Article here. Excerpt:

'Watching superheroes beat up villains may not be the best image for boys to see if society wants to promote kinder, less stereotypical male behaviours, they claim.

Unlike the comic heroes of the past who often held ordinary day jobs and believed in social justice, the new breed of Hollywood superheroes are aggressive, sarcastic and rarely speak about the virtue of doing good for humanity. Dr Sharon Lamb, of the University of Massachusetts, said that modern depictions of superheroes like Iron Man are often playboy millionaires who are only ruled by selfish goals.
'''
"There is a big difference in the movie superhero of today and the comic book superhero of yesterday," Dr Lamb told the annual Convention of the American Psychological Association.

"Today's superhero is too much like an action hero who participates in non-stop violence; he's aggressive, sarcastic and rarely speaks to the virtue of doing good for humanity.

Article here. Excerpt:

"It is the mainstay of countless magazine and newspaper features. Differences between male and female abilities – from map reading to multi-tasking and from parking to expressing emotion – can be traced to variations in the hard-wiring of their brains at birth, it is claimed.
...
In fact, there are no major neurological differences between the sexes, says Cordelia Fine in her book Delusions of Gender, which will be published by Icon next month. There may be slight variations in the brains of women and men, added Fine, a researcher at Melbourne University, but the wiring is soft, not hard. "It is flexible, malleable and changeable," she said.

Story here. Excerpt:

' SAN FRANCISCO — A Mexican woman who claimed she was beaten and raped for decades by her common-law husband has won the right to stay in the United States in a case that experts say makes clear that domestic violence is valid grounds for asylum.

The Department of Homeland Security found that the case of the woman known only as L.R. met the stringent standard necessary to win asylum. An immigration judge found in her favor on Aug. 4, and the decision was announced this week by her attorneys.

"The point has been made, very loud and clear, that cases such as these involving domestic violence, and even more broadly, gender-based violence against women, are valid cases," said Karen Musalo, L.R.'s attorney and the head of Hastings Law School's Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at the University of California. The name of the applicant was withheld to protect her privacy.

Article here. My jaw dropped. Was this the same Liz Jones who is consistently bashing men in the Femail section now having a go at her own gender? I thought it was too good not to share. Excerpt:

'Yet another bit of woman bashing took place last week. According to a survey of 3,000 employees, women bosses are incapable of leaving their personal lives at home and are eager to bitch about colleagues behind their backs.

Yet men, on the other hand, according to research commissioned by the recruitment firm UKJobs.net, never bring their personal lives to work (I can confirm this. I sat opposite a man for three years and only realised his wife had just given birth to their fourth child when one day he stood up, then keeled over, exactly like a felled tree).

Most tellingly, the survey found men in the workplace are simply not as moody.
...

Article here. Excerpt:

'NEW YORK – Katrina Clark and Lindsay Greenawalt have much in common. Bright women in their 20s, raised by single mothers, keenly curious about the men whose donated sperm helped give them life. Clark's search for her father succeeded after only a month, though with a bittersweet aftermath. Greenawalt is still searching, seven years after she started — persisting despite doubts and frustrations.
...
"I've dreamt of you since I was a little girl," Greenawalt wrote to her unknown dad in a Father's Day blog posting in June. "There are so many things I want to know about you."
...
Since 2008, Greenawalt, 25, has been chronicling her quest on a blog, "Confessions of a Cryokid." One of the most wrenching entries came last Thanksgiving, when she addressed the oft-repeated refrain that donor-conceived children ought to be grateful they were born.

Story here. Excerpt:

'PLEASANT RIDGE, KAN - A high school teacher from Lansing accused of having sex with a student admitted her mistake on Friday and entered a plea to avoid a trial.

While Shannon Young plead guilty to having a sexual relationship with a student at her school, the young man's parents aren't pleased with the sentence she's expected to get because it doesn't involve jail time.

Young, 36, was an English teacher and a volleyball coach at Pleasant Ridge High School in Easton, Kansas during the 2009-2010 school year.
...
"If this was not a consensual relationship, this case would have been charged differently. The only thing that made it illegal was Ms. Young's status as a teacher," Young's lawyer Debra Snider said. "Otherwise, this would not have been an illegal set of actions at all."

Story here. Excerpt:

'When Mike Obrock got home Wednesday morning after a night on the town with Donna F. Miller, police said, he had a message on his answering machine from her, saying she had a wonderful time and asking why he didn't love her.

Maybe it was because -- according to court documents -- she punched him in the mouth and hit him with her crutch when he tried to drop her off in the parking lot of the Camp Hill Shopping Center. Or perhaps it was because of the false report police said Miller filed claiming she had been raped.

Miller, 50, of the 400 block of Hiltonhead Avenue, was arrested yesterday morning by Camp Hill police and charged with resisting arrest, false alarms to a public safety agency, fictitious reports and false reports to police. She was arraigned in front of District Judge Richard S. Dougherty and committed to Cumberland County Prison in lieu of $7,500 bail, court documents state.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Police have warned that malicious reports of false rapes will not be tolerated after a woman was jailed for 15 months after lying to detectives.

Cheryl Moss, 26, falsely claimed that a 19-year-old man had raped her in an alleyway near St Peter's Road, Bournemouth, in November 2009.

Moss pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice and was sentenced last week at Bournemouth Crown Court.

Dorset Police said the investigation used valuable time and resources.

Despite being shown CCTV footage of the man the mother of four had been with all night and that sex had been consensual, Moss maintained her allegations were true.'

Letter here.

'It is unfortunate that Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, described domestic violence in terms of men only when quoted in the Aug. 10 Associated Press Style story "Controversial song features abuse." By doing so, she mischaracterized a significant problem.

Domestic violence is not the province of one gender; abusers can be male or female, heterosexual or homosexual. Although abuse by males is widely recognized, abuse by females is generally not. As a consequence, male victims face problems because of the general lack of recognition of their plight.

Additionally, Ms. O'Neill should not have resorted to playground name-calling by saying that "it's only 2-year-olds and violent men who use violence to get what they want." This trivializes an important issue.'

Story here. Excerpt:

"A vicious fight on Aug. 1 was almost the beginning of the end for Jennifer Freeman and Earl Watson's marriage. According to nydailynews.com, when Freeman got a text message late at night on Sunday, Aug. 1,, Watson "became suspicious" and "took her phone to check the message."

In a flash, Freeman became enraged, and hit Watson in his face. Then, in a sudden rush of aggression, Freeman bit down on Watson's hand. According to Watson, this bite was responsible for "breaking the skin, leaving teeth marks and drawing blood." Freeman continued on a violent rampage as she supposedly "proceeded to bite down on [Watson's] chest." She then attempted to "attack Watson with an iron," which Watson managed to pry out of her hand. After the attack, Watson petitioned for a divorce from Freeman but he recently withdrew it.
...

Day 14 and we are stuck between #183 and #185

Hello Mensactivism Members and Supporters,

I am in hopes that you all are continuing to online and text message vote for us to win the Pepsi competition daily. For those of you who aren't aware or aren't voting (perhaps because you don't know about it or don't know enough about it)...read on...

I have been an advocate for men who are or were in relationships with abusive women for 13 years now. In 2000 I founded the only national non profit in the USA with a toll free helpline that specializes in offering supportive services and public awareness to male victims of domestic violence.

From Abusegate Bob:

The domestic violence industry shows a remarkable propensity to conjure up the most creative claims and then present them as scientific "fact." In this article, the author makes this claim: "In fact, studies have shown that up to 48 percent of women delay leaving an abusive home out of fear that their pets will be harmed if left behind."

But when you realize that the great majority of women in abuse shelters are poor and often homeless, the notion that half of them can't flee an abusive situation because of a pet is flat-out absurd.

No surprise, the author conveniently forgets to provide the source of her claim. Maybe if every Abusegater were to contact Allie Phillips at PAWSprogram@americanhumane.org and ask her to provide the reference for her "statistic," the lies might begin to stop.

Enjoy.

'PAWS® Program
Guest Author - Allie Phillips, J.D. Vice President of Human-Animal Strategic Initiatives, American Humane Association

Article here. Excerpt:

'he Food and Drug Administration approved a controversial new form of emergency contraception Friday that can prevent a pregnancy as many as five days after sex.

The decision to allow the sale of the pill, which will be marketed under the brand name "ella," was welcomed by family-planning proponents as a crucial new option to prevent unwanted pregnancies. But critics condemned the decision, arguing that it was misleading to approve ella as a contraceptive because the drug could also be used to induce an abortion.
...
Critics, however, are convinced it will and fear that a woman who does not realize she is pregnant will use the drug, unwittingly giving herself an abortion. They also worry that men will slip ella to unsuspecting women. And, the critics say, a woman might knowingly use ella to try to abort a fetus, putting herself at risk for potentially serious complications that have been reported among a small number of women using RU-486 and possibly damaging her developing child if it doesn't work.'

Article here. Excerpt:

"The fate of the 43-year-old Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning took a sinister turn yesterday when she appeared on Iranian state television to confess to her “crimes”. Her lawyer fears she will now be executed imminently, probably hung by the neck until she is dead.
...
Yet the response of feminists in the West has been strangely muted.

Hillary Clinton lost no opportunity to brandish her feminist credentials during her campaign to become the Democratic Party’s Presidential nominee in 2008 and even went so far as to blame her failure to beat Barack Obama on the “glass ceiling”. Unfortunately, the concrete ceiling of Ashtiani’s jail cell hasn’t inspired any comparable rhetoric. All she has said is that she’s “troubled” by Ashtiani’s case.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The lack of women at the top of Britain's biggest companies is laid bare today as research by The Independent reveals the full extent of the gender imbalance in UK boardrooms.

When the former trade minister Lord (Mervyn) Davies was appointed to look into the problem last week, the coalition Government admitted that only 12 per cent (139) of the directors of FTSE 100 companies are female. But the situation is far worse.

Because several of them hold multiple positions, in fact there are only 120 individual women on boards, out of the total pool of 1,100 directors. And just 20 of them – 6 per cent – are the executive directors who run the company on a daily basis, compared with the 309 who are male.
...