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Topics - Somebody else
1
Just when I think the rights of men might be getting some attention, I see things like this. So now kids don't need a real Dad. We can just get a cardboard cut-out. Is that how little value men have?
Yeah, I know, they used the term "Flat Mommy" twice in the article just to give the appearance of some sense of equality. What's the real ratio?
How long before this is used to replace drummed out, divorced Dads? 'Now we don't have to honor the visitation schedule, you can look at this cardboard cut-out when you feel you need Dad.'
Guard families cope in two dimensions
`Flat Daddy' cutouts ease longing
By Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff | August 30, 2006
Maine National Guard members in Iraq and Afghanistan are never far from the thoughts of their loved ones.
But now, thanks to a popular family-support program, they're even closer.
Welcome to the ``Flat Daddy" and ``Flat Mommy" phenomenon, in which life-size cutouts of deployed service members are given by the Maine National Guard to spouses, children, and relatives back home.
The Flat Daddies ride in cars, sit at the dinner table, visit the dentist, and even are brought to confession, according to their significant others on the home front.
``I prop him up in a chair, or sometimes put him on the couch and cover him up with a blanket," said Kay Judkins of Caribou, whose husband, Jim, is a minesweeper mechanic in Afghanistan. ``The cat will curl up on the blanket, and it looks kind of weird. I've tricked several people by that. They think he's home again."
At the request of relatives, about 200 Flat Daddy and Flat Mommy photos have been enlarged and printed at the state National Guard headquarters in Augusta. The families cut out the photos, which show the Guard members from the waist up, and glue them to a $2 piece of foam board.
Sergeant First Class Barbara Claudel, the state family-support director who began the program, said the response from Guard families has been giddily enthusiastic.
``If there's something we can do to make it a little easier on the families, then that's our job and our responsibility. It brings them a little bit closer and might help them somewhere down the line," Claudel said yesterday.
``You know, this is my motto: `Deployment isn't a big thing, it's a million little things.' These families go through a lot."
While most families stay in touch with their guardsmen by e-mail, snapshots, and videophone, the cutouts are unusual.
``It's a novel approach," said John Goheen, spokesman for the National Guard Association of the United States, a Washington-based lobbying group. ``It's to remind the kids that this guy and this woman is still part of your life, that this is what they look like, and this is how big they are."
Claudel said she heard about the Flat Daddy idea while attending a national conference for the Guard. In Maine, the initiative began about eight months ago when Flat Daddies were offered as part of the deployment of B Company, Third Battalion, 172d Mountain Infantry, which is based in Brewer.
Now, when units are mobilized, the Guard organizes Flat Daddy parties, in which families can meet one another while receiving instructions on assembling the photos.
Judkins said the cutout has been a comfort since her husband was deployed in January.
``He goes everywhere with me. Every day he comes to work with me," said Judkins, who works in a dentist's office. ``I just bought a new table from the Amish community, and he sits at the head of the table. Yes, he does."
In the car, her husband's image sits behind the driver's seat so Judkins can keep an eye on him. A third-grade class writes to him as their ``adopted" guardsman. And Judkins even brought her husband's cutout -- which she calls Slim Jim, because he's not -- to confession at the local church.
When asked what her husband had to confess, Judkins laughed. ``That's private," she said.
Jim Judkins had at least one precarious moment as a cutout. When cousins tried to stuff him into a suitcase to take on a cruise, they broke his neck. But instead of expensive surgery, all the cutout needed was a little duct tape, Judkins said.
Cindy Branscom of Hallowell, whose husband, Colonel John Branscom, is in Afghanistan, said spouses of service members in the 240th Engineer Group often bring their Flat Daddies to monthly support meetings and group barbecues. She said one spouse, Mary Holbrook of Hermon, has been seen in the company of her cutout husband, Lieutenant Colonel Randall Holbrook.
``Mary has taken Randy to different events," Branscom said.
But then again, that's almost expected.
``I think it's wonderful," Branscom said. ``My Flat Daddy sits in my dining room all the time. He even went to Easter dinner with us at my family's house."
2
Rambling and obvious, but...
How many men do you know that are married and everything they do, they have to ask their wife's permission? How many say things that gives you the impression that they are afraid of their wives? Or their wives control the purse strings? And everything else. Or they have to cow-tow to their wives in order to make the marriage work? How many do you know that have had to give up the hobbies and sports they enjoy because their wife won't "let" them do those things any more, even though the wife, in the girlfriend stage, seemed to like those activities? And how many married men in today's society act like this is perfectly normal. This is a pervasive attitude in our society. (Yes, I know exceptions exist.) How can this attitude be changed?
Every friend I have that is married acts this way. They talk about the "Honey-do" list. I ask them if they ever make a "Honey-do" list for their wife. They look at me like I just asked them to commit suicide. They can't do anything without asking her permission. I tell them, 'Why don't you just TELL her that's what you're going to do? Isn't it your life, too?" They tell me they just want to "get along" with her. Or they joke that they don't want to sleep on the couch. They look at me like I'm crazy. Maybe I am. They tell me I must not want a "happy" marriage with that kind of attitude. Or they say that's just what you have to do when you get married. I tell them, if that's what it takes to have a happy marriage, to cave in and give it all over to the wife, then no I'm not interested in a "happy" marriage. I'll keep my balls and backbone, thank you very much, and my wife and I will have some difficult times until she realizes that it's not ALL about her. But will she? I believe in fairness and equality. TRUE equality, not the, 'I get my way all the time, because men have opressed women for X-thousands of years and only when women have done the same for X-thousands of years will it be equal' kind of equality.
If this is what it takes to be married to women today, then, for a man, being married is akin to being a slave and giving up his life to be the servant of a woman. If he stands up and tells his wife it's his life too and refuses to play it that way, then what? She can accept that or accuse him of being insensitive to her "needs" or even being "abusive" and shame him back into submission or divorce him and take everything she can get to punish him for daring to treat her that way. Then what is the point of marriage for men?
The one thing that concerns me out of this is the feminists goal of eliminating marriage all together. Then you've got the fact that more and more men are refusing to enter into it because of the one-sided nature of it and the risks involved. Men are seen to be taking a stand against this unfair institution, but it plays right into the hands of the feminists' goal of destroying marriage altogether. The feminists win. What's the alternative?
3
Rambling and obvious, but...
How many men do you know that are married and everything they do, they have to ask their wife's permission? How many say things that gives you the impression that they are afraid of their wives? Or their wives control the purse strings? And everything else. Or they have to cow-tow to their wives in order to make the marriage work? How many do you know that have had to give up the hobbies and sports they enjoy because their wife won't "let" them do those things any more, even though the wife, in the girlfriend stage, seemed to like those activities? And how many married men in today's society act like this is perfectly normal. This is a pervasive attitude in our society. (Yes, I know exceptions exist.) How can this attitude be changed?
Every friend I have that is married acts this way. They talk about the "Honey-do" list. I ask them if they ever make a "Honey-do" list for their wife. They look at me like I just asked them to commit suicide. They can't do anything without asking her permission. I tell them, 'Why don't you just TELL her that's what you're going to do? Isn't it your life, too?" They tell me they just want to "get along" with her. Or they joke that they don't want to sleep on the couch. They look at me like I'm crazy. Maybe I am. They tell me I must not want a "happy" marriage with that kind of attitude. Or they say that's just what you have to do when you get married. I tell them, if that's what it takes to have a happy marriage, to cave in and give it all over to the wife, then no I'm not interested in a "happy" marriage. I'll keep my balls and backbone, thank you very much, and my wife and I will have some difficult times until she realizes that it's not ALL about her. But will she? I believe in fairness and equality. TRUE equality, not the, 'I get my way all the time, because men have opressed women for X-thousands of years and only when women have done the same for X-thousands of years will it be equal' kind of equality.
If this is what it takes to be married to women today, then, for a man, being married is akin to being a slave and giving up his life to be the servant of a woman. If he stands up and tells his wife it's his life too and refuses to play it that way, then what? She can accept that or accuse him of being insensitive to her "needs" or even being "abusive" and shame him back into submission or divorce him and take everything she can get to punish him for daring to treat her that way. Then what is the point of marriage for men?
The one thing that concerns me out of this is the feminists goal of eliminating marriage all together. Then you've got the fact that more and more men are refusing to enter into it because of the one-sided nature of it and the risks involved. Men are seen to be taking a stand against this unfair institution, but it plays right into the hands of the feminists' goal of destroying marriage altogether. The feminists win. What's the alternative?
4
Just saw an ad on the television -
"1 out of 4 girls will be sexually assaulted by the time they turn 18"
Unfortunately I didn't stay focused on it long enough to catch who sponsored it.
Anyone else see this ad?
If I see it again I'll fill in the details.
5
Some on this forum have extolled the benefits of living in a country that is not so feminist controlled. Some are actually there. I just got to wondering...
What are the best of these countries? Least touched by feminism? Greater sense of equality without the push for sameness? Low crime rates? Friendly to white males? Greater personal freedom? Lower cost of living?
I'll assume one of them isn't Sweden, or Great Britain, or the U.S.
6
Hi All,
I've been reading this board for a few months - ever since I started looking for info on divorce statistics and the feminist propaganda I've been hearing, i.e. wage-gap, domestic violence stats, all men are rapists, patriarchy-oppression crap.
Actually I just got tired of getting beaten down, hearing all the male-bashing in the media and my wife constantly accusing me of abuse (after she went to a divorce lawyer and asked how she could get the kids and cut me out of their lives permanently and being told for that there would have to be a pattern of abuse) - if I disagree with her, I'm abusive, if I don't give her all the money she asks for, I'm abusive, if I try to insist on a bedtime for our kids, I'm abusive.
Then she did a report on domestic violence for a class she was taking (a business admin class-don't know how those two relate), brought home books by Dworkin, Lundy Bancroft and similar writers, read them and began to beat me up (figuratively) some more with this fresh info. Likes to tell all her friends and anyone else that I'm abusive (to try to make a case, I think). Things get better, then worse, ups and downs. Better at the moment anyway. Not abusive, by the way-I don't believe in violence, but then I don't believe disagreeing with someone is abuse either.
Would like to get a divorce, but don't want to lose contact with my kids (boys 5 and 2. Best thing that's ever happened in my life), think it's important for kids to have both parents growing up (stats seem to confirm this). So trying to make the best of it.
I'm 46, my wife is 39. She's Ukrainian (anyone want opinions about foreign wives, just ask, although I will admit I'm a bit jaded at this point).
Other interests: Sailing, BBQing, woodworking and making things.
Found the Angryharry website, from that one this one.
Sorry for the long rant, just wanted to give some background.
