Anonymous User writes "The petition to end IMBRA can be found on this website. So far they have over three thousand signatures. If you click on the "View Signatures" button at the bottom of the webpage you may view the comments of the signers. There are quite a few people who are angry at this new law, and they're not all men. The good news is that according to Wikipedia, 'On Feb 4, 2006, The District Court of Northern Georgia placed a restraining order preventing the enforcement of IMBRA. A trial will be held to determine its Constitutionality'. In the meantime, please sign the petition to repeal IMBRA. No man should have to go through the lengths that IMBRA specifies in order to communicate with a foreign female. By allowing this law to go unchallenged we are agreeing that every American man who intiates a romantic interest in a foreign woman is a criminal. Is this how you want men to be known?"

Marc A. writes "This UCLA Daily Bruin columnist did a pretty good piece supporting choice for men. I was impressed to see this at UCLA. It would be good to email and thank her."

Ora Pro Eis writes "I have opened a new website entitled Support Duke Lacrosse / Pray For Colin and Reade. This site is a support and prayer site for the Duke Lacrosse team and specifically for the two boys who are falsely accused of rape. Visitors can add their prayers to our "Prayer Chain", or just log on to the Message Board and post words of support for these young men. This is an excellent way to show support for these young men in the midst of the media's rush to judgment. Please visit the site today and write your words of support and your prayers. The boys very well may read the site, and I'm sure it would mean a great deal to them."

Ed. note: In particular note the presence of a message board at this site.

Anonymous User writes "A Cape Cod area high school principal is under investigation for performing criminal background checks on the male prom dates for a number of female students. While the prom dates of these females students were not actually enrolled at this school this is largely irrelevent. In essence, what we have here is a government official screening male citizens for their romantic suitablity via criminal backround checks. Admittedly, some of the male guests did have minor records but this is not the point. How long until the government requires all males to submit to a criminal backround check in order to initate a romantic relationship with a female citizen? Think it can't happen? Have we forgotten IMBRA?"

Ed. note: IMBRA is also discussed in this Wikipedia entry.

Anonymous User writes "No explanation why - but the three men in this case each get 12 years in prison while the only woman gets four.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/staffor dshire/4762481.stm"

Marc A. writes "Good article here. Excerpt:

'"It's becoming less taboo for male victims to come forward," she said, "and there certainly is a need to provide similar services to them."

There could be a legal need as well. Herma Hill Kay, a Boalt Hall law professor who specializes in anti-discrimination law, said federal court decisions and state law suggest that excluding male victims from funding may violate the law.

"Equal protection under the law sounds like a cliché," said David Woods, who claims he was denied a restraining order against his wife and mocked by police when he reported being hit. "But wouldn't it be nice for someone who never got it."'"

Anonymous User writes "Nifong must be getting desperate. The Durham police have arrested the taxi driver, Moezeldin Elmostafa, who placed Seligmann away from the crime scene the night of the alleged rape, on a 2 1/2-year-old misdemeanor warrant. Ernest Conner, a lawyer representing Seligmann, asserts that this is nothing more than an attempt to intimidate and pressure a witness who presents a rock solid alibi for the defendant.

Especially damning in this article is the following quote: "Conner said it was highly unusual for police to arrest someone for a misdemeanor more than two years after the crime. He contrasted the treatment of the taxi driver with that of Kim Roberts, the other dancer at the party. Conner said Roberts initially told police no rape occurred at the party but changed her story after she was arrested on a probation violation. District Attorney Mike Nifong later reduced Roberts' bail". Apparently, the DA in this case will stop at nothing in order to get a conviction, regardless of the facts."

This article reports that Russian president Putin has finally decided to address the crisis in health/population implosion in Russia. Guaranteed if it were Russian women's health that was in such bad shape, it would have gotten a lot more attention a lot sooner. He also seems to be stressing the idea that Russian women should just have children -- and get paid for it, no less -- over Russian men getting better health care and education. Excerpt:

MOSCOW, May 10 — President Vladimir V. Putin today directed the Russian Parliament to adopt a 10-year program to stop Russia's sharply declining population, principally by offering financial incentives and subsidies to encourage Russian women to have more children.


...

Mr. Putin then warned that Russia's population has been declining by almost 700,000 people a year, and that the state must stop the decline. In 2004, for every 16 Russians who died, only 10.4 Russian babies were born, according to the most recently available official data.

Click "Read more..." for more.

Today's news couldn't be more pointed in terms of double-standards as applied to males and females, boys and girls. This article reports a current case now splashing the headlines.

Now compare this news with the following piece in the front page of "B" section under local news in Rochester, NY as a "News Brief": Woman Faces Rape Charge. If a man had been charged in the rape a girl like this, it would be front-page news.

Click "Read more..." for more.

Good news in Glenn Sacks' May 9, 2006 newsletter: SB1482 in California has been withdrawn! From the newsletter:

In the face of over 4,000 opposition calls, letters and faxes, California Senator Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) has decided to withdraw a bill which would have granted custodial parents an almost unlimited right to move children far way from their noncustodial parents. Romero pulled SB 1482 just before today's scheduled hearing on the bill.

SB 1482 would have weakened if not abrogated the California Supreme Court's 2004 LaMusga move-away decision, which affirmed that courts have the power to restrain moves which run counter to children's best interests.

Hard to believe it, but can the gender blinders be so incredibly thick that people couldn't see what was wrong with this until a child welfare group pointed it out to them? Excerpt:

On May 3, Budhia was woken up at 3:15 a.m. and started running at 4:07 a.m. to avoid the worst of the heat as he made his way from the temple town of Puri to Bhubaneswar, the capital of the eastern state of Orissa.

He ran for 7 hours 2 minutes, braving a peak temperature of 36.7 degrees Celsius, or 98 degrees Fahrenheit, but collapsed from exhaustion 5 kilometers before reaching his goal of 70 kilometers.

As soon as he had recovered sufficiently to face the cameras, he was met by the Orissa sports minister and a contingent of dignitaries from the local police brigade, which had sponsored the event.

Dittohd writes "In this case, a seventeen year old girl and sixteen year old boy were caught having sex in the girl's home during a lunch break from school and only the boy was suspended. I checked North Carolina's statutory rape laws and the age of consent there is sixteen years of age, so no crime was committed. Note that in this case, the girl is older than the guy and she drove him to her house, yet he is still the predator and she the victim. Sigh!!!!!"

Not content to make HIV out to be largely the fault of men (gay ones in particular), some in the media seem to need to paint it as a "black" disease and in particular, a "black woman's disease". A "mere" gynocentric observation when talking about sub-Saharan Africa, HIV infection rates in African women have come to be a staple of discussions about Africa's health. But in this article, they're talking about America!

Even, it seems, in the case of devastating pandemics, the media cannot resist the urge to gender and/or ethnicify pretty much anything. Right from the get-go, the article starts with:

Battling a Black Epidemic
At home: AIDS now threatens tens of thousands of African-Americans, many of them women, in big cities and small towns alike. A community in peril tries to save itself.

Nowhere in this article does the author seem to suggest that maybe, just maybe, anyone who engages in known high-risk behavior for HIV transmission ought to be taking a wee bit more responsibility for their own actions-- regardless of their sex or ethnicity. Precautionary measures are well-known and widely available in America, yet some folks, even when they know their likelihood of contracting HIV is high, just seem to think the law of probability doesn't apply to them.

RandomMan writes "Naturally, 'women's groups' are screaming for blood, because some man 'got away' with heterosexual sex, which is always rape, apparently. The fact that he was found not guilty by a court which allows evidence of the alleged victim's conduct into evidence just doesn't seem to matter. The fact that he was foolish enough to have unprotected sex with an HIV-positive partner was stupid, but not criminal."

Click "Read more..." for more.

AngryMan writes "The British press is full of reports of the first British servicewoman to die in Iraq apparently as a result of enemy action. The only other female casualty, Military Police officer Denise Rose, apparently killed herself at an army base in Basra in 2004. The last time the British Army lost a woman to the enemy was 22 years ago.

Corporal Heather Kerrigan, 20, was killed by an IRA landmine in 1984. Women's contributions to the British military are still insignificant compared to men's, but you would never know it from the media. The papers are full of glowing praise for the latest casualty, pictures and biographies everywhere. No mention of the fact that men die all the time. This is the gender-neutral military: all men can have the obligation for combat, a few privileged women can have the right to choose combat, and their contribution is grossly exaggerated. Doesn't sound very equal to me."