So, I was putzing around on my web page tonight/this morning and I saw a new ad was posted using the service I subscribe to. The title of the ad was inocuous enough – Fathermag.com – so I clicked on it to see what it was all about.
I assumed that I was going to find helpful articles about being a father. You know, time management skills, disipline tactics, ways to manage work and parenthood, etc.. What I found, however, was a diatribe against feminism. Somehow, this “magazine” believes that the way to be a better father is to denigrate women and the feminist movement. At first, I read it with disbelief. “This has to be a joke,” I thought.
It’s not.
Here’s an excerpt:
I’ve already e-mailed my service to express my disgust and ask that it be removed from my page, if not the entire system. If you’re feeling particularly adventurous or need to vent some anger the web address of this site is http://www.fathermag.com/. If anyone knows anyone who might be interested in starting some kind of campaign, please feel free to forward this on. Their contact page is here: http://www.fathermag.com/contact.shtml
These “fathers” are in need of some enlightenment.
You can also express your displeasure to AdBrite for allowing this ad. Their contact form can be found here: http://www.adbrite.com/mb/commerce/contact_form.php
Whew! Had to vent that somewhere or I wasn’t going to be able to sleep tonight.
this movment is nothing new. its just becomming more common. thanks for the link though and the diary. i’ll be passing this along to others.
renee
More contact info…
Fathering Magazine
Fathering Enterprises, Inc.
PO Box 231891
Houston, TX 77223
Tel/Fax (603) 462-8965
Alexander Sheldon
sheldon@fathermag.com
There’s a bunch of people on the right that obviously believe — for no sensible reason — that good parenting is somehow connected to public policy. This utterly baffles me.
I’m a divorced father of a wonderful twelve-year-old girl, and there are lots of things I struggle with. Every other parent has the same laundry list, plus or minus a few items. Maybe it’s just me, but I generally don’t feel any impact from legislation or social activism on my relationship with my daughter. (It’s not that I’m not concerned about how social issues impact my daughter. My daughter is, after all, female, and the “family values” crowd is working very hard to make sure life is as hard as possible for her.) But when it comes to actual parenting and trying to be the best father I can, politics have next to nothing to do with it. It has more to do with time and effort and love and understanding. The activities of right-wing lobbyists have about as much impact on that as the activities of feminist activists have on right-wing parents, which is to say, next to no impact at all.
Of course, seriously, I really do understand the right wing position. Rightists don’t like parenting at all. They want the schools to do it for them. They want the media to do it for them. That’s why they get so upset when the schools aren’t churches and TV isn’t all milquetoast educational and inspirational programming. Rightists are such crappy parents that they’ll grab at any straw to cover their own incompetence.
This magazine sounds like more of that sort of thinking. Its message boils down to, “It’s not that you’re too busy, too lazy, too impatient, or just too flat-out incompetent to be a good dad, it’s that those evil feminists are pushing legislation somewhere.” Yeah, that’s it. It sure beats the hell out of the often uncomfortable self-examination that it takes to be good at parenting or much of anything else.
The ad has been removed from my site. Sadly, the magazine still exists in the universe.