Article content continued

Amitay’s presence alone will make the men who attend this event feel validated and supported, a rare occurrence for many men in our society. In an interview, Amitay told me that when the going gets tough for men, they have a tendency to go down one of two unhelpful routes: either clam up, refusing to ask for support, or grow bitter and angry and act out. He aims to give them a better option, to adopt a perspective that is neither closed nor self-destructively mired in feelings of victimhood. He describes the tools he offers as “self-agency” and “self-efficacy” — a means of navigating “the reality.”

Amitay has had a great deal of experience in supporting men caught up in coils of injustice created by our father-frosty family court system. So one extremely important facet of the reality he refers to is the fact that when it comes to continuity of the parental role with children after separation, apart from a minority of gender-neutral judges, family courts are overwhelmingly friendlier to mothers. A full 77 per cent of sole custody orders go to moms, and this includes many cases of not especially great moms challenging the claims of the undisputed best of fathers who ask only for shared custody. In his practice, Amitay sees the tragic effects of this bias on men.

Amitay is particularly keen to connect with male students — young men on our campuses who feel they are being blamed for all the world’s ills, not an exaggeration to anyone who studies Gender Studies texts. One of his messages to them, he told me, will be, “you need to learn to work around the fact that you’re being told you can’t have a voice.”

But it would be wonderful if many female students attended as well. Young women are simply not getting a balanced gender picture from their feminist teachers. Here is an opportunity for open-minded women to discover that “silencing” is a two-way gender street.

Amitay’s talk will take place Mar. 21 at 7 p.m. in Room 103 of Fitzgerald Building, 150 College St, University of Toronto.

National Post

kaybarb@gmail.com

Twitter.com/BarbaraRKay