My thanks to Julian for alerting me to the activities on this site.
The Centre for Social Injustice promotes anti-father propaganda and unhinged conspiracy theories about the power of “the Christian Right” in modern secular Britain. From the ‘About’ page:
This website shows how everything about the child maintenance reforms, right from the Green Paper itself, was based on lies. It is mainly about child support, but veers off into related territory. I have uncovered some previously unreported information about key individuals in the British Religious Right, which will be of interest to people who are interested in separation of state and religion, the rise of the Religious Right in eastern Europe, Russia and the United States. I’ve also discovered how closely the interests of single mothers and our children are entwined with LGBT rights – both are under attack by the Religious Right, but to different proportions in different places. In the UK it seems that David Cameron willingly sold single mothers down the river to placate the Religious Right, who opposed his legalisation of gay marriage.
A caveat: I hope my theme of Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale doesn’t confuse, distract or put off. Hardly anyone I know watched it, but I was horribly gripped. I watched the two series while conducting this investigation into child maintenance, and was intrigued by the misogyny of the commanders’ wives and the Aunts.
Obviously, the sabotage of the child maintenance system and the deliberate impoverishment of single mothers and our children is nowhere near on a par with what happens in The Handmaid’s Tale. But the psychology and ideology beneath it comes from exactly the same place, and I have no doubt that some of the Religious Right would like to take us back to the days of the workhouse and the Poor Law, the Magdalene laundries, and the deportation of our children for hard labour.
The men in this real-life tale of misogyny – Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Loughton, Steve Webb, Nick Woodall, while repellent, are irredeemably boring. But, just as the most villainous and most compelling characters in Margaret Atwoods’ “Handmaid’s Tale” are women, the key figures driving the child maintenance reforms were anti-feminist women, who I find weirdly and horrifyingly fascinating.”
The Centre for Social Injustice makes the claim that withholding child maintenance payments is domestic abuse and that Conservative governments have been complicit in enabling men to abuse women with whom they have children via such methods whilst referring to “bogus parental alienation ideology” on Twitter. Statistically poor outcomes for fatherless children are dismissed on the site with cherry picked examples of people from intact families who’ve committed crimes. It’s clear that in the complex and nuanced situations that arise after family breakdowns, The Centre for Social Injustice is convinced that mothers are significantly disadvantaged as compared to fathers and is committed to perpetuating narratives that emphasise women’s victimhood and subsequent entitlement to special protection and to denying truths that promote the importance of father involvement in their children’s lives.
To recap:
- Single parent families are nearly twice as likely to be in poverty as those in couple parented families.
- Father’s involvement with children is linked to higher educational achievement and occupational mobility, and increases a boy’s chances of escaping poverty in particular*
- Father’s involvement is associated with fewer child behavioural problems*.
- Father’s involvement is associated with lower criminality, 76% of children and young people in custody had an absent father* as compared to the <25% national average.
- Father’s involvement is associated with less substance misuse and addiction*.
- Greater father involvement is associated with higher levels of self-respect and self-regulation*.
- Father absence is associated with earlier sexual activity and teen pregnancy*.
- Children with single parents show increased risks of psychiatric disease, suicide, and attempted suicide*.
* See: The Empathy Gap, William Collins, 2019.
The Centre for Social Injustice writes extensively about Karen Woodall and one of the most notable posts links the work of the “therapist, writer, commentator on family separation politics, gender specialist, helper and observer of all things to do with family relationships” to Men’s Rights Activists including: A Voice for Men’s Paul Elam, Families Need Father’s Vincent McGovern and J4MB’s founder, Mike Buchanan. In this post it is claimed that “The Christian Right and the men’s rights movement have found common cause in battling feminism and women’s rights for nearly half a century.” and it is true that those of us who may well be more atheistic and libertarian within the Men’s Human Rights Movement do find ourselves with points of agreement with those on the Christian Right regarding battling against the hate-filled supremacy movement that is feminism and women’s privileges more generally, and it’s a point of pride that we can bridge our moral and philosophical gaps in order to pursue sex equality in our societies. The Christian Right are far more tolerant and compassionate bedfellows than the Ideological Left, that’s for sure!
Our last general election manifesto is here.
Our YouTube channel is here, our Facebook channel here, our Twitter channel here.
If everyone who read this gave us £5.00 – or even better, £5.00 or more, monthly – we could change the world. £5.00 monthly would entitle you to Bronze party membership, details here. Benefits include a dedicated and signed book by Mike Buchanan. Click below to make a difference. Thanks.
