Article here. Excerpt:

'The labor shortage has been a defining feature of the pandemic job market and it's not getting better any time soon. But there is a whole group of workers who are being overlooked even though they could be part of the solution.

Criminal records are keeping certain workers from finding good jobs. This is particularly true of men in their 30s.

More than half of that group has a history of criminal conviction or arrest that keeps them from fully participating in the labor market, a study from nonprofit research group RAND Corporation released Friday found. As of January, just over one million men between the ages of 24 and 35 were counted as unemployed, the biggest group of jobless males, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
By 35, some 64% of unemployed men have been arrested, and about 46% have been convicted of a crime, according to the study. Nearly a third of American adults have been arrested at least once, a far higher level than in comparable Western European countries.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'MEN are at risk of weaker sperm depending on where they live, a study warns.

The fertility of thousands, potentially millions of men, may be experiencing fertility decline without realising.

Researchers in China discovered that men who live in heavily polluted areas may experience poor sperm motility.

Motility is how well a sperm swims. The stronger it is, the easier the sperm can swim in a forwards direction in search of the egg.

But male fertility relies on a number of sperm parameters - inluding sperm count, which is the concentration of sperm per ejaculation.

It’s not the first time a link between toxic air and men’s swimmers has been made.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'As universities continue to push programs and staffing that focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), some are beginning to notice the price tags of these programs. Information from Professor Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute has shown that the University of Michigan has allotted 126 positions at a cost of $15.6 million and Ohio State University has allotted 131 positions at a cost of $13.4 million for the 2021-2022 academic year for diversity, equity, and inclusion staff.

Article here. Predictably, the question is framed in terms of "patriarchy", etc., and it seems the woman's moral agency is minimized, which happens whenever a writer wants to let her off the hook. Still, it's good the topic is now being addressed. Excerpt:

'Popa is the anti-heroine of The Dictator’s Wife, a debut novel by a young British Indian writer, Freya Berry, that explores how tyrants deploy glamorous spouses to soften their image: velvet gloves to their iron fists.

The book poses an important question: to what extent should such women be judged as complicit in their husbands’ regimes? They are often survivors of brutal patriarchy and lack genuine political power. But do they, too, have blood on their hands?

Article here. Excerpt:

'Attacks on traditional ideas of masculinity threaten not only the civic vigor of a society, but also a nation’s ability to compete with others and defend itself from dangers, these leaders say.

“The left want to define traditional masculinity as toxic,” Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said in an address to the National Conservatism Conference last fall. “They want to define the traditional masculine virtues – things like courage and independence and assertiveness – as a danger to society.”

“The problem with the left’s assault on the masculine virtues is that those self-same qualities, the very ones the left now vilify as dangerous and toxic, have long been regarded as vital to self-government,” said Senator Hawley, who has become one of the most outspoken conservative leaders to proclaim that American men are in a crisis. “Observers from the ancient Romans to our forefathers identified the manly virtues as indispensable for political liberty.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The U.S. now averages about 275 drug-related deaths per day, mostly from synthetic opioids such as fentanyl. Nearly 92,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2020, which was a 30% increase from 2019. It was the highest annual total on record. Preliminary figures suggest 2021 numbers will be even higher.

But there is a concerning truth that is going underreported… Opioids are disproportionately killing our men. American men are more than twice as likely as women to die by overdose. Men 24 to 34 years old are the most likely among all age groups to die from drug-related causes. You could say that the drug-overdose crisis is a crisis of single men.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Yang seems to misunderstand the term “toxic masculinity.” He thinks it’s meant to denote that there’s a problem with men and boys themselves. It’s probably because, like most American men, he has been socialized to experience anything short of praise as a threat to his manhood. Therefore, he responds like an entitled teenage boy who needs constructive criticism to be sandwiched between ego-boosting compliments. Yang pleads for less condemnation of problems and more celebration of “positive masculinity” (which he fails define). However, he’s comfortable disparaging other demographic identity groups; he carelessly launches familiar critical tropes about single motherhood and non-heteronormative family organizational structures.
...

Article here. Excerpt:

'This is a real problem — and it’s wonderful that Andrew Yang understands this, even though the Democrats don’t seem to. And it’s a problem not just for men but for society as a whole. Rearing a cohort of under-employed, disaffected, fatherless men who are alienated from mainstream culture, denied responsible male role models, and robbed of jobs they once took for granted and could support a family with is, well, asking for it. Adding a whole bunch of contempt doesn’t make it any better. In fact, it is making it a whole lot worse.
...

Article here. Excerpt:

'Luke Stubbs also claimed at a Hampshire fire authority meeting in December that equality goals "only benefit women and minorities".

The comments were widely criticised and he subsequently apologised.

Mr Stubbs has since stepped down, the Local Democracy Reporting Service has learned.

He made his comments at a Hampshire and Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service authority meeting where plans to hire more women and people from minority ethnic groups were outlined.

Mr Stubbs said: "Government - and I think this is wrong - is bringing in quota programmes across the public sector, but only where it benefits women and minorities.

In areas where it's mostly men it has to be 50/50, but in areas where it's mostly women there's no change."

Stating the fire service's control room was 84% women, he said: "I would like assurance that steps are being taken to reduce that."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'In Homer’s great epic the Odyssey, the land of the Lotus-Eaters is a place where inhabitants and wayward sailors live in drug-induced states. In this place, men forget about families and responsibilities and drift into a never-ending delirium supported by a never-ending supply of narcotics. The only escape is being forcefully taken away, kicking and screaming, as addicted sailors beg for the sweet lotus. Something we recognize today as heroine and opioid dependency.

San Francisco, the city by the bay, is America’s very own land of the Lotus-Eaters, where thousands go to imbibe in drugs, and many go on to die. “City-funded service providers supervise people smoking fentanyl and meth they buy from drug dealers across the street,” according to a story written by Michael Shellenberger and later confirmed by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The data are clear. Boys are more than twice as likely as girls to be diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; are five times as likely to spend time in juvenile detention; and are less likely to finish high school.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t get better when boys become adults. Men now make up only 40.5 percent of college students. Male community college enrollment declined by 14.7 percent in 2020 alone, compared with 6.8 percent for women. Median wages for men have declined since 1990 in real terms. Roughly one-third of men are either unemployed or out of the workforce. More U.S. men ages 18 to 34 are now living with their parents than with romantic partners.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Prosecutors have dropped charges against a Missouri high school teacher after she married the student she was accused of having sex with.

In February 2019, former Sarcoxie High School teacher Baylee A. Turner, 26, was charged with having sexual contact with one of her male students following an investigation by the Jasper County Sheriff’s Department, the Joplin Globe reported.

Turner, then 23 years old, was a first-year English teacher at the high school when she was accused of having sexual intercourse with a student in January 2019, leading to her resignation.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'HPV comes in more than 170 forms (with certain subtypes being more ‘deadly’ than others) and typically transmits through sexual activity. Despite it spreading equally easily and causing cancer in both males and females, there tends to be surprisingly low awareness of what HPV is among men. It is unbelievable to me that the term doesn’t even ring a bell among the highly educated male friends in my social circle, with some even confusing it with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) or the Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV). Findings in recent scientific studies appear to align with my anecdotal observations.

Article here. Excerpt:

'She says her next book will be about men. “When my brother moved in, he kept saying all these things against feminism. The thing he kept saying over and over again is ‘it’s easier to be a woman these days than it is to be a man’.”

“I started to see it from his point of view”, she says. “If any woman has a problem there is another woman who will be able to talk to her about that problem. We are surrounded by this informal, beautiful sisterhood network that we’ve built up called feminism.”

“Men don’t have anything like that,” Moran continues. “Men can’t talk to each other about their problems. There are no songs about how great it is to be a boy. If you said I want to talk about the problems of men, you would get laughed at.” The void, she feels, is leaving boys open to the influence of “right-wing commentators like Jordan B Peterson who are astonishingly unhelpful for young men”.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A woman who runs a charity to help victims of domestic abuse is being accused of a hate crime and was interviewed by police after stating publicly that the charity was only for women. Officers told Murray: "We need to speak to you to ascertain what your thinking was behind making your statement." Police have since been accused of investigating "thought crimes" by advocates Roddy Dunlop QC and Joanna Cherry QC.

Nicola Murray, founder of Brodie's Trust, a UK charity intended to support "women who've suffered pregnancy loss through domestic violence or forced termination," was interviewed by police on her comments that Brodie's Trust would "remain a female only service, run by women, for women, and will not be intimidated into changing our stance on this matter," The Times reported.'