Unnatural Authority

If we ask what the key instruments are, by which male power and control is maintained - family court is right at the top of the list. As an institution, family court operates in near-total secrecy, cloaked in privacy laws, and with no independent oversight. Worlds unto themselves, family courts wield enormous authority and power, and a long and invasive reach into how we conduct our most private relationships. 

Journalist Grant Wyeth has spent the last few years delving deep into exactly how family courts across the world wield that power, whose interests are protected and whose are not, and the cultural forces that drive its decisions - decisions that by and large do not favor the interests, safety and welfare of women or children. 

In this episode, Elle and Grant hash through the whys, hows and very real and violent impacts of "the family court crisis", what it says about the state of men, and the urgent need for a new language and new terms for relationships between women and men.