Fairness

I once held a job as an ethicist. Part-time. Seriously, I was employed as a writer and civic ethicist. Which doesn't mean I'm completely ethical. No one is. We are all leading the right life, as best we can, and that's essentially what I took away from that two years of working in ethics.

The word we continually threw back and forth was 'fairness.' Justice is essential to who we are, and how our culture is meant to work. I don't know if there is such a thing as true justice, but there are attempts at fairness and balance that get us closer.

In divorce, I am convinced that there is no fairness, there is no balance. Not within our legal system. No one is going to feel satisfied at the end of divorce proceedings, because everyone has lost something. Without being married, you don't have equal rights to the children or the assets you have between you. So an unmarried couple has little legal recourse when it comes to divvying up property or custody. They really don't have the cooperation of the law. And married couples are subject to the rule of the court, which is never fair. So the system doesn't want you to break up. The system will punish you for not staying together.

The system wants you to get together and stay together. Married couples are the key to the economy. Everything is geared towards the marriage experience. Married couples consume a great deal of resources. Single people do too, but not in the same amounts. Married people will order the all-you-can-eat special, whereas the single person orders a diet coke.

Fairness in divorce proceedings never feels fair. And in abuse cases, even less so. An abused man is not validated for the trauma he suffers. In previous generations, it was the other way around. Abuse against women was seen as putting-her-in-her-place, just as now, abuse against men is spun as serves-him-right.

It's the symbolic v. the concrete. In the symbolic world, it seems that when a man is physically abused, it is some kind of abstract justice. Justice for women who have been abused. In the concrete life, a person has been hit or had something thrown at them. In the symbolic world, when a man is granted limited custody in a court decision, it is often seen as an act of justice. Not for him, but for men all over the world. In reality, a person has been granted limited access to his children.

Fairness is always in question, and as I said, divorce is never fair on either side. But perceived fairness is dangerous. When an act of injustice is perceived as fair, it warps our sense of justice altogether.