers.

They're upset because they're

not allowed to be fathers.

That guy...

Blows his head off,

blows his brains out.

Out of family court?

And people don't think there's

something wrong with that?

We just open the doors

tomorrow for business as usual

and that's okay?

I've always

thought of feminism

as being the fight

for gender equality.

And yet I've never heard

about father's rights

and the injustices going on

in family court.

Why is this?

I decided to ask gender studies

professor Michael Messner.

Well, I'll just say,

I don't think it's...

I don't think that a lot

of their assumptions

are correct to start with.

There's no doubt

that there have been some men

who get just screwed

by court decisions

and custody cases.

But I think when you look

at the broader patterns,

it's still the case that

in intact heterosexual

families with kids,

women are still doing

the vast majority

of the housework and child care,

and there's a lot of

sort of father absence,

lack of participation

by fathers,

some of whom, I think,

after divorce happens,

end up suddenly wanting

equality, you know, as fathers

when they haven't really

been participating equally

as fathers before.

So to me, it always

kind of swings back

to the feminist perspective

of how we need to push

for full equality

across the board,

including before divorces.

And if we have that,

then we might expect

more symmetry

after divorces happen.

The more I

researched father's rights,

the more I realized how deep

this rabbit hole goes,

not only in

the amount of issues,

but also in the vast array

of perspectives on these issues.

I decided to create a flow chart

of what I thought

fathers' options might be

following a surprise pregnancy.

I then put a green line

for the paths

that I thought would be

good turn-outs for the father.

And I put red lines

for the paths

that seemed to not be good

for the father.

Then I created a flow chart

for women's options

and did the same

with green and red lines.

And as I stepped back,

I saw all the red lines

for the women's options

if she does not want the child.

But something dawned on me.

Of every path the biological

father could go down,

he's at the mercy of

the woman's sole discretion.

Although women have

very difficult choices to make,

she at least has the choice.

But for biological fathers,

they have no say

over their parental destiny.

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