Regardless of how it started, it’s seemed pretty clear to me that the alt-right has been a very deliberate vehicle for the radical right to recruit young people for quite some time now.
> I trained myself to freeze my facial expression into something neutral so that when I countered Sam’s remarks—“Feminists keep divorced dads from seeing their kids” was a favorite—it would seem as if I’d actually considered his perspective.
A big chunk of the alt-right is precisely divorced dads drawn in, or people drawn to their stories, and the insane racist, sexist, and other baggage comes along. Much of the far-left is precisely people drawn to horror stories from LGBTQ members or African Americans who join a community and bring along similarly insane baggage for the ride.
I'm pretty convinced that unless the left manages to find a way to dive into alt-right ideology, with an open mind, and bring in the very few sane pieces, and change their opinions about the places that their reasoning is wrong, the alt-right will be able to keep recruiting.
Except that feminism actively derides both the gender norms that say mothers are better caregivers and the US court system's bias against fathers in child custody rulings. There is literally decades of literature and other sources on these points.
A old, common talking point and accusation is that feminism is equivalent to female supremacy, and antifeminist groups recruit men who feel emasculated by women[1]:
> A second set of texts presents varieties of the contemporary masculinist response. Like its earlier incarnation, contemporary masculinist response is split between efforts to dislodge women's supremacy in the private sphere and support for men who are "wounded" in the struggle to exude an aura of masculinity in the public sphere.
> Men's challenges to women's perceived parental monopoly come from men's rights groups such as the Coalition for Free Men, Men's Rights International, and Men Achieving Liberation and Equality (MALE), as well as numerous fathers' support groups. These groups often deny that men have power in society, arguing that male supremacy is an illusion, along the lines of the illusion of the chauffeur: "he's dressed in the uniform and he looks like he's in the driver's seat," noted Warren Farrell, "but from his perspective someone else is giving the orders" (cited in Woldenberg 1986, p. 10). Masculinist texts claim that women and men are "equally oppressed" (Baumli 1986) and rail against perceived institutionalized female privileges, such as exemptions from the draft and advantages in alimony, child custody, and child support (Goldberg 1976; Haddad 1979). One critical review of these texts summarized their claims as follows:
> > Men, they say, are emotionally and sexually manipulated by women, forced into provider roles where they work themselves to death for their gold-digger wives, kept from equal participation and power in family life, and finally dumped by wives only to have courts and lawyers give all the property, money, and child custody to the women. (Messner 1986, p. 32)
Among people who call themselves feminists there are both people who strive for equality (and better relations) between the sexes and those who are striving for better conditions for women only.
Many self-proclaimed feminists probably wouldn't consider bias against fathers in child custody rulings a major issue. And those who don't concern themselves with men's rights are likely to alienate men in their quest for better treatment of women.
But a feminist was the originator of the idea that women should get primary custody of children[1], and the National Organization for Women opposes joint custody[2][3], and highly patriarchal societies such as Saudi Arabia generally give default custody to the father (Saudi Arabia just changed the law last year, and now mothers get primary custory[4])
I would say that the idea that "gender roles, not feminism, is responsible for default custody for mothers" is by far the most commonly debunked argument amongst the men's rights community.
[1] https://baysingerlaw.com/2018/02/tender-years-doctrine-origi...
[3] http://web.archive.org/web/20070708213232/http://michnow.org...
[4] https://www.khaleejtimes.com/region/saudi-arabia/saudi-arabi...
If you don't believe me when it comes to what modern feminism actually believes I'd be happy to walk through a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article to make the point. Most modern feminists do not support the tender years doctrine.
No need! Just point me to the testimony at any senate hearing where any major feminist group stood up for equality in family law or in domestic violence law. Or an endorsement of a reform law moving those towards equality.
And it's a mistake to characterize opposition as only being legal; if I said I was against murder, would you only believe me if I prosecuted a murderer, or campaigned for the death penalty?
What if feminists had other (bigger) issues to fight in the name of gender equality, which would be better for them to direct money? What if they don't believe that "standing up for equality" in the way you think makes much sense compared to writing and educating in society? We can already see this at work in other areas of feminism; a great number of feminists believe that pornography is harmful, but few seek legal means against it.
Joint custody is not the same as equal custody. Courts will almost always assign joint custody, but rarely equal custody and almost never primary custody to the dads, at least where I live. That's not tender years presumption; that's simple sexism. Typical arrangement is 3 nights dad, 4 nights mom.
That, in turn means a massive windfall for the mom.
In the cases I know which were settled out-of-court, the men were told, in essence, they had little chance at equal custody due to gender and sexism by the courts. In at least two cases I know, the dads were the primary caretaker before the divorce.
Virtually all the men's rights groups lobby for default equal custody. A majority of the opposition comes from feminist groups.
The majority of men in this situation voted for Trump over Clinton, and believe it or not, would still vote Trump over Warren, despite agreeing with Warren on quite literally everything else.
1) Many courts assign default custody to women, almost no matter how bad a mom she is.
2) In liberal, feminist blue states, assuming both parents have equal incomes, the Dad will often pay about a third of his income post-tax to the mom in child support. Assuming the dad was a good parent, the de facto default custody split is quite often 4 nights mom / 3 nights dad, so expenses are essentially equal. The Mom has twice as much money as the Dad
3) If the Mom remarries, her household income will than be several times higher than the Dad. Dad keeps paying the same child support; spouse's/household income doesn't factor. The Dad, at this stage, is unlikely to be able to successfully remarry, given new socioeconomic bracket, or even be all that good a caretaker.
4) The Mom, for the most part, has almost all the tools to continue a pattern of abuse after divorce as before.
Like it or not, these laws came to be from a very active divorce lawyer lobby parading feminist groups in front of legislatures. Nice, abstract texts don't do much against actively lobbying for the opposite.
That pattern continues across the board. It's not abstract. We have a Violence Against Women Act. When men call in for domestic violence, they typically get arrested for having been assaulted. We don't have a Domestic Violence Act. Schools are incredibly sexist to parents -- the mom is the default parent. That's all thanks to very active work by women's groups.
As you might guess, that leads to a small surge of alt-righters, and a bigger surge of Trump voters. Want to know why Trump won? I know a large number of registered Democrats, otherwise as far left as you might imagine, who held their noses to prevent electing someone whose campaign was quite literally handing out "woman cards."
The author's son is far from unique here.
Separate-but-equal had a similarly nice theoretical perspective of equality, and a similarly not-so-nice reality of one side being treated well, and a second side getting the shaft.
Until and unless feminism can start to act for equality (rather than write nicely cited academic texts), it's likely the alt-right will just continue to swell.
I've never seen a feminist testify for equitable family law reform.
Ever.