Divorce and Property: where did the child go?

From the Huffington PostOf course, not one mention of what the child might want. Or that the child is anything other than a contested piece of property. A recent re-read of the Communist Manifesto was remarkable to me in many ways. Marx and Engels write of the evolution of society and points to the moment a hunting party turns to a human settlement as easier than the rigours of the hunt - that the raiding party is a natural extension of the hunting party, and the long known customs of war - kill all the men, rape all the women and enslave the children. That women were the first property in Marx and Engels gives the two a feminist consciousness not always acknowledge. Marx and Engels argue for the dissolution of the nuclear family in order to free children and women from servitude. I was especially struck by the repeated use of the word democracy in connexion w/ socialism. As any one who has made a cursory glance thru the Marxist ouvre, is struck by a religious sense of communism being the Omega Point of Humanity - a thing of the far future. The Communist Manifesto can without a single edit fit any kind of Fabian Socialism you like. I for instance believe in a Socialist Democratic Republic, and have a touch of the royal in my chart, and fancy myself a latter day Emperor Norton, tho at the time being, going incognito and unproclaimed. (unless you were at the poetry readings in San Francisco where i worked out the details of my plan to take over the world.) I

Of course, not one mention of what the child might want. Or that the child is anything other than a contested piece of property. Does 'conventional' divorce take the real status of the child[ren] into account i.e., do the children have lawyers representing their interest.

As a child i learned that the 1st Amendment does not apply to children. Children have no redress against censorship. Because the child belongs to someone, the school, while ze is there, is in loco parentis. The Founding Fathers did not consider anyone without land a citizen. The extension of the franchise to more and wider groups is still being fought, but no one talks of the native child as citizen. Why shd not some one who can read not be allowed to vote for President? in fact, to have an opinion, one need not be literate. An indiscriminate perusal of the comments on these kinds of discussions suggests that one not be 'literate' to compose a comment. So why not when a child is old enough to understand that they are making an important choice (what? 5 - i think a 3 year old capable of deciding "I like this candidate, i don't like this other candidate.")

I admire all the people who have put a lot of thought and time and personal availability for those undergoing the dissolution of a family. And a lot of well meaning people cannot prevent themselves as thinking of children as a special kind of property. I can say of my daughter "She is mine." but not legally. Without a helpful free lawyer to point out that my natural child has the right to certain benefits, including health insurance, as i struggle to maintain on disability, after my mental illness brought about the end of contact w/ my daughter. After a couple of postcards detailing the adventures of Bille Bunne and Tejas [pronounced w/ a hard 'j'] i received a bille bunne and tejas story from the mother explaining that seeing her father go insane is too painfull for little girls to witness. I am reminded that i was explosive and unpredictable - the kind of person a child shd be protected from. Without the understanding that is her father re:birth certificate, that my daughter was entitled to benefits (i don't know about the not living w/ me part) so that a letter delivered by a Local Marshall (causing my roommate to hide in the closet) having nothing on me, i answered the door and found myself in receipt of some paperwork relinquishing my rights as a father, so her mother's husband cd adopt her. The explanation given was so that he cd put her on his insurance. It tore my heart out, when the lawyer in Texas explained that in order to fight i would have to return to Texas, pay child support out of my disability pittance… and the likely outcome was that i wd lose no matter how hard i fought, and that he wouldn't do it for less than $7000, which was a fantastic a sum as 7 trilllion as far as my assets are concerned. My daughter on facebook uses her first name, her 2 middle names, her mother's maiden name which is her name or her birth certificate and her stepfather's name. Tho her facebook identifies me as her father, so also is so listed her stepfather. He and his mother started dating as i was going out of my mind (to a whole other level - later in the process i decided i would no longer fight it, and give up my skeptickal toolkit. "Let's see how far it goes…" That decision came either before or after my final contact w/ my daughter, the chronology of that period (there were a lot of drugs) is vague, but i think after. I remember the where (walking down Filmore between Haight and Waller - on my way either to or from Body Manipulations where i had a major passion for an employee. seeing her was the highlight of my week. and i slipped in and out of rapid cycling i decided i would not divert the crazy into a major depression, but go w/ it. by the following year i was back on psych meds, escaped from Texas w/ 3 months of psych meds to tide me over before the system took me over here. Since i had the meds and diagnoses and a chart as big as the Encyclopedia Britannica plus a very public display of madness that has left me convinced that if only eveyone listened to me, that i could save the world.

My parents fought savagely - all verbal, no hitting, but i wished they wd divorce with all my heart. Or to quote my 12 year old nephew at a combined Birthday for my mom and myself (we are both Leos and against my better judgement have often visited Texas in August) (a propos nothing in the conversation) "I hate my dad." i bit my lip. His mother, my sister Alison, looks at him a moment particularly unreadable and sez: "That's not a nice thing to say. Can you think of a better way to say that?" he thought a moment and said "I strongly dislike my father." I cda high fived him, but i was maintaining as high a level of truce concerning her Asshole Husband, and was only silent witness. Right on kid! Even you know yr dad is as Asshole. that is his nature, and the racist crap that goes with it is all of a piece. I feel the same way toward the Irish that he does towards Blacks and mixed and his racial bullshit. mine is more Scottish - Fuck All Of You, Especially you Other Scottish bastards. I say, take 2 steps back. by that i mean, go to the land of one of your grandparents. In Mythological Terms: the Witch, the Werewolf, The Evil Vampyre and