Equality is the real issue

(To have a look at the John Waters article, please click here

In the last issue, in the course of an article ostensibly about fatherhood, John Waters took the opportunity to launch a virulent attack against feminism in general, and against myself in particular. This is yet another personal assault in a tedious war that he has been waging for a long time on any woman who dares to argue for gender equality from a feminist perspective.

Waters, like a number of other like-minded contrarians, has moved across the political spectrum in his own lifetime – from a vaguely left wing outlook, to embracing a strange brand of extreme social conservatism. He now churns out opinion pieces for the Irish Times, and a constant refrain of his is the complaint that fathers rarely get awarded their ‘rights’– ie custody of their children upon parental breakup.
It is strange that this sort of rhetoric is always about ‘fathers’ rights’ – never fathers’ responsibilities, nor indeed children’s rights. As anyone who has ever bothered to read the relevant Irish law will know, a family court judge must base any decision about child custody upon the fundamental criterion of the child’s best interests. In so doing, judges have to examine the actual parenting roles assumed by both mother and father – and where young children are concerned, in general mothers remain the primary caregivers. Of course, in an ideal world, both parents would share parenting responsibilities equally – as feminists have always sought.
A key aim of the women’s movement is to create a more equal society, in which it would not be assumed that mothers would be the primary caregivers, nor fathers the primary breadwinners. In such a society, with parenting duties shared equally between men and women, custody would generally be equally shared between parents upon any breakup of their relationship.
Of course, in an ideal world, relationships would never break up at all. But in the real world, relationships break up, children get caught in the middle, mothers are more often the main carers, and in those hard cases where parents cannot agree on childcare arrangements, judges have the unenviable task of deciding on custody and access – and must make their decisions based on the state of affairs presented to them, in the best interests of the child. Surely the rights of both mother and father must always give way to this fundamental principle?
That is what I can never understand about the aggressive macho posturing of the angry fathers’ groups here and in Britain – how little they mention the rights of children. It often seems as if the main enemy for these angry fathers is not the family courts at all; but rather feminism. The issue of fathers’ rights represents for them simply another basis upon which to attack the women’s movement, usually with the tired old refrain that feminists are ‘man-hating feminazis’.
These men’s sense of self-righteousness is limitless, and they have a strong disposition for personal attacks on anyone who dares to disagree with them. They tend to be male, middle-aged, embittered, but utterly convinced of their own rightness. Their rantings against feminism fit well on the editorial pages of the Daily Mail, and may make for popular conversation around bourgeois dinner tables, but bear little relevance to the reality of most people’s lives.
Funnily enough, none of these feminist-bashers have ever demonstrated the courage of their convictions by running for election. In fact, they generally tend to remain behind closed doors, writing opinion pieces, without engaging in any sort of empirical work, real political campaigning or professional practice.
Contrast the stale rhetoric of feminist-bashing with the genuinely and passionately held views of those on the left, and of feminist political activists. We campaign for basic equality in the relationships between men and women, both in the workplace and the home; for an equal sharing of the parenting role; enhanced parental leave rights for both parents; and for a family law system that works in the best interests of the child.
This does not make us man-hating. On the contrary, in the pro-choice movement, the campaign for divorce, and campaigns around family planning, family law reform, and gay rights, to name but a few, women and men have long worked together in Ireland in the cause of gender equality. It is just a pity that some commentators are too embittered by their own vendettas to recognise this.