Chuck Grimes wrote:
>
> ``...every one of my married and divorced men friends are held hostage
> to the whim of their wives or ex-wives by the fucking family law
> system...''
>
> Could you elaborate? Joanna
>
> ---------
>
> I don't know if I really want to. It's one of those things you need to
> see close up to understand its dynamics. None of what follows is my
> direct experience. It mainly comes from two different friends. One in a
> nightmare custody battle and the other from a lawyer who started off
> in family law and quit law entirely. It's aided by years of working
> with disabled in their battles with similar institutional systems in
> health, education, and welfare.
I think this particular issue is _not_ illuminated by consideration of particular examples -- that is, it is not possible to generalize from particular cases.
But Chuck mentions working with the disabled -- and that cuts across gender lines (and I suspect more usually cuts against the woman in the case, though among instances in my direct experience, exhusband and child are the wronged party two to one). The one case (wife & children the victims) has important complications, but the core of it is he deliberately taught their two daughters to call their mother crazy and to mock her. He got custody, but she has daily visitations from them, but he continues to indoctrinate them in such a way that they will barely talk to her while at her house. Worse, her particular mix of the symptoms of depression include the one of not being able to stand injustice -- that is, to separate oneself from the instance sufficiently to oppose it 'intelligently' instead of passionately and futilely.
I'm not trying to generalize from this case -- I'm just warning against generalization from _any_ cases. I would suggest to _start_ with the most abstract level, and while qualifying that _never_ letting it disappear from view: the united states is a male-supremacist social order.
Carrol