Article here. Excerpt:

'BARRIE, Ont. — "Daddy, daddy!" cried little Serena Campione, her chubby little arms raised in the air, running with glee when she spotted her father.

Leo Campione quickly wiped the telltale tears from his eyes and smiled broadly as he raised his little daughter in the air and then hugged her tightly.
...
It was the first time in over a month since the 33-year-old Toronto father had seen his children.

And it was the last time he would see them alive. Two weeks later they would be dead, drowned by their mother, Elaine Campione.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The two Micks were as puzzling as they were unnerving. Lowy thought, "There was something from a very early age that happened to him."

Something Mantle had never confided to his wife. One night, long after they had separated, they spent an evening in Dallas watching a TV movie about a child who had been sexually molested. "That happened to me," he said.

He told her that often when [his parents] Mutt and Lovell went out to a Friday-night barn dance, her teenage daughter, Anna Bea, babysat for her half siblings. He was four or five years old when she began molesting him, pulling down his pants and fondling him while her friends, "teenagers and older," giggled and smirked, Merlyn Mantle told me. "They started playing with him," she said. "And, of course, he got an erection. They laughed at him. He remembered how embarrassed he was." That was the only time they ever spoke about it. "It could have been why he turned out the way he did," she told me.'

Letter here. Excerpt:

'...Men are stereotyped as walking erections who would "f--k mud." Even psychology's "theory du jour," evolutionary psychology/psychobiological theory" (Buss, et al.) puts men in the position of being obliged to spread their DNA as far and as widely as possible. Middle-aged men owe it to the species to reproduce with 22-year-old females of the requisite waist-to-hip ratio – rape as a "reproductive strategy," etc. We assume that male humans are sexual predators. ...Here's the problem: I don't see men doing a whole lot to undo those stereotypes. As I say to my students every semester: No one can change these stereotypes except men. And not enough of them are stepping up. If enough good men become tired of the stereotypes about their gender, they will fight to change them – no doubt being accused of being pussies all the way. ...'

Link to article here. Excerpt:

'Recently, the Education Post visited Kafue Boys Secondary School where close to ten pupils registered to get circumcised at a local health centre without the consent of school authorities.

Confirming the development, school headmistress Catherine Mutale expressed disappointment at the decision by personnel at the health centre to enlist the pupils for circumcision without the school authorities’ approval.
...
...a parent to one of the pupils had also called the school earlier inquiring on how their child had been circumcised without their approval.

‘We found posters promoting circumcision stuck on trees and by the time the deputy head pulled them out ,the pupils had already read the message on the posters and were booked in for circumcision the next day,” Mutale said.'

---
Ed note: The title for the article "Boys see circumcision as a license for unprotected sex" is new. The original title is the subject line of this post. Note the misandrist nature of the change.

From three years back, essay here. An oldie but a goodie... excerpt:

'Unlike gender-blind wealth and life destroyers — alcoholism, drug addiction, gambling, and catastrophic illness — divorce will disproportionately eviscerate the wallets, parental power, and dignity of men.

Because family courts (I call them female-ly courts) generally favor women, who have overwhelmingly unfair reproductive, custody, paternity, alimony, child-support, and homestead advantages, a man’s biggest nightmare is becoming the respondent in a divorce, especially in January.

If your marriage is already teetering when December arrives, it’s time to beware the January divorce. By the Sunday of the Super Bowl, there’s a high probability that your wife will have served you divorce papers. That’s right: women bring 70% of divorce actions, to improve their odds of taking the kids and the houses.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Women are used to being in control of contraception and it’s often difficult to let go of that, even when it’s their husband’s fertility, not their own, in question.

‘Having to take the Pill is a burden,’ says Gina. ‘You don’t know the long-term effects. I don’t fancy the coil or implants, so a vasectomy seems the easiest thing to do.

‘Contraception is a woman’s ­problem, but it would be so much easier if the man played his part.’

Feminist author Natasha Walter agrees. ‘It’s funny it’s still women having to think about contraception all the time and men shying away from it,’ she says.

‘Perhaps it’s because men think it would impinge on their masculinity, which, of course, it wouldn’t. Why shouldn’t men, once they have completed their families, take this step?’

I hesitated to post this due to its graphic content but the lesson here is too important not to pass along, especially for newcomers to MANN: *Anyone* is capable of 1) attempted/actual rape, 2) assault, and 3) gross, disgusting conduct (just in case item 1 doesn't cover it sufficiently). Excerpt:

'Meet Melissa Lee Williams. The West Virginia woman, 41, is facing assault and weapons charges after allegedly waving a knife at two men who declined her demands to engage in sexual conduct at a motor inn.
...
This is when Melissa Williams allegedly “produced a lock-back folding knife,” opened it, and pointed the weapon at her estranged husband. She then reportedly uttered a line never before memorialized in a police report: “Somebody is going to eat my p***y or I’m going to cut your f*****g throat.”

When Deputy Mellinger arrived on the scene he observed Williams--who, like the two men, appeared to be intoxicated--nude from the waist down. After pocketing a knife that was on the coffee table in front of Williams, Mellinger arrested her for domestic assault and brandishing a deadly weapon.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Can judges be feminists? Should judges be feminists? On one view the answer is easy: no. We don't want our judges to be activists. We don't want them to promote their own political agendas. We want them to do their job. We want them to apply the law.
...
The Feminist Judgments Project offers a vision as to what the law might look like if there were (more) feminist judges, and in doing so, challenges our thinking about law and judging. More than 50 academics, practitioners and activists have come together to produce 23 alternative feminist judgments in a series of key cases in English law.

Article here. Excerpt:

'They are perhaps the most high-profile women in Germany after Chancellor Angela Merkel: Kristina Schröder, the young, glamorous minister for families, women and pensioners, and Alice Schwarzer, the seasoned feminist intellectual and campaigner. And they're embroiled in an unseemly, vitriolic war of words over sex, the role of women and feminism. Played out in the mass media, the slanging match is providing titillating fodder for the press — but many German women fear it is also undermining their ongoing struggle for equality.

It all started when Schröder — at 33 the youngest member of Merkel's cabinet — attacked the 1970s feminist movement, telling Der Spiegel news magazine on Nov. 7 that early feminism "overlooked the fact that partnership and children can provide happiness." The conservative minister, who's known for her prim and proper attire, went on to say: "For me, emancipation will only be truly reached if a woman can wear make-up and skirts without having her abilities doubted as a result."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'In American schools, boys are underachieving and girls are excelling. This gender gap in academic achievement is evident as early as kindergarten. The longer students are in school, the wider the gap becomes.

Boys are more likely than girls to earn poor grades, be held back a grade, have a learning disability, form a negative attitude toward school, drop out or get suspended or expelled.

The education gender gap is affecting colleges, the workforce, the marriage rate and the fatherlessness rate in America.
...
This shift means that women will increasingly get the highly paid jobs while men will experience a drop in earnings. This is already happening. Men in their 30's are the first generation to earn significantly less than their fathers' generation did at the same age. As jobs that require little education increasingly shrink, more and more men will become unemployed.

Story here. Excerpt:

'(CBS) The city that will soon outlaw toys in McDonald’s Happy Meals could have a measure banning circumcision on next November’s ballot, reports CBS San Francisco.

“It’s genital mutilation,” said Lloyd Schofield, the author of a San Francisco ballot measure that would make it a “misdemeanor to circumcise, excise, cut or mutilate the…genitals” of a person under 18.

Baby boys in San Francisco may be relieved but not everybody agrees with a proposed ban.

“I just had him circumcised 3 weeks ago,” said Heather Wisnicky of Sacramento, mother of Tyler, a 6-week-old baby boy. “It’s a health issue. It’s cleaner,” she said.

Scientists with the Centers for Disease Control are still studying whether circumcisions are healthier, and have promised recommendations to the public. Meanwhile, according to the New York Times, a CDC researcher reported a sharp drop in the number of American parents choosing circumcision in hospitals - from 56 percent in 2006 to less than 33 percent last year.'

Link here. Excerpt:

'How To Write About Circumcision
A guide for bloggers and journalists
...
Circumcision is really, really trivial, so it doesn't really matter what you write. Flippancy is essential. Make sure you use the word "snip" at least once, and any wordplay, such as "snip the tip" is guaranteed to cause hilarity. Because circumcision is so trivial, anyone who opposes it may be ridiculed.
...
Mention the African HIV-circumcision trials and imply they prove that circumcising developed-world babies will reduce their chance of getting HIV by "up to 60%" (or 70% or 80%, whatever you're happy with)
...

By all means interview couples who decided to circumcise their sons. You can safely attribute any frivolous reasons you happen to support to them. Bathroom splatter, zipper injury, teasing by friends, all belong here.
...
By all means interview doctors who make their living from circumcision. Their motives are purely altruistic, as they will tell you themselves.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'HOUSTON (AP) — A woman who tied her husband to the bed, stabbed him 193 times and buried his body in the backyard is lying when she claims she did so after years of abuse, prosecutors told jurors Monday during her sentencing hearing.

Susan Wright, 34, is being re-sentenced for the 2003 murder of her 34-year-old husband, Jeffrey. She was initially sentenced to 25 years in prison, but the Texas Court of Appeals last year tossed the sentence, agreeing with Wright that her trial lawyers were deficient because they failed to present testimony from witnesses that would have bolstered the abuse claims.

During her opening statement Monday, Harris County prosecutor Connie Spence told jurors Wright lied about being physically abused by her husband to try to justify the killing.

Blog entry here. Excerpt:

'After three years of legal battles, Ohio father Benjamin Wyrembek has finally been reunited with the little son who was wrongfully taken from him. In Ohio high court right to unite father, son (Toledo Blade, 10/24/10), Fathers and Families Board Member Robert Franklin, Esq. recently explained:

This month, the Ohio Supreme Court finally cleared the way for Benjamin Wyrembek of Swanton to be united with his biological son, who will turn three years old this week. That should have happened long before now.

But for almost three years, attorneys for an adoptive couple in Indiana who have raised the child since birth have kept the case tied up in court, separating father and son.

News story here. Excerpt:

'OTTAWA - Marriage should be promoted as a way to civilize men and cut down on social ills such as crime, substance abuse and homelessness according to an Ottawa think-tank.

An Institute of Marriage and Family Canada paper cites marriage as helping men become more nurturing, improving their health outcomes and even making men better workers.

The paper quotes Ottawa Senators general manager Bryan Murray as saying marriage improves the games of his players.

“You’re more committed. You have something to go home to,” Murray told a reporter in October. “I think these guys start to realize that there are other people depending on what they do with their lives.”

Status of Men, authored by the institute's research manager Andrea Mrozek, looks at what role the decline of marriage may play in the lagging results educators and sociologists are seeing in boys.'