Of course we women don't want a male pill - it would end those happy little 'accidents'

Feb 18, 2010

Right now, 60 men in Manchester and 20 in Edinburgh are temporarily sterile.
They have all agreed to be part of a trial for a ‘promising’ new male contraceptive jab.
Each man has had two hormone injections which will prevent him making sperm for about two months.
We haven’t heard from the chaps involved, but the scientists are certainly jolly excited about it all.
And even though the jab is nominally aimed at men, according to its inventors, it’s really women who will benefit.
Apparently, we have been crying out for years for hormonal contraceptives for men.
Or as Professor Richard Anderson of the University of Edinburgh says: ‘When we carried out surveys of women, they were enormously enthusiastic.
‘The single most common reason was that they wanted to share the responsibility for contraception.’
Which, on the face of it, seems entirely reasonable.
After all, why wouldn’t all women want their men to share the side-effects of taking hormones and the responsibility for preventing unwanted pregnancy?
And while men might be a bit wussy about being pumped full of hormones (welcome to our world), being sterile and enduring side-effects that might include being spotty and grumpy, surely there will be a huge demand for the jab from women who are fed up with being in sole charge of contraception and who will rush to sign up their reluctant partners?
Well, personally, I’m not so sure.
Yes, in theory it’s all great. Egalitarian, sensible and oh so very modern.
But are we women really crazy about handing over control of our fertility to men, even men we love and live with?

Of course, there is the ‘would you trust him to take it?’ issue.
It goes like this: women are the ones who suffer the torments of pregnancy and the burden of child-rearing, so have the most to lose if their partner is a bit slapdash with taking his pill or going back to the doctor for his top-up hormone injection.
And, so the theory goes, men are so hopeless at remembering things and famously reluctant to visit their GP that we won’t trust him to use contraception properly, and this makes it a non-starter.
Which is all very well and, up to a point, true.
Some women are both desperate not to have any more babies, and married to useless men — and those two facts may well be connected.
But there’s another problem with male contraception that is rather less talked about. And that’s whether most women really are happy giving away our power over a part of our lives that tends to mean more to us than to men.
Most women I know would be utterly horrified if their men chose new curtains without consulting them, and would be shocked to their very core if their husband came home with a new sofa, or even a radical new haircut.

So how would we feel if our man wandered off to the GP and booked himself in for a jab without consulting us?
To be honest, I’m not sure that most women would like that at all.
In my experience, the stuff of domestic life is jealously guarded by most women.
A friend of mine grumbles about her husband’s unwillingness to deal with the tiny details of their children’s lives, yet if pushed she will admit she rather relishes her role as family lynchpin.

Can men be trusted to take contraception like women on the pill do? (posed by model)

And there can be nothing more intimate regarding that than a woman’s fertility, and I am sceptical whether lots of us will want to let go of our responsibility for it.
Or, to put it bluntly, if highly effective, side-effect and rubber-free male contraception becomes universal, it could mark the end of the very common phenomenon of the not-entirely-accidental-surprise-baby and the one-bottle- of-wine-too-many-baby which happens to the most sensible of couples.
Because, let’s face it, if all women had to wait for men to feel broody (and for this to coincide with his jab wearing off), the birth rate would drop like a stone.
I am told that there are men out there who want nothing more than to persuade or even trick their unwilling wives into having more babies, and thus will be sent packing to the doctor to get jabbed (will they get a certificate to prove it, I wonder?), but, frankly, these blokes are surely in the minority.
A rather more common scenario — and one that is a constant on the parenting site Mumsnet — is a woman desperate for a first, second or third child with an unwilling and very determined man.
This situation, especially if the woman senses time is running out, tends to cause not just sorrow and anguish, but also a sort of furious frustration. A sense that her human rights have been unfairly and unreasonably denied her.
And while it is taboo to say it, plenty of women do feel, in a primal way, that they should have the last word on how many babies they have, hence the large number of ‘surprise’ third babies around.
It is rare for women to actually lie about using contraception, but not so rare for women to cry, beg, sulk, withhold sexual favours or just stop using contraception and so leave it up to the man to take the only precautions open to him which, luckily, plenty of men don’t like doing.
As I say, this is pretty taboo stuff. But one woman who is happy to voice her belief that men really shouldn’t have too much say in the matter is mother-of-four Jerry Hall.
In her role as agony aunt, she unrepentantly told a woman who longed for a third child in the face of her husband’s opposition: ‘Honey, remember, the more you make love, the more chance there is of a happy accident… Chances are he will get used to it.

If not, having a baby later in life is an especially good idea: you will get alimony pretty much until your pension kicks in.’
Shocking? Maybe. But then again, Jerry is pretty chuffed with her four kids, and Mick Jagger?
Well it was fun while it lasted, but you get the feeling that Jerry believes men may come and go, but children are for ever.
Which brings us to another problem with the male jab.
While it might be a great thing in a committed relationship, where a woman really doesn’t want more babies and has suffered unpleasant side-effects from using contraception (and should probably be compulsory for certain Premiership footballers), for most women, the idea of a single man who is so opposed to babies that he has the jab is incredibly unattractive.
The same goes for a vasectomy. Most single women would run a mile from a man who’s had one, even if they don’t particularly long for children, because we don’t really like our men making unilateral decisions, whether that’s about curtains or babies.
However, I’ve known women who have been keen for their husbands to get snipped, not just because it means they can stop using contraception, but because, as one confessed to me: ‘What I like about his vasectomy is that now he can’t leave us and go off and have babies with someone else.'
And let’s face it, if he’s sterile, he isn’t likely to find a woman half my age to run off with, as she’d be put off by it.
If the jab is reversible, well, I wouldn’t have that security.’

The Real Reason We Do Not Have a Male Pill

 Read this article, if there were a Male Birth Control pill, it would give CONTROL to Men to make sure the Women dont Cheat and Lie to them that she is not going to conceive or she is taking the Pill when she is actually not. Women can manipulate Men this way and have the Power to decide to have a child or not, Men have no say really since the control is with them.
Just imagine how many unwanted children would be avoided if Men had some control over whether or not they want a child with a Male Birth Control Pill.

May 20, 2010

On Sunday, May 9^th 2010 women everywhere celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the introduction of the female birth control pill. In those fifty years no equivalent for men has been developed. Why?

Every five years or so, and you can almost count on every five years like clockwork, we hear news concerning the development of a male internal fertility control drug or device whose side effects are tolerable and whose fertility effects are reversible. In fact, men in many parts of the world already enjoy the benefits of such methods. Why do we have not one single method in the U.S., the U.K, Australia and Canada?

Ten years ago a drug called Nofirtill was introduced for testing in Brazil and was purported to be 95% effective, have very little side effects and completely reversible. In China and France men have enjoyed the option of hormone treatments rendering them temporarily infertile for years now. In the U.S. and U.K. there are studies being conducted as I write this that hold tremendous promise for the male pill.

Standing in the way of this whole thing coming to fruition, however, are the drug companies themselves who are very sketchy about putting up money, not only to develop methods of mass production, but also to market these methods in a cost effective manner. Why are they frightened? Who or what is keeping them from taking the plunge into what could be a very lucrative market. It seems to defy common sense doesn’t it?

But common sense has very little to do with reproductive issues in the western world.

Unfortunately, and to our tremendous discredit, men have been almost entirely silent about the male pill leaving the entire debate on reproductive control methods, and for that matter reproductive rights as a whole, dominated by a chorus of female voices. And also like clockwork, this chourus starts chiming in just around the time mention of a pending internal male fertility control method comes up.

Many of these voices support the idea of a male pill citing fairness and the desire that men carry more of the contraceptive burden. The most energetic and pernicious of these voices, however, come from a hoard of columnists writing from a woman’s perspective who oppose the idea of a male pill.

The tambre of the commentary ranges from the condescending to the appallingly bigoted. In January of 2010 HLN’s Joy Behar discussed research developments with, of all people, Ashley Dupre, AKA Eliot Spitzer’s rather, as you can see in the video in the link, over priced companion on her show. Along with discussing the “G Spot” with this supposedly renowned expert on male fertility issues Ms. Behar also discussed with Ms. Dupre the inability to trust a man when he says he is on the pill. Also discussed was the “fragile male ego” that we hear so much about and how rendering one’s self infertile might just be too much for a man’s pride to take.

Predictably mentioned as well was the idea that men simply do not possess the intelligence to realize we can get an STD without the use of a condom. Hmmm, who’d’ave thunk you could get somethin that AJAX aint gonna wash off by not wrappin' it up first? Not nobody ever told me that!

Other commentaries include a particularly offensive one written by MJ Deschamps from the University of Ottawa’s Centertown Journal called “Give Them the Remote Not the Pill” in which she paraphrases the concerns presented on the HLN interview stating: “What I’m worried about are all the other men – the unmarried, uncommitted, casual daters who can walk away from a situation if an accident happens because they forgot to take their birth control, or just lied about taking it altogether. Never mind the large increase in STIs and AIDS that would probably arise from the inevitable decrease in condom use.”

Walk away? Yea right, men are NEVER thrown in jail for failure to pay child support and we are all just an ignorant bunch of jackasses, as I have pointed out above, (sarcasm) who have no idea how STDs are spread.
No doubt, pharmaceutical company executives in lieu of very expensive market research will take note of these voices and conclude that spending the money to develop and viably market such a method might pose more a financial risk than it’s worth. If there are so many opposing voices and not much observable support for these methods why put up the money?

So why is there is so much opposition to this idea of male fertility control? Surely enabling men with the option to control their fertility would be good for them as well as society. There would be fewer unwanted pregnancies and couples and single men would have more control over their futures. But keep in mind the operative word here is “control”. What does this word mean when talking about reproduction?
Anciently, rules were developed to ensure that fertile women were paired with men that could protect and provide for them and any resultant offspring. Men, taking on the burden of providing and protecting, were also guaranteed certain say-so as it comes to their mode of life as well as access and control when it comes to raising their offspring. Both sexes were given roles, rights and responsibilities in these systems of reproductive code and similarities are ubiquitous throughout all of human civilization.

It was imperative the female had to give some assurance to the male the children he was to protect and provide for were indeed his. This was achieved, admittedly, through strict social enforcement of female chastity before and strict loyalty after pairing with a male. Neither she nor society could rightfully expect the man to support her and her children if this was not the case.

Just as imperatively, the male’s status and prestige were almost solely based on his ability to protect and provide for his family. Failure to do this has always resulted, with every society and culture, in total chastisement of the male leading to the diminishing of this “Family Name” the value of which determines the offspring’s ability to find viable mates in the social group they lived in.

This arrangement was by no means perfect, and some even call it oppressive. But make no mistake, it has supported thousands of generations, each producing healthy well kept homo sapien offspring who were much better off than their counterparts in other primate species. Also, one has to conclude, that without this system of rules not one red brick would have been laid atop another foregoing virtually every single feature of civilization as we know it.

In the Late twentieth century medical advances and changes in the law regarding reproduction, parental rights and responsibilities changed this paradigm forever. Also changed were how we would bring children into the world and raise them.

In 1960 the female oral contraceptive was brought to market, to be followed in subsequent years by a plethora of effective and relatively inexpensive methods through which women could control their fertility in a safe and reversible manner. This truly freed women to seek sexual affection without fearing the consequences they would have suffered prior. Ostensibly, men would seem to benefit in this respect too, but they would have to rely on the word of the women they had relations with as men still had the same responsibilities that come with a pregnancy.

But this was ok right? Pregnancy is so treacherous and the ordeal of taking care of an infant so daunting no woman would ever want to be anything but honest while disclosing her fertility status. Right?

Unfortunately for men at that time there was no equivalent solution to the problem of controlling their own fertility. To be fair, it was a hard nut for scientists to crack. (Pun intended) Surely though, science would work it’s wonders and make available in good order the same type of option for men…………surely.

Years went by and the pill became safer. New methods were being tested as well with the promise that if women could not or did not want to take the pill there were other options to be made available. Also on the horizon were rumblings of a totally different form of birth control, separate from a medicinal form. Soon, the use of the operative word “birth” would take a whole new meaning in the phrase: “Birth Control.”

Abortion had been available illegally for some time but in 1973 the Unites States Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade declared that the “imposition of parenthood” on an individual was just too much for the state to impose on somebody given that they were female. This meant that even after conception women would have a right to decide whether or not the pregnancy would come to term. Males however were not to enjoy that same option. Consequently, men were given the burden of someone else’s choices as far as parenthood was concerned.

Congruent to this legal development were the expansion of parental responsibilities for men and the diminishing of those for women. It is now, for all intents and purposes, legal for a woman to terminate a pregnancy as well as, abandon, or give up for adoption a child without the consent of the father. Men, however, will get thrown in jail for not being able to write a check out to a woman who has no accountability as to how that money is spent simply because they are the mothers of the child (ren) of said man. This can happen even if the child is, in fact, not that of said man and said man can prove it.

Furthermore, in our society a fathers parental rights are based in most part on the good will of the mother. There are armies of social workers and lawyers on the government payroll who will assist her in taking the child out of his life if she so wishes.

Re-read the last three paragraphs above and let it sink in before reading further.

Ok, having done that, let’s draw our attention to an article written by the UK Daily Mail’s Leah Hardy entitled “Of Course Women Don’t Want a Male Pill- It Would End All of Those ‘Happy Accidents’”. This particular article enraged me more than any other commentary on the subject concerning a man’s right to seek control over his own fertility and future. In light of the fact that there have been millions of men jailed because they didn’t hold up to the state imposed responsibilities as parents the assertion that children for men are nothing more than “happy little accidents” I find abhorrent as any right thinking person should.

This article illustrates perfectly and unabashedly the REAL reason that so many women and woman’s advocacy groups demonstrate a fierce resistance to the male pill. That reason not being they are afraid that we will lie or forget, as if women never do those things, rather, it is the fear that we will actually use it.

Contrary to popular belief there is no evidence of any real long term or broad opposition to the female birth control pill after its introduction. The pill was, in spite of anything you might hear from feminists, handed to women on a silver platter and the development for the male equivalent was simply left in the doldrums. Just what will it take for men to assert control of their own reproductive processes?

A fight.

Yup, you heard me right! There are too many agencies and interests representing the female gender’s total control over reproduction for their not to be a fight over it. Whenever a woman says “you men have birth control it’s called a condom” or “keep it in your pants” or “just get a vasectomy” the response should be equivalent to the cynical and bigoted verbal spit in the face that that statement is. I would suggest this: “Shut your mouth and any other orifice on your body that causes trouble woman! Oh, and while you’re at it go make me a birth control sandwich.”

Men also need to get vocal as a group concerning the male birth control pill. Writing pharmaceutical companies and encouraging them to develop an internal male fertility control method is a good start. Most importantly though, we absolutely must wrestle the male fertility control debate out of the hands of women and take ownership of it.

This may sound extreme to exclude women, but they are free to support the idea if they want. They should not feel free to oppose it. The male pill is about men, not women, not children, not the government……MEN and MEN alone.

Gentlemen, let us get busy and start doing something about this.

Feminism is a Communist Plot

July 4, 2010



 This article is intended to explain, in part, the real roots of feminism.  

Many of the problems men and boys face today relate to feminist ideology, and you will read a lot about that here. But most of that is just addressing a symptom of the problem. *The core of it is what I call Marxist Consumerism. It is a term that would ostensibly appear to be an oxymoron, but is actually a perfect description of where society is heading. *Our cultural evolution is tracking toward a dumbed down population of brainwashed consumer units who are wholly owned and controlled by a State that is now a government/corporate complex. *And it rules, largely by a system of Governance Feminism. *Let me explain from the start:

Feminism is a Marxist strategy designed to undermine the family and all other traditional institutions so that the primary relationship individuals have is ultimately with The State. *In the process of accomplishing this, private property, the only tangible proof of individual liberty, becomes a thing of the past. *That is your New World Order in a nutshell. *And if your eyes are open you have been watching it happen for most or all of your life.

By destroying marriage, creating a chasm between men and women, alienating fathers from children, dissolving parental authority, indeed dissolving the family itself, the barriers to state control of everyone are removed. Think of any social ill inflicted by feminism, and then think about those ills in terms of an agenda for autocratic control of the entire population. *You will find they are almost indistinguishable; that one serves the other in every way.

Central to pulling this off was to first vilify masculinity, then criminalize it. *We have long coined this as the Gender War, but we have mistakenly interpreted it as something contained to a struggle for control, or even about equality, between men and women. *Since you already know that feminism isn't about equality, let's take a look at what it actually is about.

Think about laws like VAWA that only recognize men as perpetrators of violence. *Consider the emerging "primary aggressor" laws that are designed to make sure that men, and only men, are arrested in domestic disputes. *Think about how restraining orders are routinely issued with no evidence or corroboration and how the power of accusation from women has become an epidemic ripping apart the lives of innocent men.

Do you really think all this is just because feminists are just getting their way about things?

If you really think it is that simple, please read and ponder on the implications of *this passage from Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris."We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against. We're after power and we mean it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Reardon, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."

Those words, published in the year of my birth, have come to dominate and define the world we live in. *Trust me, I would not use an excerpt from a novel as a reference source if I did not already know you could confirm it with your own observation of the world around you.

By destroying the power of men, the historical guardians of the family, and of our individual liberties, the state becomes the unopposed totalitarian overlord

Now, if you have any doubts about the Marxist roots of feminism, and the intent to create and exploit resentment between the sexes in order to destroy the traditional family, take a look at this poster from pre World War II era (1932) Soviet Union.* The Soviets knew, just as your government does today, that if you want total domination of the population, you must undermine the family and turn the government into surrogate husband and father.

Because once you take away man’s social status and dignity, and his authority in the family, the only thing he will fight for is a paycheck, some benefits and misguided nationalism.* He will never again challenge the government he lives under, no matter how tyrannical or oppressive, because he has nothing of meaning left to protect.* And men, despite the pervasive cultural mendacities of our time, are hardwired not to even complain on their own behalf, much less to fight for themselves as a group.

Of course, many people, including many men’s rights activists, have never come to the realization that feminism is something more than just a corrupt anti-male agenda operating under a guise of gender equality.* And one picture, while worth a thousand words, is not going to tell the whole story.

I suggest, to make yourself more aware of the history, that you start with visiting this series of essays by Carey Roberts, and reading through the links there to see where they take you.* It’s a rabbit hole that runs very deep.

In the west we have been blinded to the true nature of all this massive social change with unbridled, shallow consumerism, political correctness and the intentional erosion of our educations system.* Children, from grade school to high school are dissuaded from critical thinking and pressured into conformity by a Marxist Feminist pedagogy.* It is the perfect set up to participate in a system of higher education that is geared primarily for indoctrination.* And it is no coincidence that the indoctrination so rampant in the modern halls of western academe is also an artifact of dominant feminist ideology.* The average college graduate today, especially in the arts and humanities, leaves school convinced that men are inherently bad and that women are oppressed, despite the incontrovertible evidence that neither is so.

Any voice of opposition to this has been all but eliminated. By putting a dress and lipstick on Marxism, the social engineers furthering that agenda were able to rely on chivalry and other aspects of traditional masculinity for protection. It is mind blowing. *They actually used the people being the most viciously attacked to protect the very people who were attacking them. *It is, in all fairness, fucking ingenious.

And at the same time, at the other end of the social spectrum, they jockeyed themselves into further protection by popularizing the charge of misogynistic hate speech against anyone who opposed them.

Yes, quite ingenious.

But the point of A Voice for Men is not to fight against that.* And the reason for it is simple.

It is too late.

This Gender War is over and the Marxists won. *Whether you live in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand or anywhere else in the western world, you will find no relief, no solutions in your voting booths, or in the people who occupy your seats of government.* They are all bound, no matter their party or their proclaimed platform, to the new agenda.* All the legislation that matters, the legislation that indentures men to women and ultimately makes both wards of The State, will be supported by the prevailing powers, whoever they are.

It is not the fault of women, though I say that knowing you may be one of many men who do not want to hear it.* They have been hoodwinked as well, and before it is over, but after it is too late, almost all of them will end up enslaved to the same agenda that promised them freedom and independence. *They will almost all be working in low paying service jobs, marginally subsidized by the confiscated income of men. *They will find that government-as-husband and the cold drudgery life hovering around the poverty line is the only real result of their promised "liberation." *In fact, it is already happening.

But the equally impoverished, disenfranchised men will be both unable and hopefully unwilling to help them out of it.

The only thing that remains for men is their own survival.* It is men who are the pack animals and indentured servants of this new world order.* And their answer is not in going to war against Marxism, which will only result in the certain evisceration of their lives. Their answer is quite simply...to abandon any notion of commitment to women or vulnerability to them.

The sad reality is that women have become the weapon of choice that government is using to dominate and control the lives of men; to steal their property and income; to force them, in ever increasing numbers, *to surrender their assets and live in bare subsistence, and to incarcerate or kill them if they don't comply.

And the only appropriate response, for the precious few who can do it, is the development of an unorganized sub culture of men that are focused on surviving, and as much as possible, flourishing in this corrupt system. And on sharing that information with other men.

To do that requires men to make job one of a radically different view of women.

It will be a small culture of men who can do it, as most men simply cannot think outside the bounds of their own sexual programming. But .25 percent of a billion is a pretty respectable number.

Whatever size the community of men takes, our lifeline, for as long as we have it, is the internet.* It is the only way most of us will ever make contact with each other.

And so that is the purpose of A Voice for Men.* The site is here to educate men that the only movement that matters is the one away from the control of women, and therefore The State. The articles and videos here will henceforth reflect that in every way. *I will be writing essays on Zeta Game, to explore methods of reversing the traditional power flow that undermines men via the protect and provide proviso and the standard, female entitled mating ritual. *There will be offerings with a locus around anti-consumerism; living outside the realm of corporate influence as much as possible. And with the way that men are being drummed out of education and the job market, anti-consumerism will become synonymous with survival.

The emphasis, per usual, is anti marriage, anti commitment, and anti consumerism, but the short route to the point is anti corporatocracy and pro male protectionism.

I will strive to listen to your wishes and include content that you suggest and to address topics that you think are important, as long as it serves the core mission.

It will be a library of information and opinion encouraging men to consider a new form of masculinity, yes, that would be Zeta, that reduces vulnerability to this God awful system, promotes independence from women and points to a path of freer living; eschewing the way of mere utility and servitude.

And so we are clear from the beginning. *This is sacred ground, and I mean that literally. *Civil dissent and discussion are welcome from men who are on board with this websites agenda. Women are even welcome as long as they are with the program.

But,*feminists and White Knights will be immediately and unceremoniously dumped and banned. *If you are looking for debate, feel free to waste your time commenting on my videos at YouTube.

So there you have it; an explanation of A Voice for Men, and the direction this site will be going in the future. *I am counting on you to send me your ideas, post comments and help me guide this ship on a steady course.

After all, it is A Voice for Men, not The Voice for Men. Without you, I have no reason to be doing this.

Now let's get ready to rock and roll.

A Voice for Men
and
On YouTube

(Video) Minister for Men – 12 Key Priorities

May 23, 2010



A Minister for Men should campaign against all forms of male discrimination.

(1) Make Improving the educational attainment of boys a political priority.

(2) Make the state recognize/support male domestic violence victims.

(3) Improve care and funding for prostate/testicular cancer sufferers.

(4) Make judges enforce child contact orders.

(5) Support equal parenting laws.

(6) Provide better help and retraining for unemployed men.

(7) Force a review of the CSA maintenance criteria where the mother has left her husband for another man, re-married or has simply walked out of a marriage with the children.

(8) Support anonymity for men accused of rape, unless found guilty.

(9) Improve care and support for men suffering from depression.

(10) Campaign against anti-male propaganda and male stereotyping in the media.

(11) Support equal sentencing criteria for men and women.

(12) Stop the political disenfranchisement of individual men by abolishing discriminatory all-woman shortlists and priority lists.

"Gender Inclusive” Author Calls on UN to Establish Special Rapporteur for Violence Against Men

Oct 3, 2010

Routledge has published a book-length collection of his essays on gender and genocide by Gendercide Watch Executive Director and Canadian Political Science Professor Adam Jones. While these articles were all previously published, and some duplication and overlap is inevitable with collections of this nature, nevertheless many of them are as a practical matter impossible to track down today, and having them all together in one place in permanent, book form is in any case highly valuable.

Jones is a longtime warrior for genuine gender equity, tirelessly advocating for the human rights community to address human rights violations in a fair and accurate manner independent of the sex of the perpetrator and the sex of the victim. The collected articles were published over a span of nearly two decades, and accordingly it is inevitable that at least some of the earlier pieces suffer from the intervening passage of time.

Having said that, Jones has throughout his career been a razor-sharp analyst as well as a highly skilled writer. Even the first articles he published still provide worthwhile reading, as with the book’s first piece, his 1990 analysis of sexism at Canada’s largest daily newspaper, the Toronto Globe and Mail.

His book has much to offer, such as the disheartening information that the right to vote is often denied to parolees, and that at least in the US, males are actually raped more often than females. Even facts we may already know—the factor most strongly correlated with being on death row is not skin color, race, ethnic origin, or IQ, but rather sex—bear repeating, and Jones is up for the task. We learn that, “Women are more likely to be dropped out of the system the further the capital punishment system progresses.” The author makes a compelling case for invoking a rarely heard phrase, “men and minorities.” While female victims are usually identified as such in media coverage, male victims routinely find themselves referred to in a way that anonymizes their sex. As the author shows, female victims even predominate in discussions of topics “in which male victimization is prominent or predominant.”

Depressingly, in considering gender and ethnic conflict in ex-Yugoslavia, Jones finds that “the United Nations and other international agencies involved in refugee evacuation have tended to accommodate themselves to the blatantly discriminatory rules laid down by Serb occupiers,” such as rules barring an male with combat potential from being evacuated. In another article, “Toward an International Politics of Gender,” Jones pointedly comments:

If masculine privilege is so all-pervasive and absolute, we must ask (in a developed-world context at least) why it is that men live substantially shorter lives than women, kill themselves at rates vastly higher than women, absorb close to one hundred percent of the fatal casualties of society’s productive labor, and direct the majority of their violence against “their own” ranks.

One engaging piece (originally published in Transitions!) addresses several interlocking media strategies for concealing male victimization. “The effacing of male victims in mass media is generally accomplished by three interrelated strategies. The first might be called incidentalizing…. A second strategy is displacement…. Males as agents of violence were visible, and gendered; as victims, they were effaced from the discourse…. The third marginalization strategy is simply exclusion.” [italics in original] Jones goes on to show that even in those rare cases where the media expresses any concern or interest in the fate of males, it tends to be after the fact, when it is far too late for any men’s lives to actually be thereby saved. In the end, the author concludes, reasonably enough yet devastatingly, that “no meaningful claim to humanity, fairness, or analytical accuracy can be advanced by those who, consciously or unconsciously, would consign half the human race to second-class status in the humanitarian and policy equation.”

In a short piece for the Globe and Mail called, “Pity the Innocent Man,” Jones powerfully addresses the military draft:

[Th]e practice of gender-selective military conscription is so widely accepted that we have lost the ability to see it for what it is: namely, perhaps the most ubiquitous, severe, and physically destructive act of gender-specific discrimination of all. Why is conscription not considered a “social tradition or cultural norm,” capable of harming men every bit as severely as women are harmed by domestic violence, genital mutilation, or fundamentalist harassment?

Regrettably, Jones is evidently unaware that men are harmed at least as much as women by both domestic violence and genital mutilation [circumcision].

A brief, deceptively simple piece illustrates how profoundly invisible men are in many ways: a Google search for “women and international development” returned 12,700 hits while a similar search for “men and international development returned three (!) hits. Similar disparities are evident throughout the piece.

One important, in-depth article analyzes the extensive, integral roles played by women in such human rights holocausts as those that took place in Rwanda and Nazi Germany. “Remarkably,… for a phenomenon that was as old as recorded history… the gender-selective killing of community males had never received sustained or systematic attention, in the genocide-studies literature or outside it, at any point, in any language.” Similarly, the author finds in the succeeding article on genocide and gendercide that “gendercide, at least when it targets males, has attracted virtually no attention at the level of scholarship or public policy. As such, it can be classed as one of the great ‘taboo’ subjects of the contemporary age.” All too often, Jones shows, noncombatant males are conflated with soldiers as presumably expendable, while attacks on “womenandchildren” are defined as the truly egregious violations.

In the following article, about gendercide and genocide in Rwanda, Jones “offers up a truly spectacular self-contradiction [by human rights analyst Aloysia Inyumba], in consecutive sentences no less: she claims that ‘The genocide in Rwanda is a far-reaching tragedy that has taken a particularly hard toll on women. They now comprise 70 percent of the population, since the genocide chiefly exterminated the male population.” [italics in original] The author goes on to note that “such commentary as exists on gender and genocide has tended to actively suppress the male experience… Such an approach should be seen as a betrayal of the spirit of human rights work…”

Another article expands on the vulnerability of “battle age males,” showing that in the three “classic” genocides of the twentieth century—against Turkish Armenians, European Jews, and the Tutsis of Rwanda–“fullscale genocide was preceded by a wide range of gender-selective measures, including mass roundups and localized killings of men.” Sadly, the UN and human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) “have, on balance, paid only the most limited attention to the vulnerability of the group most typically targeted in genocidal killing—younger, ‘battle-age’ males.”

Jones repeatedly, forcefully calls for an inclusive approach to gender and human rights violations, whereby the sex of a victim is considered in relation to their victimization regardless of whether they are male or female, and particularly for unusually vulnerable populations requiring special attention such as “battle-age males.”

The author also calls on the UN to establish a Special Rapporteur for Violence Against Men in parallel with the rapporteur that already exists to address violations against women, and Jones even outlines in detail several of the most important functions to be served by such a rapporteur. Jones also reminds us of the shocking fact that even today, Article 11 of the International Labor Organization’s Convention Concerning Forced or Compulsory Labor allows for adult men between the apparent ages of 19 and 45—and no one else—to be subjected to forced labor.

Ever fair-minded, Jones also devotes a chapter to his theory regarding genocidal institutions against women and girls such as female infanticide and feticide, maternal mortality, and gendered deficits in health care, education, and nutrition. He claims that such institutions have killed a number of women that “vastly exceeds the number of women or men killed in politico-military gendercides.” [italics in original]

Gender Inclusive does suffer from some flaws that should have been easily fixable (certainly for a book selling for a price well into the triple digits), such as multiply repeated self-quotations, references to “this volume” that in fact are directed to the article’s original place of publication and not the current book (!) and, similarly, citations to previous articles by the author that are included in the present volume but that are cited only using the original publication information.

Adam Jones, not to put too fine a point on it, is a force for good. If his book is out of your price range, have your local library do an interlibrary loan for it. His book’s erudition and passion will amply repay your efforts.
 

(Judgement) No DV on family members living separately.

IN THE HIGH COURT OF DELHI AT NEW DELHI



Date of Reserve: 6th July, 2010

Date of Order: 29th July, 2010

+ Crl. Rev. P. No. 253/2010

% 29.07.2010 Harbans Lal Malik ... Petitioner Through: Mr. Dharam Raj, Advocate

Versus

Payal Malik ... Respondents Through: Mr. R.Jain, Mr. Deepak Aggarwal &

Mr. D.Jain, Advocates

+ Crl. Rev. P. No. 252/2010

% 29.07.2010 Varun Malik ... Petitioner Through: Mr. Dharam Raj, Advocate

Versus

Payal Malik ... Respondents Through: Mr. R.Jain, Mr. Deepak Aggarwal &

Mr. D.Jain, Advocates

+ Crl. Rev. P. No. 338/2010

% 29.07.2010 Nagesh Malik ... Petitioner Through: Mr. Dharam Raj, Advocate

Versus

Payal Malik ... Respondents Through: Mr. R.Jain, Mr. Deepak Aggarwal &

Mr. D.Jain, Advocates

JUSTICE SHIV NARAYAN DHINGRA

1. Whether reporters of local papers may be allowed to see the judgment? Yes.

2. To be referred to the reporter or not? Yes.

3. Whether judgment should be reported in Digest? Yes. JUDGMENT

These petitions arise out of order passed by the learned Additional Sessions Judge on 7th May, 2010 while disposing of two appeals against the order dated 27th July, 2009 passed by the learned MM.

2. The undisputed facts are that Ms. Payal Malik used to live with her parents before marriage at Hissar. Her marriage took place with Mr. Nagesh Malik Crl. Rev. P. No.252/2010, 253/2010 & 338/2010 Page 1 of 16 whose parents used to live at Panipat. Marriage of the parties was solemnized at Panipat on 30th August, 2001. Nagesh Malik was already working in USA and after marriage both of them went to USA on 20th September, 2001 where they settled their matrimonial home and lived together. On 24th October, 2002 a female child was born to the couple at USA, who was named as Vanishka. The parties continued living together in USA till 2008. It seems deep differences arose between the parties and they could not pull on together. There are allegations and counter allegations made by wife and husband which are not relevant for the purpose of deciding this petition. However, husband alleged that on 6th August, 2008 due to these differences, parties executed a post-nuptial agreement and decided to obtain divorce from each other, sticking to the agreement. Wife refutes having signed the agreement voluntarily and alleges that she was turned out from USA by her husband on 22nd August, 2008. Whereas the husbands contention is that she of her own left USA without joining the husband for obtaining divorce through a Court in USA. The husband filed a divorce petition before Superior Court of New Jersey Chancery Division Family Court USA on 27th August, 2008. The notice of divorce suit was duly served on her. The Court of New Jersey allowed the divorce petition and a decree of divorce was granted on 4th December, 2008.

3. On 13th January, 2009 wife filed a complaint before CAW Cell Hissar against husband and in-laws. Ms. Sushila, Inspector of CAW Cell Hissar, vide her report dated 20th January, 2009, observed that the allegations in the complaint were not true and it was useless to keep the complaint pending further. Thereafter, wife filed a complaint in the Court of MM at Delhi making her husband (Nagesh Malik), father-in-law (Harbans Lal Malik), mother-in-law (Neelam Malik) and brother-in-law (Varun Malik) as parties under Section 12 of Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 [in short Domestic Violence Act] with a prayer that Court should pass a protection order under Section 18, residence order under Section 19, Crl. Rev. P. No.252/2010, 253/2010 & 338/2010 Page 2 of 16 monetary relief order under Section 20, compensation order under Section 22 and interim orders under Section 23 of the Act. She made allegations of mal-treatment at the hands of respondents from day one of the marriage till she left USA and came to India. She stated, after coming back from USA she went to her in-laws house at Panipat but found the house locked as her parents-in-law had gone to USA. She also stated that her husband had sent a complaint to SP Panipat leveling certain scandalous allegations against her. She graduated from Delhi University in 1998 and had done interior designing course from South Delhi Polytechnic. She alleged that her in-laws had three houses and an industrial unit in Panipat. They had properties in Delhi as well and respondent no.1 (her husband) had share in properties of her in- laws. She submitted that her complaint at CAW Cell Hissar could not be pursued by her as her in-laws had tried to mislead Haryana police and also because of a tragedy in her family. She left her parents house and came to Delhi to pursue her career prospects. She was presently residing at Malviya Nagar, Delhi. Till the time she was not given back her matrimonial home (at Panipat), she would live in Delhi, so the Court of MM at Delhi had jurisdiction. She prayed that custody of child Vanshika should be given to her. She should be given shares in properties at Panipat and Delhi as well as a house in New Jersey, USA. She should be given Rs.20,000/- per month for her maintenance and education as she intended to pursue further study and Court should direct for return of her dowry articles. Along with main application under the Domestic Violence Act, applications for interim reliefs were made. She in the application under Section 23 of the Act prayed for a residence or in lieu thereof a sum of Rs.20,000/- per month and Rs.50,000/- as onetime payment to meet education expenses, a car or Rs.8,000/- per month in lieu of the car and Rs.20,000/- per month for her day-to-day expenses and Rs.50,000/- as onetime payment to repay her debts.

Crl. Rev. P. No.252/2010, 253/2010 & 338/2010 Page 3 of 16

4. The learned MM, by her order dated 27th July, 2009 directed that an amount of Rs.50,000/- per month be paid to wife as interim maintenance jointly or severally by respondents no. 1,2 & 4. She dropped respondent no.3 from the array of respondents on the ground that petition against a female respondent was not maintainable.

5. It was pleaded before the learned MM by the petitioner that there was a decree of divorce granted by a Competent Court of New Jersey, Chancery Division after following due procedure as laid down in USA. After grant of divorce there was no domestic relationship of Ms. Payal Malik with any of the respondents. (It is noted in the order of MM that the decree of divorce passed by the Court of US was placed on record.) Reliance was also placed by the petitioner on post nuptial agreement as entered into between husband and wife. The learned trial Court did not think it proper to deal with the issue whether an application under Section 12 of Domestic Violence Act could be entertained at all in respect of a divorced wife and whether the decree of divorce granted by the foreign Court where the parties had lived together for more than seven years, had some value or not.

6. The trial Court after discussing the objects and aims of The Protection of Women Against Domestic Violence Act, 2005 and after reproducing a quote from novelist Joseph Conrad "being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men" [as if men, though given birth by women, are ferocious animals and not human beings, but cannibals] passed an order for grant of maintenance.

7. In appeal before the learned Sessions Judge, an argument was pressed that the judgment given by New Jersey Court was conclusive evidence of status of the parties and in view of Section 14 of Code of Civil Procedure and Section 4 of The Indian Evidence Act, unless the judgment was set aside the trial Court Crl. Rev. P. No.252/2010, 253/2010 & 338/2010 Page 4 of 16 should not have entertained the petition under Section 12 of The Protection of Women Against Domestic Violence Act. It was pleaded that only an application under Section 125 Cr.P.C. (which is applicable to divorced wife) could have been entertained by a Court, if moved. It was argued by wife that decree of divorce was obtained by fraud and was hit by Section 13 CPC and therefore could not stand in the way of entertaining an application under Section 12 of Domestic Violence Act.

8. The learned Sessions Judge while deciding appeal observed that the provisions of Domestic Violence Act are to be interpreted taking help of Section 125 Cr.P.C. and the explanation given under Section 125 Cr.P.C. of "Wife" is to be read in Domestic Violence Act also. He further observed that the Court has to take pragmatic approach and unless the dissolution of marriage was proved by evidence, the Court has not to act on the decree. He therefore dismissed the appeal filed by husband and other respondents observing that there was no illegality in the order of learned trial Court in granting maintenance. He allowed an appeal filed by wife in respect of execution of the order of of MM and directed that Ministry of External Affairs be sent a request to execute the order dated 27th July, 2009 as per law.

9. The first issue arising in this case is whether an application under Section 12 of Domestic Violence Act made by the respondent could have been entertained against all the respondents (petitioners herein) as arrayed in her application and whether the Court without discussing the domestic and legal relationship of different respondents with the petitioner, could have passed an order against the petitioners making them jointly and severally liable to pay maintenance of Rs.50,000/-.

10. Under Section 12, an aggrieved person can file an application to Magistrate against the respondents. The respondent has been defined under Section 2 (q). The definition reads as under:

Crl. Rev. P. No.252/2010, 253/2010 & 338/2010 Page 5 of 16 "respondent" means any adult male person who is, or has been, in a domestic relationship with the aggrieved person and against whom the aggrieved person has sought any relief under this Act: Provided that an aggrieved wife or female living in a

relationship in the nature of a marriage may also file a complaint against a relative of the husband or the male partner.

11. It is apparent that in order to make a person as respondent in a petition under Section 12, there must exist a domestic relationship between the respondent and the aggrieved person. If there is no domestic relationship between the aggrieved person and the respondent, the Court of MM cannot pass an order against such a person under the Act. Domestic relationship is defined under Section 2 (f) of the Act and is as under:

"domestic relationship" means a relationship between two persons who live or have, at any point of time, lived together in a shared household, when they are related by consanguinity, marriage, or through a relationship in the nature of marriage, adoption or are family members living together as a joint family;

12. It is apparent that domestic relationship arises between the two persons, who have lived together in a shared household and when they are related by consanguinity, marriage or through a relationship in the nature of marriage, adoption or are family members living together as a joint family. The definition speaks of living together at any point of time however it does not speak of having relation at any point of time. Thus, if the domestic relationship continued and if the parties have lived together at any point of time in a shared household, the person can be a respondent but if the relationship does not continue and the relationship had been in the past and is not in the present, a person cannot be made respondent on the ground of a past relationship. The domestic relationship between the aggrieved person and the respondent must be present and alive at the time when complaint under Domestic Violence Act is filed and if this relationship is not alive on the date when complaint is filed, the domestic relationship cannot be said to be there. The first respondent made by the wife in her complaint before the learned MM in this case Crl. Rev. P. No.252/2010, 253/2010 & 338/2010 Page 6 of 16 was husband with whom the wife had lived under the same roof in a shared household till 22nd August, 2008 in USA. She had not lived for last 7 1/2 years with respondent no.1 in India. Respondent No.4 is Varun Malik who is brother of the husband. Under no circumstances it can be said that brother of husband, who was a major and independent, living separately from this husband and wife, had any kind of domestic relationship or moral or legal responsibility/obligations towards his brothers wife. He had not lived in domestic relationship with Payal Malik at any point of time. Merely because a person is brother of the husband he cannot be arrayed as a respondent, nor does an MM gets authority over each and every relative of the husband, without going into the fact whether a domestic relationship or shared household was there between the aggrieved person and the respondent.

13. The other respondent made in this case is Harbans Lal, father of Nagesh Malik. Nagesh Malik was living in USA he came to India to solemnize his marriage with an appropriate person. After marriage was solemnized he left India and went to USA. He lived all along with his wife in USA, birth of the child had taken place in USA. In all such cases where boy lives abroad and is settled abroad but comes to India for marriage, it is known to the girl as well as to the parents of the girl that they are choosing a groom who is not living with his parents but settled abroad. His links with the parents are only as with any other relative. He is not dependent on parents may be parents, if poor, take financial help from him.

14. The girl and the parents of the girl knew it very well that they had selected a person for marriage with whom the girl was going to live abroad and the matrimonial home and the shared household was going to be outside India. This act of marrying a person settled abroad is a voluntary act of the girl. If she had not intended to enjoy the fat salary which boys working abroad get and the material facilities available abroad, she could have refused to marry him and settled for a boy having moderate salary within India. After having chosen a person living abroad, Crl. Rev. P. No.252/2010, 253/2010 & 338/2010 Page 7 of 16 putting the responsibility, after failure of marriage, on the shoulders on his parents and making them criminals in the eyes of law because matrimonial ties between the two could not last for long, does not sound either legally correct or morally correct. How can the parents of a boy who is working abroad, living abroad, an adult, free to take his own decisions, be arrayed as criminals or respondents if the marriage between him and his wife failed due to any reason whatsoever after few years of marriage. If the sin committed by such parents of boy is that they facilitated the marriage, then this sin is equally committed by parents of the girl. If such marriage fails then parents of both bride and groom would have to share equal responsibility. The responsibility of parents of the groom cannot be more. Shelter of Indian culture and joint family cannot be taken to book only relatives of boy. A womans shared household in India in such cases is also her parents house where she lived before marriage and not her in-laws house where she did not live after marriage.

15. When the shared household of husband and wife had not been in India for the last 08 years at any point of time, it is strange that the learned MM did not even think it proper to discuss as to how the father or the brother of the boy could be made respondents in proceedings of domestic violence, after husband and wife had not been able to pull on together. In the present case, Mr. Harbans Lal Malik petitioner could not be said to have shared household with the respondent since the respondent had not lived in his house as a family member, in a joint family of which Harbans Lal Malik was the head.

16. It is important to consider as to what "family" is and what "joint family" is. As per Blacks Law Dictionary (VI Edition) "family" means a collective body of persons who live in one house under one head or management. Dictionary states that the meaning of word "family" necessarily depends on field of law in which word is used, but this is the most common meaning. "Family" also means a group of blood relatives and all the relations who descend from a common ancestor or who spring Crl. Rev. P. No.252/2010, 253/2010 & 338/2010 Page 8 of 16 from a common root. However, for the purpose of domestic violence act where the object is to protect a woman from domestic violence, "family" has to be defined as a collective body of persons who live in one house under one head or management. In Chambers Dictionary (1994-95) again the "family" is defined as all those who live in one house i.e. parents, children servants; parents and their children. In Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1993 ed.) "family" is defined as a group of persons living in one household including parents and their children, boarders, servants and such a group is a organizational unit of society.

17. A Hindu Joint Family or Hindu Undivided Family (HUF) or a Joint Family is an extended family arrangement prevalent among Hindus of the Indian subcontinent, consisting of many generations living under the same roof. All the male members are blood relatives and all the women are either mothers, wives, unmarried daughters or widowed relatives, all bound by the common sapinda relationship. The joint family status being the result of birth, possession of joint cord that knits the members of the family together is not property but the relationship. The family is headed by a patriarch, usually the oldest male, who makes decisions on economic and social matters on behalf of the entire family. The patriarchs wife generally exerts control over the kitchen, child rearing and minor religious practices. All money goes to the common pool and all property is held jointly. The essential features of a joint family are:

Head of the family takes all decisions

All members live under one roof

Share the same kitchen

Three generations living together (though often two or more brothers live together or father and son live together or all the descendants of male live together)

Income and expenditure in a common pool - property held together. Crl. Rev. P. No.252/2010, 253/2010 & 338/2010 Page 9 of 16 A common place of worship

All decisions are made by the male head of the family patrilineal, patriarchal.

18. Thus, in order to constitute a family and domestic relationship it is necessary that the persons who constitute domestic relationship must be living together in the same house under one head. If they are living separate then they are not a family but they are relatives related by blood or consanguinity to each other. Where parents live separate from their son like any other relative, the family of son cannot include his parents. The parents can be included in the family of son only when they are dependent upon the son and/or are living along with the son in the same house. But when they are not dependent upon the son and they are living separate, the parents shall constitute a separate family and son, his wife and children shall constitute a separate family. There can be no domestic relationship of the wife of son with the parents when the parents are not living along with the son and there can be no domestic relationship of a wife with the parents of her husband when son along with the wife is living abroad, maintaining a family there and children are born abroad. I, therefore consider that Harbans Lal Malik could not have been made as a respondent in a petition under Domestic Violence Act as he had no domestic relationship with aggrieved person even if this marriage between her and her husband was subsisting.

19. I, also consider that the definition of "wife" as available under Section 125 Cr.P.C could not be imported into Domestic Violence Act. The Legislature was well aware of Section 125 Cr.P.C. and if Legislature intended, it would have defined "wife" as in Section 125 Cr.P.C in Domestic Violence Act as well. The purpose and object of Domestic Violence and provision under Section 125 Cr.P.C. is different. While Domestic Violence Act has been enacted by the Parliament to prevent acts of domestic violence on women living in a shared household. Section 125 of Cr.P.C. is to prevent vagrancy where wife is left high and dry without maintenance. Law gives Crl. Rev. P. No.252/2010, 253/2010 & 338/2010 Page 10 of 16 a right to claim maintenance under Civil Law as well as Section 125 Cr.P.C. even to a divorced wife, but an act of domestic violence cannot be committed on a divorced wife, who is not living with her husband or family and is free to live wherever she wants. She has a right to claim maintenance and enforce other rights as per law. She has a right to claim custody of children as per law but denial of these rights do not amount to domestic violence. Domestic Violence is not perceived in this manner. The definition of "Domestic Violence" as given in Section 3 of The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 and is under:

3. D e f i n i t i o n o f d o m e s t i c v i o l e n c e .- For the purposes of this Act, any act, omission or commission or conduct of the respondent shall constitute domestic violence in case it -

(a) harms or injures or endangers the health, safety, life, limb or well-being, whether mental or physical, of the aggrieved person or tends to do so and includes causing physical abuse, s*xual abuse, verbal and emotional abuse and economic abuse; or (b) harasses, harms, injures or endangers the aggrieved person with a view to coerce her or any other person related to her to meet any unlawful demand for any dowry or other property or valuable security; or

(c) has the effect of threatening the aggrieved person or any person related to her by any conduct mentioned in clause (a) or clause (b); or(d) otherwise injures or causes harm, whether physical or mental, to the aggrieved person.

Explanation I.-For the purposes of this section,-

(i) "physical abuse" means any act or conduct which is of such a nature as to cause bodily pain, harm, or danger to life, limb, or health or impair the health or development of the aggrieved person and includes assault, criminal intimidation and criminal force;

(ii) "s*xual abuse" includes any conduct of a s*xual nature that abuses, humiliates, degrades or otherwise violates the dignity of woman;

(iii) "verbal and emotional abuse" includes-

Crl. Rev. P. No.252/2010, 253/2010 & 338/2010 Page 11 of 16 (a) insults, ridicule, humiliation, name calling and insults or ridicule specially with regard to not having a child or a male child; and

(b) repeated threats to cause physical pain to any person in whom the aggrieved person is interested.

(iv) "economic abuse" includes-

(a) deprivation of all or any economic or financial resources to which the aggrieved person is entitled under any law or custom whether payable under an order of a court or otherwise or which the aggrieved person requires out of necessity including, but not limited to, household necessities for the aggrieved person and her children, if any, stridhan, property, jointly or separately owned by the aggrieved person, payment of rental related to the shared household and maintenance;

(b) disposal of household effects, any alienation of assets whether movable or immovable, valuables, shares, securities, bonds and the like or other property in which the aggrieved person has an interest or is entitled to use by virtue of the domestic relationship or which may be reasonably required by the

aggrieved person or her children or her stridhan or any other property jointly or separately held by the aggrieved person; and (c) prohibition or restriction to continued access to resources or facilities which the aggrieved person is entitled to use or enjoy by virtue of the domestic relationship including access to the shared household.



20. This definition pre supposes that the woman is living with the person who committed violence and domestic relationship is not dead buried or severed. This does not speak of past violence which a woman suffered before grant of divorce.

21. The next question which arises is whether the learned Court of MM could have ignored the decree granted by the Court of New Jersey, USA. Section 14 of CPC reads as under:

14. Presumption as to foreign judgments. The Court shall presume upon the production of any document purporting to be a certified copy of a foreign judgment that such judgment was pronounced by a Court of competent jurisdiction, unless the contrary appears on the record; but such presumption may be displaced by proving want of jurisdiction.

Crl. Rev. P. No.252/2010, 253/2010 & 338/2010 Page 12 of 16

22. It is evident from the reading of this provision that the Court has to presume, if a certified copy of foreign judgment is produced that such judgment was pronounced by a Court of competent jurisdiction unless the contrary appears on record or is proved. Obtaining of divorce by husband from New Jersey Court is not denied in this case. Prima facie New Jersey, USA Court had jurisdiction is evident from the fact that husband and wife lived together in New Jersey for 7 1/2 years. The laws of New Jersey provided that the jurisdiction in a matrimonial matter can be assumed by the Court if the parties have ordinarily lived there for one year. In the present case admittedly the parties lived there for 7 1/2 years thus prima facie there was no issue whether the Court of New Jersey had jurisdiction or not.

23. Section 13 of CPC provides as under:

13. When foreign judgment not conclusive.

A foreign judgment shall be conclusive as to any matter thereby directly adjudicated upon between the same parties or between parties under whom they or any of them claim litigating under the same title except-

(a) where it has not been pronounced by a Court of competent jurisdiction;

(b) where it has not been given on the merits of the case; (c) where it appears on the face of the proceedings to be founded on an incorrect view of international law or a refusal to recognise the law of 1[India] in cases in which such law is applicable; (d) where the proceedings in which the judgment was obtained are opposed to natural justice;

(e) where it has been obtained by fraud;

(f) where it sustains a claim founded on a breach of any law in force in 1[India].

24. It is evident that a foreign judgment has to be on the face of it considered to be final. The explanations as mentioned in Section 13 are to be proved by a person who alleges that the foreign judgment was not to be relied on and should not be considered. A foreign judgment can be set aside by a competent Court, only when the person aggrieved from foreign judgment asks for a declaration Crl. Rev. P. No.252/2010, 253/2010 & 338/2010 Page 13 of 16 that the judgment should not be acted upon. So long as the foreign judgment is not set aside and the issue regarding foreign judgment is not adjudicated by a competent Court, the judgment cannot be ignored and a Court cannot brush aside a foreign judgment as a non- consequential. Section 13 & 14 of CPC provide how a foreign judgment is to be dealt with. A Court in India has to presume that the judgment delivered by a foreign Court where the parties had lived for 7 1/2 years and given birth to a girl, is a judgment given by a competent court and if anyone wants that this judgment be disregarded, he has to prove the same before the Court. So long as he does not prove it, the judgment is considered as a valid judgment and has to be given effect to.

25. It was argued by the respondent Counsel that the respondent did not participate in proceedings before the Court of New Jersey, USA. Participating or not participating before the Court is not a ground for setting aside its judgment. The grounds for setting aside a foreign judgment are given in Section 13 CPC and this is not one of the grounds.

26. The question of jurisdiction was considered by the Court of New Jersey, USA that awarded decree of divorce and it is not shown by the Counsel for respondent how Court of New Jersey had no jurisdiction when the two parties lived there for 7 1/2 years and gave birth to a US citizen within the jurisdiction of that Court. Learned Counsel for the respondent relied upon Y. Narasimha Rao v. Venkata Lakshmi (1991) 3 SCC 451 to press the point that a decree of divorce granted by a foreign Court should not be relied upon since the parties were married in India and they were governed by Hindu Marriage Act. A bare perusal of the judgment of New Jersey Court would show that the divorce was granted on the ground of cruelty which is one of the grounds available under Hindu Marriage Act. Crl. Rev. P. No.252/2010, 253/2010 & 338/2010 Page 14 of 16

27. In Y. Narasimha Raos case (supra), decree of divorce was obtained by husband from the Circuit Court of St. Louis Country Missouri, USA by creating a jurisdiction of that Court as the condition for invoking jurisdiction of that Court was 90 days residence. Supreme Court observed that the residence does not mean a "temporary residence" for the purpose of obtaining divorce but it must be "habitual residence "which is intended to be a permanent residence for future as well, since it was not the case, the decree was found to be null and void. It is not the position in this case. The parties had made New Jersey as their home for 7 1/2 years thus the Court of New Jersey could not be said to have assumed jurisdiction only on the basis of temporary residence of husband. I also consider that issue of assuming jurisdiction on the basis of temporary residence may have no force today when statutory provisions in India allow assumption of jurisdiction on the basis of a temporary residence [Section 27(1)(a) of Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005].

28. I am surprised that the Courts below did not give weight to the judgment of New Jersey where parties lived for 7 1/2 years but assumed jurisdiction under Domestic Violence Act because of the pure temporary residence (as pleaded by her) of wife in Delhi who is otherwise resident of Hissar. The Court of ASJ wanted that the order of the Court of MM should be honoured by the US while the Court here would not honour a decree of Court of USA where the husband and wife lived for 7 1/2 years.

29. I consider that the decree of divorce granted by the Court of New Jersey, USA where husband and wife lived together for 7 1/2 years and gave birth to a child could not be ignored and it could not be said that domestic relationship of the wife continued with her husband in New Jersey or her in-laws living at Panipat. Crl. Rev. P. No.252/2010, 253/2010 & 338/2010 Page 15 of 16

30. The learned MM and learned ASJ committed jurisdictional error by assuming jurisdiction under Domestic Violence Act, in view of admitted fact that the wife had all along, before filing the petition under Domestic Violence Act, lived with her husband in USA. Her shared household had been in USA, her husband was still living in USA the child was born in USA. The courts below also committed grave error by making brother or father of the husband and father of the husband jointly responsible for payment of Rs.50,000/- to the wife. There was no justification for directing brother of the husband to pay this amount. Once a son grows and he starts earning, marries, makes his separate home, and sires children the burden of his wife cannot be put on the shoulders of his father or brother on an estrangement between husband and wife. This burden has to be borne by the husband alone and not by the parents or bothers or sister of the husband, unless and until the husband had been contributing to the joint family as a member of HUF and has a right of deriving benefits from the joint family. If the husband had not been contributing or deriving benefits from the joint family, had not been member of the joint family and the parents had been treated like any other relative, how can the parents be burdened with the responsibility of his wife.

31. In view of my above discussion, order dated 27th July, 2009 passed by learned MM and order dated 7th May, 2010 passed by learned ASJ, directing payment of Rs.50,000/- jointly and severally, ignoring the decree of divorce and without devolving upon the domestic relationship are illegal and not tenable. The orders are set aside. No order as to costs.

July 29, 2010 SHIV NARAYAN DHINGRA, J. vn



Crl. Rev. P. No.252/2010, 253/2010 & 338/2010 Page 16 of 16

Should a concubine get maintenance? SC to examine the question

 Oct 4, 2010

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday decided to examine whether a live-in partner, concubine or a girlfriend is entitled to maintenance even though under existing Indian laws she is not eligible for the same.

The apex court passed the direction while chiding a man for having intimate relationship with a woman for 14 years but refusing to pay her maintenance on the ground that she was not legally entitled to it.

A Bench of Justices Markandeya Katju and T S Thakur appointed senior counsel Jayant Bhushan to assist the court on the issue and posted the matter for further hearing on Wednesday.

The Bench said though Indian laws may not permit it yet, there was no reason why such benefit should not be extended to a live-in-partner and cited the ruling of a Californian court in the US which had ordered similar relief by invoking the doctrine of "palimony."

"You had spent 14 years with her. She lost her youth but you do not want to pay anything to her. She might not have been legally married to you but you have an obligation," Justice Katju, heading the Bench, told counsel Harish Kumar T appearing for D Velusamy.

Velusamy moved the Supreme Court after a matrimonial court in Tamil Nadu had ordered him to pay an alimony (maintenance) of Rs 500 to D Patchaiammal who insists she was married to Velusamy in 1986.

Counsel for Veluswamy said Patchaiammal's claim was false as he was already married in 1980 and any so-called marriage in 1986 was invalid in the eyes of the law.

Veluswamy's lawyer submitted that the matrimonial court and the High Court had taken an erroneous view that Patchaimmal was entitled to maintenance under Section 125 Cr PC. Under the law, an estranged wife, besides, aged parents and children of a man are entitled to maintenance from the latter.

The counsel pointed out that there was no provision for providing maintenance to a woman who is not legally married.

"It may be true that under Section 125 Cr PC she may not be entitled to maintenance but you had spent time with her for 14 years. There was a ruling by a Californian court in the Marwin Vs Marwin case where the court ordered that 'palimony" should be paid even if the woman is not legally married," the Bench said.

The apex court pointed out that the term 'palimony" emanated from the word "Pals" under which such relationship was a sort of contract even if it was an "oral agreement."

The Bench then proceeded to appoint the amicus curiae to assist the court on determining the issue in the light of the ruling of the Californian court

Advocate does a Shanti Bhushan, names 8 `corrupt' judges

Oct 4 2010

PRATHIPADU (East Godavari): Taking a leaf out of the book of eminent lawyer and former law minister Shanti Bhushan who raised doubts about the integrity of some former chief justices of India (CJIs), a senior advocate of Prathipadu has sought high court action against eight subordinate judges for indulging in corrupt practices.

The advocate, A V Gurunadh, who is also a campaigner against judicial corruption, said, "The common man approaches the subordinate courts to seek early justice. But there are several judges of subordinate courts who are awfully corrupt. If the muck in the subordinate courts is not cleaned by the respective state HC, then there is no sanctity to the order of the CJI on the removal of corrupt judges in subordinate courts across the country," Gurunadh added.

Based on the CJI direction (dated Sept. 14, 2008) that any judicial officer who is unfit, ineffective and incompetent or has doubtful integrity could be retired from service, the advocate sought information from the inquiry wings/judicial committees on the eight subordinate judges. He had filed an appeal before the Appellate Authority (AA) under the RTI Act of 2005 and sought details from the state public information officer-cum-registrar (judicial).

Gurunadh said he also sought information as to under which legislation or regulation that an inquiry on the `corrupt' judicial officer would be conducted. "The inquiry wings or disciplinary committees of HC which conduct the probe are supposed to provide information as public interest is involved in it," he felt.

Sources said though the AA had directed the SPIO (judicial) to furnish information to the appellant on or before July 31 this year, the SPIO had replied to the advocate that information relating to the subordinate judges was strictly confidential and that it was not permissible to furnish information to a third party.

Spanish dads can now take 'breastfeeding leave'

Oct 4 2010

LONDON: Working dads may wish to take Spanish citizenship after reading this.

Europe's top court has ruled that working fathers in Spain are entitled to take " breastfeeding leave" daily even if the child's mother is not employed.

The new ruling by the European Union Court of Justice in Luxembourg means that both the mother and father are allowed to leave work for an hour during the day or reduce their working day by half an hour during the first nine months following the birth of a child, the Telegraph reported.

In Spain, fathers are currently only allowed to apply for breastfeeding leave if the mother is employed full time.

But, the top court ruled last week that the Spanish law, which was instituted in 1900 to facilitate breastfeeding by the mother, caused an "unjustified discrimination on grounds of sex" as fathers do not have the same rights as mothers.

The Spanish man who challenged the law, Pedro Manuel Roca Alvarez, said his request to take breastfeeding leave from his job in Galicia was rejected because the mother of his child was self-employed.

Such a refusal, the court said, could have the effect of forcing self-employed mothers to limit their work because the father cannot share the burden.

Not giving dads the same right as mums in this case "is liable to ... keep men in a role subsidiary to that of women in relation to the exercise of their parental duties," the court ruled.

Breastfeeding leave should now be considered as "time purely devoted to the child" in order to reconcile family life and work after maternity leave, the court said.

Out-of-court alimony settlement, not final: HC

Sept 23, 2010

AHMEDABAD: A settlement outside the court of law during divorce has no value as far as a wife's right to alimony is concerned. Gujarat high court has ruled that even if a woman forgoes her right to maintenance in an out-of-court settlement in writing, she can claim and is entitled to alimony from her estranged husband.

In one such case from Panchmahal district, Sumitra Jadabhai separated from her husband Vikramsinh Rathod in 2001. They separated voluntarily through a divorce deed prepared out of court. And in the compromise deed, which was in writing, Sumitraben stated that she gave up all her right to claim alimony. However, in 2006, she approached the court and demanded maintenance from her husband. The magistrate ordered in 2009 that the woman was entitled to get Rs 900 from the husband every month.

This order was challenged by the husband in a district court, where the husband cited the compromise deed by which Sumitra had relinquished all her rights to alimony. The district court allowed the husband's application and ruled that the woman should not be given any maintenance.

Sumitra approached the high court this year. After hearing the case, Justice Akil Kureshi concluded that the 'so-called compromise was not entered before any court of law. It was an agreement in writing between the parties outside the court. The validity of the divorce deed entered outside the court, it is significant that, no court had occasion to examine reasonableness and fairness of terms of such agreement. When the wife had outside court agreed forgoing her total right of maintenance for all times to come without any amount received from the husband, enforcing such agreement would be opposed to public policy," the high court observed.

Thus, holding that depriving the woman of her right to alimony on basis of an agreement prepared outside the court is against public policy, the high court quashed the district court's order. Justice Kureshi restored the magisterial court's order and asked the husband to pay maintenance to the petitioner on a regular basis.