Fathers For Equal

Rights: Corporate Image Project

PROLEGOMENA

WHEREAS:

(a) because the "family," however differently structured in different cultures, is the biologically-based behavioral "anlage," or nucleus of the later development of a civilization or civilizations, IT IS ASSUMED THAT the values learned within a given family structure grow into and become adult behaviors that may or may not enhance, immobilize, or destroy the qualities of life of a given civilization and the members thereof; and that

(b) the biological basis of the American family is now in a state of disintegration and genesis caused, in part, by the radical intervention of science into the fertility cycle of women causing a shattering of traditional male/female pre-marital and marital roles formerly based on fertility cycle of women, thus unalterably changing prior biological controls over female pre-marital behaviors and marital fidelity and the very structure of the marital contract itself;

THEREFORE: It is incumbent upon us to create a new set of humanistically derived behavioral ideals for men and women, the "family," and hence our culture.

IMAGE PROJECT

I Overview

All corporate/business "images" attempt to be positive. This is because to prosper non-profit as well as for-profit corporations need to make money to stay in business. Non-profits just don't show a profit at the end of their fiscal year - and that's the essential difference between the two.

To make money and prosper, however, the corporate image must promise the buying public that what the corporate image looks and sounds like, is, in fact, representative of what the corporation's product, in fact, is. Thus, the corporate image-makers must be clear on what the product(s)/service(s) of the corporation is/are and what kind of impression the corporation wishes to leave behind in its advertising, what the corporation wishes to "look" like (its image).

For example: Coca Cola is in the "refreshment" business, that is to say, promises that its product will "refresh" ("make fresh again," "rejuvenate") and thus revitalize the consumer who uses its product. Hence, the advertising images surrounding the use of the Coca Cola product are images of a refreshingly ice-cold, frothy, effervescent drink, smiling young and healthy faces, active youthful bodies, clean, bright white teeth, etc. The corporate "image" of Coca Cola, as expressed in its advertising, is the company's product: Coca Cola "is" refreshment, and refreshment "is" Coca Cola, and who would argue that "refreshment" is not positive?

What is the positive corporate "image" of Fathers For Equal Rights (henceforth F.E.R.)?

Since F.E.R. has never mounted a corporate advertising campaign to an identified market (or markets), we have not felt the need to discuss corporate image, certainly not in earnest with advertising professionals. Instead, we have - or have had - T - shirts, caps, bumper stickers, the styles of which objects have varied according to the skills of the donated labor involved, resulting in a wobbly, inconsistent series of corporate "images."

We have a corporate newsletter, a "logo" (which appears on other paraphernalia), even an awkward "motto" of sorts

appearing on our newsletter ("We are your children who love you and need you Kids of divorce are people too . . . Please fight for us!!!"). However, the styles and qualities of these images have varied over the years, sometimes radically: for the most part, however, they are whines, negative images.

We have an 11-year-old "mission" statement a five-year-old set of by-laws, both badly tattered, out of date and in need of refurbishment.

We have marched, demonstrated, appeared on television shows, gone to Lansing to testify on various issues, held public meetings once per month. We have done all of the above for approximately eleven (11) years, but few people know instantly who we "are," what, exactly. we "stand for," what we "do."

Why?

What are we? What do we "look like"?

We are seen, in my experience, variously as a "powerful group with tons of money," as "radicals," as "deadbeat Dads," as "godsends," as "anti-establishment," as "a fringe group of lunatics," as "reformers," as a "club - in short, a badly mixed bag, predominantly negative, most assuredly an unprofessional set of "images." To a certain extent, this "mixed bag" is only in part deserved (our beginnings were, after all, rather ragged), but whatever the extent, what we now have as a corporate image is what we've earned, like it or not.

We've earned our mixed bag "image" because we've never taken the time to carefully determine what our product and hence our image was going to be; we've never taken the time to determine exactly what our image was going to be because we've never taken the time to determine exactly who we are, and are not, as a corporation, and thus what we have to sell to our "market"; because we don't know who we are, as a corporation, we do not know what our "product" (or "product line") is; because we do not know what our product is we do not know what our "market" is, and is not; because we do not know what our market is, we have no idea of how to create a suitable image to sell to our market(s) - an "image" that we've never defined with a product or product line (that we have not yet defined either).

We have described our goal as being "devoted to ending sex discrimination in the court system" but have NOT precisely described how we are going to achieve that goal, how we are going to mount specific programs to move towards that goal. We have no "business plan."

Confused?

So is our market. By far the most frequent questions asked over the last eleven years is "What do you guys do? What are your services?" (i.e., "what are you selling?")

Who are "we"?

Well what, in fact, do we "do"?

What is/are our product(s)?

Who is our "market"?

II The Market

As of this date (April, l990), there are approximately 20 million divorced men in the United State of America, and I daresay not one percent belong to men's rights groups. F.E.R in Michigan has about 400 members, about the same number of members as the National Congress For Men. What has happened to these some 20-million men that we need badly to understand so that we may understand who we are?

It didn't happen very dramatically or suddenly, like a volcanic explosion or earth quake, but the world of men and woman changed forever, unalterably, when primogeniture died in approximately l960. "Primogeniture" is:

"Primogeniture: The state of being the first-born among several children of the of the same parents; seniority by birth in the same family. The superior or exclusive right possessed by the eldest son, and, particularly, his right to succeed to the estate of his ancestor, in right of his seniority by birth, to the exclusion of younger sons."

Blacks Law Dictionary

The "first born of the same parents:" with the advent of the (female) birth-control pill, how did a father, after the advent of the Pill in the 1960's, know that he was, in fact, the biological parent of that first-born child (whether son or daughter)? (HLA testing came much later.)

Even worse: how could men, in the wonderful 1960's, know that their wives were, in fact, faithful to them? With the Pill, adultery was rendered wondrously, magically, simple for women: the Pill freed them from the biological tyranny of their fertility cycle, and thus freed them from the biological, behavioral and moral sociological constraints implicit in the doctrine of primogeniture, namely, that the mother of the first-born child had to be a virgin.

The fear of being viewed as a "bad girl" or "fallen woman" served to control promiscuity in the 1950's and before; after the Pill, promiscuity was ironically given an unintended scientific sanction - no visible consequences, no evidence of immorality - no constraints - no social opprobrium!

On the other hand, at first, the Pill didn't seem a bad idea for men either: so long as women were "on the Pill" men were "safe" from the heavy, life-long responsibilities of paying for bastard children. And, for society at large, the Pill was a godsend for both single and married men and women in the wonderful, madcap, 1960's. Sex was simple, fun, easy, "for free," and we were playmates, not adversaries, with the threat of unwanted pregnancies banished from our lives. "Unisex" was in: men became "feminists;" women dressed in pants, smoked cigars, and swore with the rest of the anti-establishment troopers; "love-ins" were real ("no names, please"), "free love" taught the Greek Gods a lesson or two about orgies, pornography became a middle-class hoola-hoop ("You haven't seen 'Deep Throat'? Oh dear!"), and "enlightened" people began divorcing "for the sake of the children."

What a party! God, what fun! Free at least from the restraints of primogeniture!

With, that is, maybe one or two exceptions.

First, we forgot to invite the attorneys and the Judges to the party in the new world. They slept, for at least the first 10 years after the advent of the Pill. By the end of the 1960's, when people were divorcing in droves for the "sake of the children," no one - or only perhaps a few radicals - in the Court System knew what marvelous changes in male/female relations the Pill had wrought: they still believed that there were two types of women, the virginal "mother" of the first-born son, and the dissolute "whore," no virgin she, and assumed that any woman who had a child was, biologically, the "more fit" of the two parents, because, as the virginal "biological mother" she had an "instinct" for raising children that men did not biologically possess, and the "Tender Years" doctrine of the l950's (and before) reigned supreme. No one really looked at the radical changes in female behaviors that the Pill had wrought, and the pre-Pill myths about female "mothering instinct" and female psychology in general, persisted unabated and, in fact, are alive and well today.

Thus, the Pill gave women the choice, with impunity, of two different worlds - that of the "angel-wife-mother" and that of the "whore" - whereas nothing whatsoever changed positively for men because of the advent of the Pill. The old problem of "when did you have your last period?" simply became "did you take your pill today?" and, as men gradually learned from bitter experience, they were still responsible for "knocking her up," whether or not she was or was not "on the Pill" - she merely lied, enjoyed herself, and zap! men, chivalric souls, assumed responsibility for her deception and married her to protect her from the societal rejection of the unmarried ("fallen woman") mother and the child(ren) from the stigma of being bastards.

Thus it was mandatory, by the time the first-marriage divorce rate had hit the fifty percent (50%) rate in the late 1960's that we men and women sit down, together, and work up a whole new set of rules in the new World of the Pill for our "courting" behaviors, for unwanted pregnancies occurring not as the result of a miscalculation of menstrual cycles but as the result of downright deception, and legal punishments therefor, for assent between the parties on abortion decisions, and for divorce.

But we didn't. Men's "rights" proponents and women's "libbers" were at war then.

And we still have not really done so: sexism, while reduced, still runs rampant through the court system, and my corporate records for the last ten (10) years reveal that fifty percent (50%) of all my clients' marriages began in deception: "She 'forgot' to take her pill."

As a correlation to this mess, no one seemed to notice, either, when Mommism died in Michigan on April 1, 1972. Maybe people thought the new Michigan law was an April fool's joke, but that was the day that the "Tender Years Doctrine" died ("children under the age of 12 go to the mother, over age 12 to the father"), and, presumably, with it the cultural belief in the myth of the "mothering instinct." The Judges, attorneys, and legislators were at the April 1, 1971 party; however, it appears that someone forgot to invite the fathers - or they were invited and didn't show or, if they showed, didn't understand well what had happened.

It took approximately seven (7) years for the deaths of primogeniture and Mommism to have an impact on fathers.

Fathers showed for the l979 jock-burning sponsored by F.E.R. and reported on nationwide television. F.E.R. rocked the sexist boat named "divorce/child custody" with that rally, announced that the "boat" for too long had only one sexist custodial seat in it marked "for mothers only," and F.E.R claimed the right to row the boat, alone, as the custodial parent of children, whatever their ages. Furthermore, about two years later, F.E.R. demanded that two people, after divorce, could take turns rowing the custody boat and on January 14, 1981, the Michigan Joint Custody Act became law. Men and women were "equal" again, just like in the good 'old days of "free love" triggered by the Wonderful Pill in the 1960's.

But no one then suggested that it was finally time to sit down together, as men and women, to discuss how we were going to behave henceforth in a World stripped of the restraints of primogeniture and the infantile bathos of Mommism, how we were going to structure our society in the new World of Joint Custody and the Pill, and F.E.R. most certainly did not review and modify its 1979 "mission statement" to polish its corporate image and to meet the challenges ahead of a new world of men and women with very different rules indeed compared to those of the l950's, l960's, 1970's, and beyond.

The New "Rules"

What rules of conduct, therefore, by default of the men's movement, came into being in the l980's and now exist in the 1990's?

"There are no rules," writes Carol Cassell, Ph.D. (Swept Away): "the old rules are dead." Remember the "bad girl" of the pre-Pill 1950's (the one who got "knocked up")? She's changed:

"BAD GIRLS FINISH FIRST

Here is a quick look a Bad Girl as described by an anonymous 40-year old: 'The bad girl cares more about herself than anyone else. She is selfishly indulgent, she says goodbye to many men, she is likely to be divorced three times. She does exactly as she pleases. She likes sex and expresses her desires through actions and words. She is intelligent and usually a professional woman. She is not self-sacrificing. '. . . It's a picture [Cassell comments] of a pretty strong woman, and except for those three marriages, I'd rather be BAD!"

Why not be "BAD"? With the Pill as one's fairy godmother, there are really no consequences, no evidence of one's "badness" (e.g., a child born out of wedlock) or, in the alliterative, after all, one can merely choose to deceive Sir Lancelot and dip into his coffers for years as the needy custodial mother of his first-born son.

Cassell's book was published in l985, approximately 25 years after the advent of the Pill and the wonderful 1960's: the "Bad Girl" is clearly a product of the 1960's ("does as she pleases," i.e., "does her own thing"), the "Me" generation ("She is selfishly self-indulgent"), and, of course, most probably divorced three times "for the sake of the children" (a euphemism that I read, in part, as a rationalization to permit more sexual partners). Notice that (with the exception of the three divorces) Cassell appears to approve of these qualities, behaviors and attitudes that, in the l950's, were the behaviors and attitudes of hussies and whores, who were in turn the objects of community disdain and opprobrium. What was once an utterly negative role model - the "bad girl" - has become a positive role model for Cassells: "I'd rather be BAD!"

OK. Does the guy of the 1950's era values also get to switch roles in the 1990's so that the "bad boy" of the 1950's can be viewed as the "good boy" of the 1990's?

Not on a bet.

Poor guy, writes Cassells, "he still has to contend with the old code that says he's responsible for her for the rest of her life," and F.E.R. might add, if the poor guy thinks that the new way of the 1990's is to dump that code of the 1950's and become a 'BAD boy" ("self indulgent" "does as he pleases") he's going to be roundly disappointed to discover that nothing has changed for him at all.

Did I hear someone cry "foul!"? What is going on? Are there two sets of Post-Pill rules for men and women? Or more?

And we [women] still demand more [writes Cassells], admit it, we want an understanding, he-man. . . 'the sensitive brute.' We want a man who combines traditional masculinity with the ability to communicate and be intimate. We want a lover who's sexy and impulsive and at the same time caring and protective. We're demanding the old economic support - and the new - emotional support. Put this way, doesn't that seem like a lot of demanding for one poor human soul to live up to, male or female? Until we can take responsibility as well as give it away, this muddle will remain. (Emphasis added)

"Muddle: 1. a confused or disordered condition; mess, jumble, etc. 2. mental confusion" (Webster's New World Dictionary, 1980).

Does this definition of "muddle" not describe our corporate image?

I submit that the definition of "muddle" pretty much describes the utter disorder of not only F.E.R. but the men's movement in general since approximately l979. Men have been lost, confused, under incessant, relentless, and merciless attack from the feminist press and media, haven't seen any light at the end of the tunnel except that of another feminist freight train bearing down on them, demanding MORE!

But there may be light at the end of the sexist tunnel.

The way out of our corporate image muddle, I submit, is to make the center of our corporate image the concept of shared male/female rights AND responsibilities.

Responsibilities for what?

For everything.

Everything?

Everything. Everything from shared responsibilities for bad marriages, from shared responsibilities for unwanted pregnancies and the sometimes consequent abortions, to shared responsibilities for paying the bills and for defending the Constitution, if need be, in time of war.

Aren't we in this thing called "life" together?

No, not quite yet: "only when a woman shares male risks can she really begin to understand men," writes Warren Farrell (Why Men Are The Way They Are), only then can a woman understand that "sharing risks is part of becoming independent of men with men." Not "girls" - women. Adults who accept the responsibility for the choices they make. We must insist not only that men have "equal rights" with women, we must also insist that women have "equal responsibilities" with men, including giving their lives to defend our country and our children.

To ask otherwise of women is to betray a deep, misogynist contempt for them - an attitude befitting only a teenage Sir Lancelot of the l950's, an imitation man, not a grown man of the l990's in the world of Joint Custody and the wonderful Pill - a world of choice and responsibility.

We in F.E.R. must insist that a right without a responsibility attached is a license to commit outrage: our right to freedom of the press carries with it the responsibility not to libel; our right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" carries with it the responsibility not to infringe on another citizen's first amendment rights as well; and the right to freely choose with whom one goes to bed carries with it the responsibility of the parties to protect one another from unwanted pregnancies, from disease, from using that moment of intimacy, from whence families spring, as a deception to gain a financial advantage over one of the partners to an act of trust and love freely given. Any woman who uses sex to deceive a man, I suggest, is worthy of community disdain and opprobrium far in excess of anything dreamt of in the l950's. In an age of mass media, both radio and television, mass written communications, in an overpopulated world, such an act of adolescent deception is deserving only of our contempt.

We must insist on the equality and interdependence of male/female rights and responsibilities for our children, both before, during marriage and following divorce, and furthermore, those rights and responsibilities must, insofar as it is humanly possible, be equal (both sexes fight wars) or equitable (both sexes share in and contribute to childbirth and personally assume - not merely pay for - the responsibilities for childcare).

Finally, I submit that if we orchestrate this idea of coextensive rights and responsibilities as the corporate image of F.E.R. we will generate a "product" and a "product line" of services and actions to sell to a market of some 20 million men that no other men's organization in the world offers. We have the experience, the personnel, the know-how, to lift ourselves out of the muddle of the last eleven years and create a new, balanced, future for our children and all children of marriage or divorce; and furthermore, we have a responsibility to do so.

Do we not have that responsibility, gentlemen?