NOMAS, the National Organization for Men Against Sexism, is an activist organization dedicated to “changing men.” You see, there’s something wrong with us men, and the good folks at NOMAS have just the program to fix us.

According to NOMAS, our biggest problems revolve around sexuality and violence. We’re scared of homos, and we run around beating up women, raping people, sexually harassing folks, etc. You may not see it when you look out the window, at the restaurant, on the bus or at work, but rest assured that just around the corner, or maybe behind some curtains, there are hordes of men out there who need “changing.”

NOMAS comes right out in the beginning to let us know how nasty we men are. Their tenets page begins with this passage:

Pro-feminist

Whatever psychological burden men have to overcome, women are still the most universal and direct victims of our patriarchy. Our organization must take a highly visible and energetic position in support of women’s struggle for equality. Our movement was born directly out of and continually nourished by feminism. Our support for women’s rights and specific women’s issues must be vigorous and unmistakable.

I’d like to dismiss these people as your typical university radicals, but they are plugged into family law policy in some important and disturbing ways.

Although NOMAS claims to want men to emotionally bond with their children, their policy on child custody could have come straight out of a feminist family law seminar:

The National Organization for Men Against Sexism is committed to make substantive this nation’s ideals of equality and justice. In choosing loyalties in disputes over child custody, any society that cares for its future must make its primary concern that which is truly in the best interests of children. In a society such as ours in which men daily subject women to violence, oppression, and discrimination, men who would not add to this violence must not blindly side with other men in custody disputes. Indeed, men must relinquish the privilege of sitting idle while the lives and freedoms of women and children are impoverished by vindictive men who lobby, in our name, for laws that benefit men. An examination of custody laws in the various states reveals widespread injustice toward women and children. There is a disturbing national trend toward laws mandating joint custody despite a lack of psychological and social research showing this to be in the interests of the child. In fact it is clear that court mandated joint custody is not in the best interests of the child.

You guys want some men to fight? NOMAS is starting to look like a good place to find them.

NOMAS supports the right of women to restrict fathers’ access to children:

“Friendly parent” provisions are particularly disastrous because a woman who does not assure “frequent and continuing contact” may be seen as “uncooperative,” resulting in the child being placed in the care of an abusive parent.

NOMAS insinuates the typical lie that women do not cooperate with their husbands only because they were abusive.

Although the support for the status quo of female advantage in family law is disturbing, what is even worse is NOMAS’ position on domestic violence:

According to NOMAS and the articles it posts on its “Ending Men’s Violence” page, domestic violence is an entirely one-sided affair in which men beat women to maintain the patriarchy. One writer, who works for the New York Batterer Program, suggest that only a “minuscule portion” of men who assault their wives are ever arrested, so presumably most men are doing so. Another suggestion is that most “abuse” is legal. This suggests that the organization uses a very loose interpretation of abuse, which probably means that abuse is anything a woman wants it to be, such as, say, refusing to buy her a piece of jewelry or getting upset about her amorous liaisons with the next door neighbor.

And speaking of the NY Model for Batterer Programs, NOMAS finds that “This model was determined to be most in keeping with NOMAS principles and beliefs about sexism, domestic violence and batterer programs.”

The NYMBP is focused on “How Courts and Programs Can Bring Real Meaning to Offender Accountability.” This means that it is in full support of the kinds of programs that force men to confess, very much like the Maoist “self-criticism sessions” that were a major component of the abuses committed during China’s Cultural Revolution.

Here’s a summary of why NOMAS likes the NYMBP:

The focus of batterer programs under the NY Model is quite different: to provide the courts with a mechanism for offender accountability and judicial monitoring. Expectations thus shift from individual rehabilitation to a range of attainable, measurable individual and systemic outcomes. These include uniform court enforcement of orders to batterer programs, batterer program implementation of reasonable and verifiable policies, and meticulous feedback to the court regarding compliance.

For men who have been falsely accused – and they are legion – this is a nightmare. Lots of men have no choice but to attend court programs to see their children, whether they have been convicted or not. The NYMBP is actually quite explicit in its advocacy for a “civil” means to force men into their program — there is a financial incentive, after all. The more men ordered into their program, the more funds they will get. Therefore, there is both an ideological and financial incentive to punish men, many of whom certainly committed no crimes. Of course, as Phyllis Frank, Director of VCS Domestic Violence Program for Men, admits, “Batterer program sessions should acknowledge that most intimate partner violence committed by men against women (as defined by the domestic violence movement) is not illegal.”

I’d like to delve into the NYMBP a bit more, but that will have to wait for another post. For now, it should be taken as an indication of NOMAS’ real program for men, which is vindictive, cruel, punitive and quite clearly oppressive. Underneath the treacle on their site there’s a black hatred of ordinary men that can’t be hidden by a cloak of empathy.

NOMAS is a dangerous organization, and well worth fighting.

As for who is responsible for NOMAS, the organization has helpfully provided a list that I’ll publish in a separate post today.