ppmnow sent us this article from the News Tribune and writes "A custody battle, an exchange of words, and an innocent woman shot dead...by another woman. Clearly feminists are becoming much less clever at hiding their violence, and no longer afraid of shooting their own gender." The murderer was Lorraine Laxton, who formerly chaired the Federal Way Domestic Violence Task Force. She left this position "abruptly," as co-workers were concerned about her " frightening temper and penchant for carrying handguns." Thanks also to Mark Rosenthal for submitted this version from the Seattle Times.

"TheBlackDog.net, an Irish-based website for men who suffer from mental distress, invites its brothers from across the pond to join us for our launch this Friday from 9 PM GMT (that's 4 PM Eastern Time). The night will involve men speaking about their experiences and what they have found useful in dealing with the changing world. There will be plenty of scope for music and mingling. Click on The Men's Room link on our home page, login and meet fellow black dogs in Ireland this Friday evening. theblackdog.net is Ireland's interactive self-help site for men coping with mental turbulence. It is a place for men to visit, take their time, exchange views and advice, get angry, relax or get information which might be useful. We are confidential, independent, non-judgemental, readily available and easy to switch off. We are proud to be brothers of maledepression.com and salute our comrades in America."

The Men's Hour November programme is out including: A protest in Strasbourg, France. Ian Kelly on the newly proposed U.K. rape law. Trudy W. Schuett on CyberManbooks. The death of Myra Hindley, child murderer. MSNHatesMen challenges MSN's sexism.

Also, a Christmas message for men is proposed. Ideas and contributions for a message that just might help men who can be very vulnerable at Christmas time (such as fathers excluded from their family) are welcome.

With birth control, abortion, artificial insemination, cloning, and ovular merging, women are well on their way to becoming biologically independent of men. This has led to a very real threat of men being reduced to a "manageable," low percentage of the population.

The promise of male birth control, stem cells, and artificial wombs has helped to reestablish a balance of power, in which men would no longer be dependent upon women for reproduction. A missing link in all of this, however, has been the need to obtain eggs from women in order to clone a man or possibly merge the genes of two men into an offspring.

This article (registration required) describes a prospective attempt to create a human-mouse hybrid using stem cells. It seems it might be possible for such a (mostly) mouse to create human egg cells. If that is the case, in principle a man's genes could be inserted into such an egg cell and the resulting embryo carried to term in an artificial womb. If you think things are strange now, just give us humans a few more years.

John Knouten writes "
Due to discrimination many fathers become desperados with
nothing to lose. Thus, some become suicidal. Some become violent.
The story is here." From the article:

"Men who snap in such violent ways have few defenders. Yet fathers' rights groups, joined by a few academic experts, see a common denominator in these recent bursts of rage, and ask whether America's family court system could be partly at fault by deepening the despair of many divorced men."

Anonymous User writes "Wendy McElroy's column this week is about recent attacks on her from mainstream feminists, one of whom slandered her to a potential employer in an effort to harm her career. Wendy's latest column is here. We live in a sick world."

warble writes "By now everybody knows that radical feminists are trying to force admission of women into Augusta National. We hear of evil men excluding women and see radical feminist Burk claiming that women would never do such an evil and horrific act like excluding men and having a women’s only club. Well if that is true then why is there this women’s only group called the Women’s Policy, Inc. with a roster that includes only women? Were are the men? Were are the demands for men to be admitted into the leadership? Why is this group black listing Rep. Anne Northup for not being a member? Clearly, women have their own club and this one is shaping the male hate laws that we see flowing out of the federal government."

SJones writes "An article on divorce and the traditional conservative position ends with the statement that conservatives should support "joint physical custody." This is a great step in the right direction. The author even mentions vengeful ex-wives who lock fathers out of their children's lives. The article is here." The author argues that it is not divorce, but what happens to children after divorce that causes social problems. It's an interesting way of looking at this.

Tony submitted the following alert from the National Organization of Women:

"November 29 Is the Deadline for Title IX Messages. Write to the Commission on Opportunities in Athletics in support of the current policies implementing Title IX, which guarantees equality for girls and women in all federally-funded education programs. Take action!"

Tony writes, "The link at www.now.org requesting people to submit letters of support for Title IX. As we know Title IX enforcement has caused many sports programs to fold due to the "play it safe" quota enforcement many schools use to abide by the Title IX rules. This needs to change now.
It has a nice bit of sarcastic irony to use NOW website links against them on NOT supporting this issue."

Mark writes "This Vancouver Sun article details the charges against Rachel Marsden for criminally harassing her ex-boyfriend. If the name seems familiar to you, it's because she made herself famous for accusing a Simon Fraser University swim coach with sexually harassing her. An interesting note on this trial is the judge has prevented Rachel from defending herself publically to prevent the alleged victim from being 're-victimized.""

Mitchell A. Smith has been making repeated attempts to contact MSN Egreetings and have them remove their male bashing e-cards, but is getting the standard, "thank you for your opinion, it's been forwarded to the appropriate people" response. He would like to put the word out that he could use more support from other men's activists. Please contact them and let them know that we expect more from them. Mitchell would also like to hear from other activists who have tried to address this issue - his e-mail is ppmnow@hotmail.com.

Kingsley G. Morse Jr. writes "In a dramatic and long over due remedy, a court finally ordered a woman to pay damages for lying to her husband about who the father was. Bizarrely, men are often forced to reward liars with child support." All I can say is...I sure hope this helps to open the floodgates!

warble writes "I encourage everybody to read the stories of officers who have become victims of radical feminists. They are quite upset that they have to enforce bigoted male-hate laws. You can read the responses of two anonymous officers at this link: Police join with NCFM, LA in speaking out against male-hate laws!"

frank h writes "While reading this article, I came upon this link to something called "The Innocence Project," an organization that advocates the use of DNA evidence, post-conviction, to exonerate those wrongfully incarcerated. While there, I happened upon this section of the site, which includes a bar graph showing the factors leading to wrongful convictions, an analysis of the first 70 cases where wrongful convictions were reversed. If you sum the categories of False Witness Testimony, Prosecutorial Misconduct, and Police Misconduct, you see that these factors together overwhelm all others. Also, and maybe more important, I could not find ANY females among the exonerated. Given these two things, I submit to you that this is further evidence of the shoddy treatment of men by the court system."

Steve writes "I will host this week's MANN chat, Wednesday night
(11/20), starting at 9:30 PM Eastern Time, at the usual location. The topic
for this chat will be 'Why Are Men So Apathetic About Men's Issues?'  
The title says it all.  Let's figure out some answers at this week's 
MANN chat.  Invite a friend or two to join you!" Scott's Update: The chat server that QuickChat uses is apparently down, so unfortunately tonight's chat must be cancelled. We do intend to revisit this topic during the next on-line chat, though.