Ken Cuccinelli’s Involvement With Hardline "Fathers' Rights" Misogynists

[phantom power]

The Washington Post has a story up about the gross depths of Ken Cuccinelli’s fucked up, misogynist worldview. It’s not just his dogged attempts to shut down legal abortion single-handedly in the state, but now it’s been revealed that he has ties to the “fathers’ rights” movement, a group of men whose political goals all point back to the single purpose of making it harder for women to rid themselves of controlling and often abusive men. They fight protections for victims of domestic violence, educate each other on novel ways to sue your ex-wife so that you can stay in her life and make it miserable, demand stricter divorce laws so a woman can’t leave you just because she wants to, and push to reform child support laws so that it becomes more expensive and therefore more difficult for women to leave bad marriages. How well they conceal what they’re up to varies a lot—some of them are remarkably good at portraying themselves as humble fathers who simply want to be a part of their children’s lives, and whose ability to use said children to control and punish their ex-wives is simply a coincidence—but what’s interesting is that Ken Cuccinelli’s buddy, Ron Grignol, doesn’t do a very good job at hiding his stripes at all.

...

...Or what if a woman, who is being beat by her husband, wants to leave but knows that in her state, she can only do so by giving custody over to her abusive husband? “Fathers’ rights” assholes are good at concocting hypotheticals that redirect your attention away from the issues that most concern them, but make no mistake, this kind of law would largely function as a tool for abusive men to intimidate their wives into staying. They may talk a big game about hypothetical philandering husbands, but at the end of the day, the most significant result of a law like this would be that abused women would be forced to stay out of a dual fear of losing custody and a state law that forcibly impoverishes someone if she files for divorce. Look at that proposal again and think about it: Even if a woman works and pays half or more of the mortgage, if her husband is beating her, the price to leave the marriage is to relinquish all her earnings and custody of her children. You can even attach a bunch of meaningless caveats to it, such as making exceptions if he’s been convicted of domestic violence, and that would still be the end result. Right now, judges in divorce cases can look over evidence that there’s been abuse, even without criminal charges, and determine custody based on that. This sort of law would be there to keep them from doing that most of the time.

These are the kind of men that Ken Cuccinelli is in bed with. Grignol, according to the Post, is just part of a large network of “fathers rights” activists that have the ear of the obsessive anti-choice misogynist that wants to be Virginia governor. While it’s no surprise to myself or regular readers of this blog that such an avid anti-choicer would also be friendly with forces that want to rewrite family law so that leaving abusive husbands is harder to do, I hope that this knowledge helps the larger public see what’s going on with men like Ken Cuccinelli.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/30/ken-cuccinellis-involvement-with-hardline-misogynists/

[Gothmog]

1. The fathers rights movement people can be extreme

I have seen the work of some of these groups in Texas and their basic position is that they want to tilt the system in their favor instead of relying on a balanced system. The Cuch's support of these groups is not surprising