Feminism succeeded in part because of some of the idiosyncrasies of the culture it was resisting. For example, that awful, stultifying, boring middle class lifestyle of the late 20th century left a lot of time on women’s hands. A mere decade before the 1950s women would have been working too hard just getting by to make much noise politically. The affluence and surfeit of spare time spawned an activist class of women who flocked in large numbers to “progressive” institutions that lobbied for government intervention in their favor.
Unfortunately, men don’t have that luxury, and never really have. Additionally, the men who have the most to gain from activism are those who have the least time for it. Divorced and unmarried fathers of all sorts are amongst the most hard-pressed people of all in our society, in many cases living an existence barely above the poverty line and having to keep their noses to the grindstone to stay out of jail. In fact, it seems almost deliberate, but I suspect that the primary motivating factor in keeping them under this regime has more to do with the desire to milk them for all they are worth.
Because of this setup, most of the more successful men’s rights activists are not dealing directly with the most pressing of the issues themselves. Perhaps one could draw a parallel between them and abolitionists, who were ultimately far more important to the abolition of slavery than slaves themselves.
However, it is still important that men who are going through family law hell have some say, and be given some opportunities to act in tangible ways. Those for the whom the problem is still fresh may be too overwhelmed to do so, but some of the more compelling figures in the news have been fathers whose children have been abducted to foreign countries, men who were locked up for not paying for children who are not their own, and men who spent decades behind bars for being falsely accused and convicted.
Perhaps the most important role wronged fathers and husbands can take on is that of the icon of the oppressed. Their stories should become cultural touchstones that people will remember whenever they hear the term “men’s rights” or “fathers’ rights.”
So, in seeking more public support, we ought to look for and broadcast these painful narratives. There are plenty out there, including many in which children are involved, and we shouldn’t shy away from using them to gain sympathy and change the public perception surrounding the issue of custody and fatherly responsibility. If this effort is pursued with enough skill and dedication, eventually the image of the “deadbeat” may be replaced with the far more accurate image of the wronged father and child.
