Two overview comments.
First point: the legal system. Few commenters here are noticing what Stephen Baskerville’s “Taken Into Custody” is about: about the incentivization of bad behavior toward fathers. People here are commenting about marriage, as if marriages break up just because men make bad choices in their wives. But the point is that the legal system has morphed 180 degrees over the last 30 years, and perverse incentives for divorce have multiplied to the point that the legal system now catalyzes, encourages, and amplifies family breakup and child misery.
It’s not just that “bad women” screw their husbands in divorce courts-that’s a given. It’s that the legal system now encourages and gives great rewards for such socially destructive behavior. Any women who is on the cusp between behaving well and behaving badly in court finds that the public system pushes her toward bad behavior.
Second point: the culture. Both the “at large culture” and the “courtroom culture” encourage women to be vengeful, destructive and focused on getting even. These two zones of culture-the macro and the micro-are connected. The man-hatred visible in the larger culture is enacted within the confines of courtrooms everywhere-and almost no one says the obvious thing, which is, “This is really wrong and destructive.”
It’s time that we started to say that, though. “This man hatred and father hatred is wrong and destructive, and we do not respect it.”
In “Politics and the English Language” George Orwell said that most people believe that their individual efforts can do nothing about the degrading of language-but he urged people to understand that their individual efforts do make a difference. Same here. Some parts of our culture are urging women to hate their husbands and hurt them. We ned to understand our individual efforts make some difference: we have the power to stand up against the misandrists and their allies in state legislatures and say, “For shame! Stop it!”
Mr. Baskerville’s book is first-rate muckraking and reportage about the cesspool that family law has become in the last 30 years. One action available to anyone is to buy a copy or ask your library to order one.
