Recent letters in the Press

We provide a selection of letters written to the press, some of which have been published.

11 December 1999 The Times - Weekend supplement

(In reply to the John Naish article of 4 December 1999)

As so often, the men's movement is misrepresented by people who want to paint it as some kind of Neanderthal fascist movement that wants women to be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.

This was the case in John Naish's article, "Villainous women are waging war on us" (Weekend, December 4). There were references to "wife in the kitchen", "dad as head of the family" and "men wanting their traditional roles", but no quotes from the men interviewed conveyed anything of the sort. They spoke of unfair treatment in the divorce courts and health, where millions are spent on breast cancer, almost nothing on prostate cancer. Instead, Susan Faludi was wheeled in to "understand this die-hard misogyny". For every man quoted, a woman was quoted. When did you last see that when Germaine Greer was interviewed? Or Faludi?

As long as there are articles like this, the men's movement will continue to grow. Hopefully there will come a day when equality is for both men and women, and not just for women.

Yours faithfully, RAYMOND CUTTILL

9 June 1998 Telegraph : Pension Splitting on divorce

Sir,

Harriet Harman's justification for pension splitting on divorce (report, June 9) contains the dismal array of false argument and selective evidence, which we have come to expect from the feminist establishment on this issue. A wife cannot be deemed to have contributed to a husband's pension by "bringing up the children and looking after the home". A pension is accrued by a worker through payments he has made during his working life, which he alone has earned. This would apply whether he was married or not. What a wife has contributed to is precisely as stated "bringing up the children and looking after the home". Since the wife normally gets the whole or major portion of both of these on divorce I should have thought that principles of fairness and equality would suggest an adjustment in favour of the husband rather than the wife.

Harriet Harman seems to have forgotten that the divorce scene has changed somewhat since the 1930s. We now have divorce on unilateral demand coupled with "needs" based rather than "conduct" based settlements, operating in a social climate in which men and women have equal access to education and career opportunities. She also seems to have forgotten that settlements take into account all assets possessed by the parties, whether owned before the marriage or not. A survey that I recently conducted on a sample of 350 divorced men showed that, on average, men brought five times as much capital into their marriages than women and left with five times less. Since the Government has made much of its intention to represent all the people, and support families, perhaps Harriet Harman could explain to my son, and other young men like him, the incentives introduced by her measures for him to work hard, get married and raise children ?

Yours faithfully

Dr John Campion

20 May 98 Telegraph : Church is wrong on remarriage

SIR - Marriage rates are at an all-time low and are still falling. This is only to be expected, as the adverse consequences of being divorced against one's will become increasingly visible to the wider community and relationships become increasingly strained and based on self-interest, protectionism and suspicion, rather than on mutual commitment, mutual benefit and trust.

The only logical way out of this quagmire is either to separate church affairs from secular ones entirely (so that a church marriage has no legal status), or (preferably) to recreate marriage through having the mutual commitments made in marriage to be reflected in law.

Just as you can't "buck" the market, you can't buck human nature and human needs.

Dr JOHN CAMPION