Trish Wilson, I'm your greatest fan!

Trish Wilson (aka "The Countess") is an annoying pain in the ass, but she may be one of fathers' rights best unintended allies. She's a very vocal blogger on the opposite side and has tons of fun slamming fathers rights whenever she can. In fact, she blogs so much that one might wonder that she doesn't actually have to do some real work once in a while. On the other hand, she just got married, so perhaps she gets to take advantage of those aspects of the hated "patriarchy" to which her ilk conveniently turn a blind eye because they work in their favor. (I don't really know, and I don't much care to find out, but the inuendo of suggesting it amuses me.)

She is particularly outspoken against joint child custody after divorce and the idea that a mother might attempt to alienate her children from their father in the course of a custody battle. She and her cronies appear to lack the cognitive abilities required to recognize that some mothers might act in a manner not entirely to their children's best interest and that fathers might have some legitimate concerns and face real obstacles in pursuing them. As a result, she often supplies marvellous opportunities for counter-argument and publicity for more reasonable points of view via the comments sections of her posts. It is common that she and her cronies ignore the very real and cogent points brought up in response to their views and quickly degenerate into incoherent rants about their own ex's and undefendable and insulting ideas about the uselessness of men in general. These can get quite entertaining, if you can avoid letting them get your blood pressure up.

Here's a good example:

She writes a review on blogcritics of one of those ten-a-penny books on how aweful men are and ties this to her recent defence of the undefendable PBS documentary "Breaking the Silence". I wouldn't bother with the actual review, just skip to the comments. The first, from Teri of Feminist4Fathers, says: "You are not describing the fathers and family rights movement accurately. You are pointing out instances where fathers in pain with no recourse have lashed out. I can go to several places online and find mothers saying things even worse than that. What's the point?". And the very next starts with "I'm goddamned tired of whinny privaleged men bitching about them being denied their rights. Holly crap, which right do they want, the one to beat the shit out of their wife whenever they want, the right to rape their daughters and sons if they feel the need?"

"whinny"? "privaleged"? "Holly crap" (very festive)? We obviously have a master of debate joining in here.

A selection from further comments:

"I saw a father hang himself from his neck because he gave up his fight for custody."

"The mother/female needs to learn to take the same amount of responsibility in this ongoing blame game." (from a woman, mother, abuse victim, with initimate knowledge of real PAS)

"from my own experience, and this is just a sample, I have seen that:
1) women can be just as aggressive as men,
2) in order to avoid unnecessary disagreement, it is important that both parties to the discussion are using the same definition,
3) although the written DV laws don’t support sexism, in practice it is not at all uncommon, and
4) it would be naive or insincere to suggest that a double-standard for men and women does not exist."

"my two daughters and my twin sons are all the victims of parental alienation syndrome"

And, from a, er, Trish supporter: "You stupid bitch its people like you that are putting children in harms way when you tell everyone that all mothers are reporting false abuse to keep kids from their dads! Stupid bitch! What if it was your kids how would you feel bitch? GOD! I HATE ignorant people!"

Don't we all. It would appear to be reason versus unreason. I wonder which will win?

Anyway, thank you, Trish, for providing a forum for so many to share their stories and experiences, I'm not in the least sorry that they're so contrary to your ideas. It is interesting to note that, back on her own blog, she writes "I'm going to try to write several articles a week for Blogcritics. I think it's important to get a progressive and feminist voice out there, especially since Blogcritics posts link at Yahoo News and Google News." Again, where on earth does she get the time, but hey, at least she's going to be giving us a lot more publicity opportunities.

Here's another one where she posts a copy of a pro-PBS article, but again, ignore the article, check out the comments - coherent presentation and defence of fathers' difficulties and incoherent rubbish about those nasty men that are all over the place which actually degenerates into purile gossip about who gave whom VD! They're a three-ring circus this lot!

On the other hand, I am tempted to copy here the comment from "Trina" dated Oct 26th in its entirety as an excellent example of direct experience of multiple incidences of fathers destroyed by a process that Trish claims doesn't exist, but instead I suggest you go and read it.


Simulposted at: Hate Male Post