Most readers have probably heard the popular example of a loaded question, which goes like this:

“Do you still beat your wife?”

Whether you answer yes or no, you admit to being a wife-beater. Yesterday, one of the people whose names I put up as open oppressors of men, a feminist lawyer, left what could be called a loaded comment on The Spearhead. Because new comments have to be approved, I considered trashing it, but then I thought I’d use it as an example of how these people operate.

The comment, posted by Kris Miccio (I can’t absolutely verify the identity of the sender, but I’m going to assume that’s who it is), reads as follows:

2010/08/21 at 11:10

I’d lke to thank you for including me on your list here. I was unaware of this blog. Perhaps there will come a time when invective is put aside and accountability replaces it–and those who batter their wives, their girlfriends come to terms with the violence of their actions; not just for those they physically harm but for the people who love them.

The suggestion is that those of us writing for The Spearhead are batterers who physically harm people and need to be held accountable. It is written in such a way as to insinuate rather than outright accuse, so one could call it a form of legal slander. It’s a common courtroom trick that less talented attorneys use in an attempt to portray people in a negative light.

It might seem kind of ridiculous, and not worth taking seriously, but it shows quite clearly that these people simply don’t believe in the concept of “innocent until proven guilty.” And, unfortunately, they are quite often entirely in charge of “batterers’ programs,” DV diversion, etc.

There is probably no system in the United States that is a better example of how totalitarian governments operate than family law. The people behind the system – mainly ardent feminists – have an ideological agenda, and they need not only victims, but scapegoats as well. It’s actually quite similar to the Maoist program of class struggle, except the classes in this case are replaced by gender. In their frame, all men are guilty, because they have been socialized by a patriarchal culture, so men are either batterers or potential batterers, and nothing else.

Conceptually, this is far, far away from our traditional practice of law, in which the burden of proof falls on the accuser. In the case of domestic violence and family law, it is the opposite; a man is essentially considered guilty before he’s even been accused, and must go through a process of self-criticism to purge himself of his guilt, which is added on top of any criminal penalties (if he was convicted of anything — a conviction is not necessary to trigger coercion into DV programs). It’s a strange recapitulation of the idea of original sin.

For any man who lives with a woman, or would like to at some point, this is serious business. Relationships don’t always last, and when they fall apart women can do some pretty vicious things to gain an advantage — ask any divorce lawyer if you have any doubts about how common this is.

In the meanwhile, we have to keep an eye on the people who are behind this system so that we can both personally avoid them and politically oppose them. The easier it is to look people like Kris Miccio up on Google and find their feminist credentials, the more effective we will be in both endeavors.