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Full-Time Dads;
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Issue 24
It was Thursday, January 27, 1993, and the California Women's Law Center called a press conference in Pasadena, California, where the Super Bowl would be played three days later. There are literally hundreds of media events and promotions during Super Bowl Week, but this was one of the few that would have an impact long outlasting the game itself. The Law Center's Sheila Kuehl told reporters that, according to a study done by researchers at Old Dominion College in Virginia, Super Bowl Sunday was "the biggest day of the year for violence against women," a day when wife-battering increased by 40 per cent. The message to women across the country was clear: "Don't remain at home with him during the game."
Good Morning America reported the statements as fact, as did CBS and the Associated Press. A writer for the Oakland Tribune explained that watching the Super Bowl caused "boyfriends, husbands and fathers" to "explode like mad linemen, leaving girlfriends, wives, and children beaten." For good measure NBC, the network broadcasting the game, aired a public service announcement just before kickoff to help encourage men to control their violent urges. There was only one problem. Kuehl had lied. The researchers at Old Dominion had actually found that there was no such connection between football games and domestic violence. Responding to Kuehl's claims of a 40 percent increase, Janet Katz, one of the principle authors of the study, remarked, "That's not what we found at all." But by then the damage was done: Kuehl's fantasy had been set in the concrete of fact and she was soon recognized, in the words of the Los Angeles Times, as a "nationally known expert on domestic abuse." In 1994 she was elected to the California Assembly from Santa Monica. Fans of late '50s television remember Kuehl as Zelda Gilroy from The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Lesbians regard her as a homegrown version of Mother Courage for having dared step out of the closet to seek political office as one of them. But fathers' rights groups in California regard her in a more sinister light as one of the immovable roadblocks in the way, speaking out against reforms which would bring greater equity to family law and give more children the opportunity to have two parents in their lives. In fact, while she is little-known outside of California, Kuehl's confabulations about violence against women, uttered under the shield of her reputation as an "expert", have had a national impact. With the additional protection afforded by her sexual identity and her radical feminism, Kuehl has thus far managed to avoid owning up to her fabrications. Dobie Gillis himself couldn't have contrived a better fantasy life.
Just four months after the Super Bowl fiasco, Kuehl was at it again, this time on the CNN talk show Sonya Live, where she explained that male brutality toward women was such a deeply entrenched part of contemporary society that it was reflected in commonplace figures of speech like "rule of thumb." That particular phrase, she told the national audience, actually "was a law in England that said you could beat your wife with a stick as long as it was no thicker...than your thumb." This claim had no basis in truth, but as with the Super Bowl hoax, the fact that what Kuehl claimed "seemed" right gave her cover. In her defense, it should be noted that this idea had circulated for years in feminist literature, and routinely appeared in places like Time, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the Atlanta Constitution. But Kuehl was speaking as a Harvard-educated lawyer and as the director of an influential legal organization, and she should have known better(and probably did.
In fact, according to William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, the eighteenth-century text which codified British common law, spousal abuse was prohibited. Furthermore, as Canadian folklorist Philip Hiscock has noted, the phrase "rule of thumb" comes from wood workers who used their thumbs to measure things. The Oxford English Dictionary explains that the phrase has been used for centuries to denote any method of measurement based on experience instead of science. But what others might see as common sense, Sheila Kuehl apparently regards as patriarchy.
What then, is Kuehl trying to accomplish by spreading these untruths? Christina Hoff Sommers, professor of philosophy at Clark University and author of Who Stole Feminism?, offers an explanation. Kuehl "is really an extremist who hates men," says Sommers. "She's never seen a male-bashing rumor that she didn't like...Her agenda appears to be militant, radical, gender-war feminism, [and] she's eager to get her hands on the 'smoking gun' that proves we live in a violent patriarchal society." The fact that these smoking guns are filled with nothing but blanks makes no difference to people like Kuehl, explains Sommers, whose book documents some of Kuehl's storytelling. "She's a collector of these myths and she promotes them for her own passionate agenda."
And she has done so without any apparent damage to her reputation. As the examples of Kuehl's misandry and inobjectivity have piled up so have the honors bestowed upon her. Some observers felt that her headline-hunting was an attempt to get the name recognition that would allow her to run for public office. But her crusade has not slowed down since taking office. For example, in a recent form letter sent to her constituents Kuehl claims that "about 6,000 women die each year as a result of domestic violence." In fact, research done by Centers for Disease Control epidemiologists James A. Mercy and Linda E. Saltzman suggests that just isn't so. They reported that between 1976 and 1985 there were a total of 9,480 women killed by their husbands (and 7,115 husbands killed by their wives), for an average of under 1,000 per year. (Mercy and Saltzman also report that rather than rising, such murders decreased nearly 32% during this time). Furthermore, The U.S. Department of Justice reports that in 1993 out of 23,271 total homicides, only 5,352 of the victims were women, meaning that even if Mercy and Saltzman were completely in error, even if every female murder victim died at the hands of her husband or boyfriend, Kuehl's figure would still be incorrect.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Kuehl's misandry extends to family law as well, and she is an automatic "no" vote whenever fathers' rights bills come up. Most recently she spoke against a bill which would have simply made joint custody the starting point in divorce negotiations involving children. The mild bill would not have established a legal presumption for joint custody, but simply would have affirmed the fact that children are in most cases better off with two parents in their life.
Still, Kuehl's opposition came as no surprise, as she has long resisted any alteration of the current sole custody system, which both benefits and victimizes women. While still at the Southern California Women's Law Center, she wrote in a law review article that the idea that joint custody was good for children was a "discredited myth," and that there was no meaningful connection between joint custody and increased payment of child support. This despite evidence from the US Census Bureau and other sources showing that in joint custody situations child support is paid on time and in full between 90 and 95 percent of the time. William Bender, a professor of special education at the University of Georgia, explains that "if you encourage access and empower parents through joint custody, child support is paid." Furthermore, says Bender, the evidence suggests that children in joint custody arrangements have higher self-esteem, and smoother post-divorce adjustments than their counterparts in sole custody. For some, Kuehl's fierce extremism on family law issues raises serious questions about her suitability for office and her basic character. "She's representing both women and men in her district," reminds Christina Hoff Sommers, "and I'm not sure she's capable of representing men's or boys' best interests, she's so carried away with her own strange agenda."
Fred Hayward, executive director of the Sacramento-based Men's Rights, Incorporated, believes that Kuehl's ethical sloppiness may not be accidental. "Originally I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt that she was simply misstating or misunderstanding facts," he says, "but at this point it is hard to believe that she is not simply lying. It took years before members of Congress braved their fear of being branded Communist sympathizers and stood up to Joe McCarthy. Now our own legislators must overcome their fear. They will have to stand up to people like Sheila Kuehl, and for our children's sake I hope it's soon."
This article originally appeared in the Sept./Oct. 1996 issue of Fathers & Families magazine. For a free copy call 1-800-752-6562, or e-mail 73674.1710@compuserve.com
Copyright 1996 Author
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