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TAILGATING PART 2 CODEBREAKING

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CODE BREAKING (TAILGATING part 2)

As I sat in my office, overlooking the very country road where for the first time in my life I pulled over for a tailgater and let them go past, I thought about what had happened over those two days.

 

I thought again about Osgoode Village, the truck tailgater, my response, the next day sedan tailgater, and how I had pulled over to wish someone well who, only moments before, was a threat.

 

I thought of where in the body I feel it when such things occur. The racing pulse, shorter breathing, the tight gut and full threat alertness and physiological arousal as the wolf is summoned, just in case. I remembered the ways I might protest and curse at the interloper crowding my back end, the furtive back-and-forth glances at the road and rearview mirror, options running through my mind.

 

When else had I felt like that? Of course, every time I’d been tailgated, came the answer. And what about earlier than that, I pondered. What’s the earliest I can remember ever feeling this way?

 

I let that sit for a day or two, moving in and out of my office, hearing the cars whiz by the end of my driveway. I was unhurried, curious, exploring, imagining, seeking only to access an intuitive understanding of why this happens.

 

About three days later, it came to me:  the earliest time I can remember this kind of arousal was when I was a little boy, say, between age 8 or so and 11, sitting in the living room at my parent’s home watching black & white TV with my eight siblings, and dad would walk in and take his seat.

 

My dad had his own chair, centrally located in the room, directly opposite the TV. He’d arrive and someone would scramble out of his way, maybe two of us even, so he could take his place and watch with us. It was usually Bonanza, Star Trek, Walt Disney, or cartoons like Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Donald Duck, and the odd time Superman, Spiderman, and their ilk.

 

Thinking back to those times I realized that dad’s arrival made me uncomfortable. So much so that in short order, sometimes in five minutes and at other times in ten, I’d make an excuse about having something to do and leave the room. I’d leave Dad and the TV to my brothers and sisters.

 

Why did I do that? I never even realized I was doing it at the time. The house was run by mom and backed up by dad. With nine kids to look after, ma was tireless and efficient and had little time for anyone stepping out of line. Morality at home was assumed more than it was taught.

And on those occasions where she felt the full weight of her martyrdom, your perceived transgressions fueling the “being taken for granted” caregiver’s dilemma, she summoned her husband as punisher. Mom gave a lot, and sometimes she took a little back.

Over the years of my early life dad had tried various lesser pieces of wood spanking his children and finally settled on a twenty-inch piece of maple hockey stick handle he called “the ruler.” He kept this on top of the kitchen door frame for all to see.

Typically, the progression of his ire was first a look that could kill, then a raised voice that froze you in place, often followed with a slap or a throw across the room, and finally, if he was sufficiently agitated, a spanking with the ruler. I held the family record for number of strikes.

One time a classmate and I were caught tossing a note back and forth in class. It was grade three and our teacher was a nun with the most beautiful face. My friend Jr. sent the first volley with “caca” written on it. I replied with “pipi” and sent it back.

An exchange or two later and, the aerodynamics of folded paper being what they are, my return landed on the desk of another student, the teacher’s pet. To my horror Miss Good-Goody-Two-Shoes promptly read the note and turned it in while pointed me out to the teacher. Since we lived just up the street, I was sent home with a note at lunchtime.

 

I tried to explain myself to ma, but she spied the envelope I was holding behind my back and demanded to see it. After reading it, all she said was “Wait ‘til your father gets home.”

I knew I was fucked.

 

That evening, I got the family record: seventy-two full adult swings on my backside while I held on to my bedpost with pants pulled down. After 30 strikes I’d fall to the ground and beg for mercy. “Daddy, no!” I’d say, “I won’t do it again.”  But he’d just reply with “Get up!” and keep hitting me.

 

My two older brothers listened from the other room and counted the total. It was said I screamed so loudly the neighbours all around us could hear. It wasn’t the first time the old man had yelled at me or hit me, and it wasn’t the last time either.

I’m not writing this to re-live difficult episodes of my early years. Rather, I share these experiences in the hopes others will understand the process I used to address a longstanding shortcoming. Keep in mind this is about tailgating, yes, but much more than that.

 

It’s enough to say that my nervous system was changed forevermore that day. I was a good kid, no real problems. In fact, I was attending French school as an Anglophone speaker.

Though I understood not a word in grade one, sometime in grade two I had gone to school in the morning ignorant and confused… and come home understanding a new language.

By grade six I was class president.

 

As I said, the day I got the family record wouldn’t be the last time I was spanked, but it seems that day he beat the emotion out of me. It took many years before I could feel again, at least the way I surmise others might feel in every-day situations.

 

And so it was that I learned to avoid my father at every turn. My instincts for self preservation honed to a sharp edge, if he showed up, I was out of there as soon as I could. Apparently, he noticed.

Probably when I was eleven or so, my folks tried family therapy at a local mental institution. I remember a session facilitated by two therapists where my father turned his attention to me in and accused me of avoiding him. I was so overwhelmed that I responded angrily and stormed out in tears. They found me later walking down Carling Avenue alone and pulled the car over and let me in.

Not a word was said that I recall. I don’t remember ever going back to therapy either.

 

Operating System

As I sat in my office remembering all of this, I saw how my physiological arousal while being tailgated dovetailed with the way I felt in the living room of my parent’s home watching TV when dad would come in: people all around, eyes on the TV, on my father, on the TV, on my father, on the TV…

 

That was it. A perfect match of fact and feelings.

The first time visiting with “Little Chris” years ago required a fair degree of compassion and understanding. Partly that was to make sure I didn’t just scare him off, sending that part of me into hiding again. I talk about this in Sipping Fear Pissing Confidence, my book about addictions.

In my experience, no one survives childhood emotionally unscathed under perfectly imperfect parenting. All of us have a Younger Self wandering the darkened hallways of the psyche, looking, searching, maybe holding a stuffed Teddy Bear and dragging a favourite blanket, looking for belonging. And that part of us always has a story to tell.

 

So, I asked myself given the circumstances and how I felt, what would I have to believe to make these facts and feelings true. I thought hard about that, re-imagining myself as a boy, barely double digits in age, in that setting with the matching beige pleather couches, every seat taken by someone, the movement of characters on TV, seeing through my eyes as if I were there again…

 

And it again, the messaging came to me: “I’m in danger. Something bad will happen.”

Looking at the TV, looping, “I’m in danger” and glancing towards dad “Something bad will happen” and at the TV, “I’m in danger” and over my shoulder at dad “Something bad will happen.”

 

Now, I imagined driving down the road being tailgated and saw that I was unconsciously ruled by these same two declarations. “I’m in danger” looking at the road, and “something bad will happen” while glancing at the rearview, back to the road and “I’m in danger” and to the rearview “Something bad will happen.” These were the irrational beliefs summoning the wolf.

This was a part of my operating system: nervous system coping from decades ago that had been superimposed on tailgaters all that time and had never been updated

 

It was like using Commodore 64 in a Windows 11 world.

I’d learned to manage that kind of physiological arousal as a child by leaving the room and avoiding my father’s wrath. I couldn’t do that while driving. I was stuck there not feeling safe and expecting something bad would happen. These were the same feelings I had at 8-9-10-11 years old. They were with me still.

 

Like learning to walk at an early age and doing it automatically ever since, I’d learned the danger of keeping my eyes ahead on a screen while a menace lurked around me outside my control.

 

It was my nervous system, trained by the body-mind long ago, and on occasions like this, still on autopilot all these years later. It was time to take over the controls and create new concepts my brain could use predictively next time someone decides to follow my vehicle too closely.

Conditioning

I’d experimented that first time with the sedan on my street and it had worked better than expected. What was needed was more opportunities like this to put in place new thoughts, new feelings and new behaviours because the predictive brain is trained by experience. If it learned one way, it could learn another.

 

I had done this enough times over the years so that I didn’t have to reach out and comfort, reparent, or father my younger self. In my Taming Shame course I teach a few ways of doing this. I did, however, keep him in mind, compassionately, just in case, as I went about watching for the chance to practice giving my brain new concepts to use in the future.

 

It wasn’t long before a chance came about. On the way to the local supermarket with my daughter one of those little Japanese cars with loud exhaust and a stylish racing wing on the back showed up and was impatiently hurrying me along.

 

I knew a left turn lane ahead had a right lane go-around for a hundred metres or so.

 

As soon as I reached that point in the road, I quickly signaled and moved into the slower right lane and let the little sports car pass. While doing so I thought to myself, “Here, allow me,” in highly polite-Canadian fashion.

 

Off they went, zooming on by and I could see them get stuck behind cars a ways up the road and finally stop at some lights. Meanwhile, daughter and I continued our pleasant conversation before we turned into the grocery store completely unbothered by the tailgater. Such freedom.

 

The idea is to have new thoughts, new feelings, while engaging in a new behaviour. In my case, in addition to “Here, allow me,” I’d think, “Sure, if you need the road that badly, here it is,” or “You must be in a terrible hurry,” or, “Here you go brother/sister, let me help,” as I pull over and let them pass.

 

I did a version of this seven or eight times at this initial writing. The emotional activation of when I first notice the tailgater through to the subsequent methods to deal with them has diminished in intensity each time. The rule is if your emotional response doesn’t fit circumstances, an update is in order.

 

By not rewarding the nervous system with my usual response to tailgaters, the old way of dealing with things will die out completely through behavioural “extinction” simply because it’s no longer being reinforced by the usual O/S behaviours, thoughts and feelings which sustained it.

 

And the more times I can use my new response to the tailgating situation and not use the old method that plagued me for decades, the more the predictive brain will put in place the new concepts to use in the future.

I am almost looking forward to tailgaters now. Nuts eh?

Sure enough, the day before Christmas Eve (men’s shopping days for sure), I had to travel into town during a snowstorm. On the way back, the roads were full of snow. No way you could see lines demarking lanes and cautious driving was the way to go.

Going through Findlay Creek some dude is six feet from my bumper and honking his horn because I’m driving down the middle of two lanes IN A SNOWSTORM instead of one. So I pull over enough to let him zip by me. I was a little envious of his traction, admittedly, nothing like my Elantra.

At the next lights I rolled up beside him and lowered my window, smiling, gesturing at the road while telling him if he needs to get somewhere I cede the road to him with pleasure. He yelled back thanking me and mentioning that there are two lanes there. I smiled and asked if he noticed THE SNOWSTORM laughing. The light changed. We moved on, him ahead, pulling in a half mile up the road at a used car place. I gave him a short honk politely as I went by. I assume we are friendly now.

 

That’s how you update your operating system.

©2026 CHRISTOPHER K WALLACE
all rights reserved Advisor to Men™

WOW EFFECT

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WOW EFFECT
Nothing brings things to the fore emotionally between couples like being rejected in the bedroom. You can’t hide who you are when you are in your birthday suit. What you see is what you get.

Getting naked with someone takes risk, especially in the beginning, but also trust if you are going to keep doing it.

Without trust, you have nothing.

Males of the western world (and much of the rest of the planet) have lost the generational masculinity so necessary to their maturational development. (read that again)

Males have a large group bias, solve problems using technological advances, and are practical collaborators who stand shoulder to shoulder with other men to build cultures.

Over two world wars, the plague, the nuclear era and the communist threat, and consequential changes in families, Team Human was deprioritized and the result is over-mothered and under-fathered boys who grow up under the “wow effect.”

Let me explain: If a guy robs a bank one day, and a woman robs the same bank identically the next week, and both are caught, you can bet she’s getting a lesser sentence. That’s the “women are wonderful” effect and it’s real and everywhere

Let me add that at their best women are truly wonderful, but so are men when they are at their best too. WONDERFUL

If you have been in therapy a long time and still struggle, good chance you are involved in a form of Socratic questioning circle jerk. I don’t fault the industry I am part of but it’s the nature of the beast. Most therapists, most male therapists, were over-mothered in the same way as you probably were.

Female therapists are maternal by nature. So let me ask you: can you truly say you understand what it’s like to menstruate? No you cannot. And, similarly, she don’t get male weakness. At all…

It’s the blind leading the blind as they say. There are exceptions, bless them, and they don’t disprove the rule.

Have a look at my friend Christine’s comments wishing me happy birthday last week. She couldn’t bring herself to write the words herself but called me out for not mentioning all three of my children and when I asked her what she meant, this was her answer.

I found a couple more snips of complaints she’s made over the years about men. You can bet she doesn’t see the connection.

Lastly there is an answer from Justine on a friend’s wall about a dad bods post. People thinks she’s refuting the dad bod post but she’s not. She’s complaining about weak men. Like Christine.

That’s what they all complain about. All over the fucking world women at once create weak men and then complain about weak men once they reach adulthood. I hear it EVERY DAY.

So are women to blame? NO. They are being women.

It’s the generational masculinity that men have allowed to be pulled out from under boys that’s missing.

No one is coming to rescue you from this. Not a therapist, not your one male friend, not your mama or your wife or your GF.

It’s only by supporting generational masculinity as taught in the Defender Board of Directors that you will finally ascend to your rightful position as a powerful defender of life.

Failing this, your expendability means less or no pussy.

Because that’s how Team Human works.

Questions? Comments?

Merry Christmas!

True and free…
cw

ATM DEFENDER APP INTRO

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One of the things that struck me as I grew into middle age was that no one ever told me it was up to me to create order. Seems obvious maybe.

I had to run into the order versus chaos dichotomy from sheer ignorance borne from curiousity.

Meaning, it’s a damn good thing I like to read.

I suppose it’s also because I’d learned to be a manager in that purest of sales endeavours, the door-to-door crew business.

I’d hustled jobs and extra money as soon as I hit double digits in age and benefitted from my buddy and neighbour Graydon’s work ethic, but working doors over the years taught me plenty more.

When it comes to setting goals and making steady progress, what I see is that most guys have good intentions, often better than mine, but often fail to systematize their efforts to win.

Or they are blocked somehow.

Though women are usually exceptional organizers, order is key if we are to keep the forces of decay from overwhelming us. That’s very much a male responsibility.

I fling dumbbells around to keep grip strength and have done wall sits while brushing my teeth for decades to protect my knees. I used Day Timer’s system to organize my priorities in college (and still do to some extent).

From this attitude the quadrant system was born.


DAILY QUAD TRACKING
I like to add day of week (M,T,W, etc.) and put something in daily under each quadrant. Here I was with a pulled abdominal muscle but checked off 100 Jumping Jacks and 75 Pushups daily just the same. Tracking did that.

The quadrant system exists to organize daily actions across physiology, piety, people, and production, so that effort can be observed over time. It’s the daily actions, you see.

Like the way I’ve made my bed each morning for decades to “put order into my world.”

Like how I say psalm 118:24 to myself first thing when I pull the window curtain open in my room.

Even as a comfortable agnostic, these set my intentions for the day. It’s the rituals then.

These lessen anxiety, build resilience, form character, and often help with belonging.

For example ma went to church her whole life. Dad didn’t.

I asked him about it in his eighties, and he said he’d wished he’d attended.

Felt he’d missed out on the community.

 

Some psychologists liken us to herd animals, and tell of how the emotional system is governed by belonging.
The beautiful part of belonging is shared causes, and how as men stand shoulder to shoulder with each other they can accomplish just about anything.

And so, retired engineer and Defender Board member Gary took our stuff and built the Defender App for the benefit of all men. Gary is an amazing guy…

The Defender App supports the quadrant system by providing a stable place to record daily activity and revisit that record later.

Writing actions down creates a reference point that persists beyond mood, fatigue, or temporary self-assessment.

It’s also an app like none other.

WEEKLY CHECK IN 
It contains daily quadrant tracking and a weekly quadrant summarizing page.

It has place for a daily “to do” list and leaves room for a “one thing” to get done as this week’s priority.

Taking 15 minutes to review daily activity at the end of the week is really helpful, failing which I would need to assess how committed I am to progress in managing my life.

I like to review my daily activity and summarize them in a weekly “after action review” exercise every Sunday.

GOAL SETTING
Goal setting starts with a no-BS present time self assessment in each quadrant then it asks that you create goals in each for the next month, season, and year.

Firstly, it invites you to claim your identity by creating a Destiny Vision for each quadrant. Combined these make up a kind of deliberate masculine destiny path to follow.

This is critical for men.


We left room in seasonal and yearly goals to enter various levels of goals in each quadrant.

For example you can input a manageable goal, a slightly more challenging goal, a top end goal and a downright impossible or dream goal.

Having this stare you in the face each day helps you to decide what kind of man you want to be.

Ask: why be average when you can be amazing?

PRIVACY
In developing the app we thought about building an interface so you could also access your data on a desktop or laptop. I’ll tell you why we didn’t. We want your stuff to be fully private.

Besides, all of the goals and journaling entries can be saved to the journal section on the app itself or shared by email as a text file to keep in a file off the phone app itself.

Even though no one has time to look at your stuff, we didn’t even want the ability under any circumstance.

GETTING UNSTUCK 
A big reason for this is not just quadrant tracking and goal setting, but also the journaling functions which contain some of my best proprietary journaling techniques.

I refer to these as the “T Journals” as each can be described with a word beginning with T.

For example:

Option one is the open “free flow” journaling where you can enter whatever is on your mind. This is an important exercise where you can dump thoughts and feelings to find clarity.

Hence, “Talk Journaling”

Gratitude journaling encourages you to write at different intervals about whatever it is you have to be thankful for, a practice with profound effects on mental health in the way it reduces stress and depression, builds resilience, improves sleep, and enhances life satisfaction.

Hence, “Thanks! Journaling”

The blessings exercise follows that same idea and invites you to find three things that went well today, why those are important, and how to get more. I even get my kids to do this one.

Hence, “Tally! Journaling”

Caging the wolf will be familiar to those who have read Sipping Fear Pissing Confidence and has to do with refuting the “feed, fuck, kill, run, hide” lower order nervous system at play in addictions and general fear seeking. Instead, build your better character while claiming an identity you can be proud of.
A man must defend his confidence at all costs, I say.

Hence, “Temptation Journaling”

The 10R process is found in The Taming Shame course and has to do with identifying negative feelings but which may not fit the circumstances directly. These often signal an emotional trailhead of sorts. 10R provides a map so you can update your internal operating system.

Hence, “Trigger Journaling”

Lastly, the self care writing exercise is included so a man has a way of dealing with old wounds that might still be affecting his approach to life. This is the exact process I used to get past being beaten as a child, You may or may not make use of this deeper work, but it is there if needed.

Hence, “Trauma Journaling”

All of these can be saved into your personal journal library. The information stays on your phone where no one else can see. You can also send files to yourself.

I find that option particularly helpful when reviewing entries about temptation, being triggered, or about old traumatic events.

So, there you have it.
Daily tracking, weekly progress, goal setting based in facts and not in fiction and that build character and identity, as well as the most comprehensive journaling options possible.

The beauty of the system is if reluctance or inactivity interferes with intention it usually means there is work to do emotionally to resolve whatever is blocking a man’s progress. Combined, the various journaling options is like having an Advisor to Men™ in your pocket. Say what??

THE DEFENDER BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Ideally, you want a squad of men to whom you can turn to for feedback, like what we’ve created in The Defender Boards. The Defender App makes the whole process more efficient, and it’s gamification makes it fun too.


You have no doubt heard that what gets measured gets managed.

Life simplifies immensely with daily tracking because of its measurable progress.

The alternative might mean ten years go by only for a man to realize he did not, in fact, live a decade (or two), rather he lived a version of one year ten times.

Don’t be that man.

Set some goals, track your progress, defend your life.

Be an amazing guy…

Take the quad course, get the app, join the boards

Stay powerful, true and free…
cw

Don’t wait, get started today…

 Join us in building a Defender Destiny by taking this free course.
https://10mm.org/quad-courseVideo version of above: Defender App Intro video Dec,2025
https://youtu.be/4MhnQQWbuoo
🛡️ The Defender Board of Directors meets weekly in squads, daily in chat…
👉 Join here https://10mm.org/membership 
*Note Defender Board members get the Pro version of the app included.
Ask me for my special link to get in the board at less than the usual monthly app rate so you get both for less…

INNER WOMAN: INDIVIDUATION & THE ANIMA

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The Four Faces of Her… Within You
Individuation, the Anima, and the Way Forward

Most men I work with are stuck. They are not broken. They are not weak. But they are stuck. Not because they lack willpower. Not because they do not want to grow. But because something inside is unfinished. In Jungian psychology, that unfinished business is often the anima.

My first psychology teacher, a Gestaltist, introduced me to this idea of leftover stuff, with its best practitioner Fritz Perls calling it a “gunnysack of anger” carried over the shoulder wherever you go.

Holy fuck did I carry a load! Maybe you do too… I felt the burden and I realized then and there I had plenty of work to do. I learned to let go of that weight over time.

Through my studies in Behavioural Science, in short order I was introduced to the archetypal psychology of Carl Jung.

Jung’s analytical psych mentions Individuation as the psychological process of integrating the conscious and unconscious parts of the self to become a whole, unique individual. This is integration at its simplest. It involves confronting and balancing inner archetypes, like the anima, to achieve personal growth and self-realization.

The work we do in the Taming Shame course using the Younger Self 10R process is all about understanding the unconscious motivations that drive us. Constructed emotion and the predictive brain alongside my behavioural training mesh well with this approach.

Look, I could go on and on about this stuff but I’ll stop here. THE WORK is about updating your operating system. I call it “using a Commodore 64 operating system in a Windows 11 world.” You may be old enough to get that reference.

Jung describes the anima as the unconscious feminine side of a man’s psyche, representing emotions, intuition, and relational qualities. It influences how he perceives and connects with women and his inner self, evolving through stages from Eve to Sophia as he matures (explained forthwith).

So the anima is the inner image of the feminine that every man carries. She is not a fantasy. She is not a wish. She is the psychic counterpart to your masculine soul.

If she is not integrated, she will distort your relationships. She will lure you into chaos or make you retreat into passivity.

If she is integrated, she becomes your guide to wisdom, purpose, and love.

Individuation means reconciling the parts of your psyche that have been split apart. It is not a goal you check off a list. It is a lifelong process of becoming whole.

One major part of that process is how your inner woman matures. Jung described four stages of anima development: Eve, Helen, Mary, and Sophia.

You will recognize yourself in one or more of these…


Eve is the mother. At this stage, a man seeks care, unconditional acceptance, and emotional security. Many men who were abandoned or smothered by their mothers are stuck here. They do not desire a partner. They desire to be soothed. Often, this leads to addiction, dependency, or an inability to lead.


Helen is the lover. Here, a man is captivated by beauty, youth, and sensual energy. He becomes driven by attraction. He judges women based on looks. He chases validation from women instead of leading them. He fears aging because his anima is still adolescent. This man can be charming but is often insecure.


Mary is the virtuous woman. This phase is marked by a desire for devotion and meaning. The man begins to look for a woman of character. He may idealize goodness. He starts to ask questions like, “What is a good life?” and “What kind of man should I be?” His anima is maturing, and his heart begins
to serve something beyond pleasure.


Sophia is wisdom. She is not beautiful in the youthful sense. She is radiant in the eternal sense. A man at this stage no longer projects fantasy onto women. He sees them as they are. He respects them, but he is no longer ruled by them. His inner feminine now guides him toward truth, meaning, and deep alignment with life.

Most men I see are stuck in Eve or Helen.
They are either looking for a woman to mother them or a woman to turn them on.

And get this: They rarely recognize that what they are seeking is already inside them.

That is the purpose of individuation. Not to find the perfect woman. But to become the integrated man.

You cannot skip these stages. But you can stop getting stuck or bouncing around from one to the other.
Your anima will grow with you if you let her.

It is only with the anima that a man blesses others with his King energy. That’s how it works.

Start by asking yourself honestly: Who am I really drawn to, and why? What do I want from women? What do I fear they might see in me? What kind of woman do I want beside me when I am dying?

Let her grow. And you will grow too. Reverse the flow…

If this stirred something in you, share it. Join the Defender Boards. Learn what it means to walk shoulder to shoulder with men committed to becoming whole.

Stay powerful, true and free…
cw

Father Custody Rights

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The Marriage Contract Solution: A Father’s Case for Cultural Renewal
(A reflection on Stephen Baskerville’s argument for restoring marriage through father custody)

There’s a conversation we’re not having in the west, one that makes even the strongest men uncomfortable. Professor Stephen Baskerville of Warsaw University in Poland believes he’s found the key to unlocking not just the family crisis, but the west’s broader decline.

His solution is both simple and radical: make marriage legally binding again, with a presumption of father custody in divorce.

The Heart of the Matter:

Baskerville argues that our current “no-fault” divorce system has created what he calls a fraudulent contract. Imagine signing any other agreement where the other party could walk away at will, take half your assets, and remove your children from your life. You’d never sign such a document. Yet that’s exactly what marriage has become.

His proposal isn’t about fathers being superior parents—it’s about keeping families intact. When mothers know they can’t simply leave with the children, they’re far less likely to initiate divorce. When fathers know their parental rights are secure, they’re more likely to invest deeply in marriage and family life. Because that’s how it works.

The Ripple Effects:

What strikes me most about Baskerville’s argument is how he traces seemingly unrelated social problems back to this single source. Consider these connections:

Young men today lack motivation because they see no secure future in family life. Why work, save, and improve yourself when any family you build can be dismantled at will? Father custody would restore that fundamental incentive structure.

The welfare system becomes largely unnecessary when families stay together. Single motherhood, with all its associated poverty and social problems, becomes the exception rather than the rule.

Crime and social decay in our cities trace back overwhelmingly to fatherless homes. Restore the father’s role, and you restore order to communities.

The Deeper Philosophy:

There’s something profound here about authority and responsibility. Our current system has created what Baskerville calls “emasculation”—not in a crude sense, but in the deeper meaning of removing men’s authority as leaders of their children and families.

When a man cannot be certain his investment in family will be protected, when his role as father exists only at the discretion of others, we’ve fundamentally undermined the natural order that built Western civilization. Given human evolutionary history shows and still shows human children are best raised by a mother and a father and a series of helpers (alloparents) — see Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at University of California Davis and her book, Mother Nature — subverting father’s role is nothing less than unnatural.

This isn’t about domination—it’s about responsibility. A man who knows his family depends on him will rise to meet that responsibility. Again, because that’s how it works.

The Political Reality:

Baskerville suggests that even strong leaders like Trump avoid this issue because it requires confronting forces that have made careers out of the current system. The family court industrial complex, the welfare bureaucracy, the entire apparatus built around broken families—they all have vested interests in maintaining the status quo.

But here’s what I find especially compelling: this solution requires no new government programs, no massive spending, no complex bureaucracy. It simply requires restoring one principle: that marriage means something legally binding.

The Strategic Insight: Feminism’s Achilles’ Heel:

Baskerville makes a crucial observation that goes deeper than policy reform. Drawing on the work of scholar Daniel Amneus and activist Phyllis Schlafly, he argues that feminism’s entire power structure rests on one foundation: mother custody after divorce.

“The linchpin in the feminist program is mother custody following divorce,” he writes. “Pull that pin…and the feminist structure collapses.”

This isn’t just about family law—it’s about understanding the source of feminist power itself.

According to Amneus, feminism’s central impulse is “the demand for unlimited sexual freedom and female-dominated reproduction.” As he put it: “A woman’s right to have a baby without having the father around is what feminism is all about.”

The historical progression reveals the strategy: after securing the vote, feminists’ first major achievement was the welfare state, followed by no-fault divorce. Both innovations served the same goal—transferring authority over children from married fathers to single mothers.

The National Association of Women Lawyers (USA) proudly called no-fault divorce “the greatest project NAWL has ever undertaken.” Are you kidding me?

This creates what Baskerville, and others call a climate of fear that extends far beyond individual families. When women can divorce at will, take the children and assets, and consign men to “state-enforced servitude,” it doesn’t just affect divorced men—it makes all men fearful of marriage itself.

Government officials learned from this matriarchal model how to create other bureaucratic tyrannies, understanding that “ordinary men heading families pose the principal impediment to their power.”

The Marriage Strike as Leverage:

Here’s where the whole argument becomes particularly interesting. We see that conventional political methods—lobbying, protesting, organizing—won’t work for men seeking to restore family stability. But men already possess a powerful form of leverage: they’re increasingly refusing to marry, date, or start families. No one is born aspiring to become an Incel.

Rather than seeing this “marriage strike” as merely a symptom of social decay, Baskerville views it as potential ammunition. Men are already voting with their feet. The question is whether this spontaneous boycott can be directed toward specific legal reforms.

Think about the logic: if women derive power from their ability to control access to children and sexual relationships, then men’s withdrawal from those relationships removes that source of power. It is economic pressure applied to the most fundamental human institutions.

The Path Forward:

The beauty of the father custody solution its clarity. Instead of getting lost in a dozen different battles, we are better to focus on this single, achievable goal: Make marriage contracts enforceable with father custody as the default. Watch as the incentives align to strengthen rather than destroy families.
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The claim is that this one change would accomplish more than any collection of smaller reforms. Why? Because it strikes at what he sees as the root of the problem rather than its symptoms.

Would there be challenges? Certainly. Would some bad fathers gain custody they shouldn’t have? Possibly. But Baskerville argues—and I find myself agreeing—that these costs pale beside the wholesale destruction of family life we’ve accepted as normal.

Look, she is the burdened female creator of life. He is the expendable male powerful defender of life. Together, with plenty overlap, they are Team Human.

As creator, one side has more chaos, while the other defends with order.  The culture has become so feminized and chaotic that it now requires drastic masculine order to restore balance. Enforceable marital contracts with default father custody honours children with two parents while also respecting our evolutionary history. It’s what brought us this far.

A Personal Reflection:

Reading Baskerville’s argument, I’m struck by how it connects to something deeper than policy—it touches on what it means to be a man in modern North America, Australia, Europe, and likely the West in general. We’ve created a society where a man’s most important role, as father and protector of his family, exists only at the pleasure of others. This is fucked up.

I remember arguing with my first wife about her egregious behaviour as she planned yet another overnight trip out of town to see her gal pal. I protested and she whirled about to face me on the front steps of our home. “If you don’t like it we’ll divorce and I will make sure you never see your son again!,” she said… with such vehemence I believed her. She knew I’d never leave him.

And every time I nudged her closer to marital counselling she’d provoke a fight and refuse to go. The custody issue meant she held all the cards and could pursue her dysfunction at will.

No fool, in his late teens the boy asked me why I hadn’t divorced her already. He saw, he knew. I finally left when he was 20 or so.

Perhaps that’s why this conversation makes us uncomfortable. It forces us to confront not just failed policies, but failed assumptions about human nature, family, and the proper ordering and sustainability of society.

The question isn’t whether Baskerville is completely right about every detail. The question is whether we have the courage to admit that our current approach has failed spectacularly, and whether we’re willing to try something that might actually work.

Males are taught to be men by generations of men around them — most important of which is the father. An externality of the capitalist system — that began in the Victorian era as men left home to go to work — is that this critical contact has been lost. Now, most men grow up confused, left longing for maternal acceptance learned from being over-mothered. It’s all they know.

Though the danger of nuclear war looms large on any given day, it is not global warming or communism or authoritarianism that is the biggest threat. The biggest problem is weak men. The world desperately needs powerful rank and file prosocial defender males running families… lest we continue to be led by Dark Tetradians and their hybristophillic followers.

We ought to build our cultures with the underlying premise that children have the right to both a mother and a father. We need Team Human in balance. Honour the marriage contract and you restore the foundation upon which healthy society rests.

Let yourself imagine how that might be…

Questions? Comments?

True and free…
cw

©2025 ATM NEWS
Christopher K Wallace
|Advisor to Men ™

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The Case for Father Custody Reform: Legal Talking Points

  1. The Marriage Contract Has Been Legally Nullified Marriage is now the only civil contract in which one party can walk away unilaterally, seize half the assets, and take custody of the children—with the full enforcement of the state. No other contract permits this level of one-sided breach with legal reward. That is not a contract—it is entrapment.
  2. Parens Patriae Is Overreach Masquerading as Protection The doctrine of parens patriae gives the state ultimate authority over children, not parents. It’s sold as protection, but functionally it means the state—not the family—decides what’s best. This inverts natural law and erodes the integrity of parenthood.
  3. Custody Law Ignores the Child’s Right to a Father Family courts systematically violate a child’s birthright to be raised by both parents. They treat the father as optional, conditional, and replaceable—often using vague or unproven standards like “best interest” to mask biased rulings.
  4. The Primary Custody Standard Is Institutionalized Sex Discrimination Awarding custody to mothers by default is sex-based discrimination. Imagine any other legal context where such a presumption is tolerated. This practice violates constitutional protections and equality under the law.
  5. Family Courts Operate Without Due Process Family courts routinely remove children, homes, and finances from fathers without trial, evidence, or jury. Allegations alone—without proof—are enough to restrict paternal rights. No due process. No justice.
  6. No-Fault Divorce Plus Maternal Custody = State-Sanctioned Family Sabotage Unilateral no-fault divorce, combined with custody laws that reward the initiator, encourages family breakdown. The result is state-supported family sabotage that incentivizes abandonment and punishes stability.
  7. The State Has Incentivized Divorce Through Financial Engineering Welfare programs, federal funding formulas, and legal aid structures reward father removal and subsidize single motherhood. The state profits—literally—when fathers are ousted.
  8. Presumption of Father Custody Rebalances Risk and Restores Order A legal presumption of father custody (especially when the mother initiates divorce without cause) would restore marriage as a serious contract. Men will once again invest when protected from institutional betrayal.
  9. Judicial Discretion Is a Veil for Ideological Enforcement Family law judges are not neutral. Their wide discretion enables ideological bias—often rooted in feminist legal theory or outdated maternal preference models. This discretion must be curbed.
  10. Reform Isn’t About Power—It’s About Responsibility This is not a campaign to dominate women. It is a campaign to restore accountable fatherhood as the central pillar of a stable society. Male authority and responsibility rise together. Let the law reflect that truth.

Advisor to Men™ | Cultural Renewal Through Legal Truth www.advisortomen.com

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Note: after watching, ask how you can apply these principles to other areas of life.
Even if a man does not have a relationship, a partner, children, etc. it STILL falls to him.
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