Story here.

'Nearly 50 men have won back child support payments totalling A$434,378 (£262,249), with one man recovering A$70,000.

In January, 2007, changes made to the Child Support (Assessment) Act allowed any parent to seek a DNA test to determine the paternity of his or her child.

Support groups hailed the development, saying too many men had been duped by former partners into supporting children who were not theirs.

"I think it's a good thing that children are able to know the biological father rather than their pretend father," said Sue Price, director of the Men's Rights Agency. "I think it's essential that they should be able to have the money repaid to them.

"Why should they have to pay for another man's child?"

But Kathleen Swinbourne, president of the Sole Parents Union, said the new laws were damaging children at the centre of such DNA disputes: "What does this say to children about being wanted, being loved, being parented?"

Article here. Excerpt:

'Rutgers University Professor Lionel Tiger and some of his penis-wielding peers have been rallying to establish a “men’s studies” program at Rutgers University. Men have reached a point where “they’re experienced a considerable amount of dismay and uncertainty,” says Tiger to CNN. Men today feel “somewhat scorned, in principle by women.” Tiger’s work has been born from a fear that men are being feminized. Thus, men must explore what it means to be masculine; both on a social and biological level, and reclaim their territory.

Article here. Excerpt:

'What's the next battle for an aging feminist?

Boys.

Granted, the battle for women's rights and equality has not been completely won, but the new reality is that in the future, it will be males who are most endangered.

Currently, up to 60 percent of the students at an average co-educational college or university are female. The majority of bachelors' degrees are now awarded to females in every racial and ethnic group. By 2017, the ratio of female to male college graduates will be 1 1/2 to 1. One demographer calls that prediction "staggering and transformational."

Feminists have lobbied for a societal transformation where the rights and talents of women are fully recognized. But is this the kind of transformation we want? A "role reversal," where women will reign supreme in all fields but the sciences?

Is it healthy that even those men who do stay in college seek fewer student leadership positions and perform worse academically than women do? Won't these factors, combined with the lower graduation rate, promote a "marriage gap?"

Article here. Excerpt:

'I recently was in a class when a discussion broke out about the men’s center and how it was going to be voted on in this past week’s election due to it being included in the platform of one of the candidates.
...
In the beginning of this conversation, I will admit that I was convinced that this would be a place where men would sit and talk about how women are pulling the rape card or plotting how they would get out of whatever situation they were in.
...
If these gentle spirits that help me with my movement and my cause need the same help I do, I would never, ever, turn my back on them based solely on their sex.

This is not to say that every man who may use this center is a part of the feminist movement, but they hopefully are more compassionate to women’s causes if they are experiencing the same type of gender violence that women are.

In the case of the men’s center, I feel it is the first step towards fixing a broken system and bringing light to men’s gender violence issues as well.

Story here. Excerpt:

'SUDBURY, Ont. — More than 100 men donned red high-heeled shoes in downtown Sudbury, Ont., Sunday.

The inaugural “Walk A Mile in Her Shoes” event aimed to raise awareness about violence against women.

Pumped dignitaries from around the community joined in, including the mayor, chief of police and local MP.

Police Chief Frank Elsner says domestic issue is an important issue.

Money raised is going toward a YWCA women’s program.

The event also marks the beginning of National Victim Awareness Week.

“Look at all the men who’ve come out and put on their heels,” said Mayor John Rodriguez, who gained a couple of centimetres from his own pair of pumps.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'For feminism, spring is an aphrodisiac for histrionics and unadulterated stupidity. The University of New Hampshire’s Womyn’s Club spent all of last week fighting the local fire department over the right to burn smutty magazines wherever the “womyn” pleased. Last month Sen. Harry Reid uttered perhaps the stupidest remark by a feminist in history: “Women don’t commit domestic violence.”

Video here. Original report on MANN here. Thousands of pictures and possibly videos as well appear to have been taken. Caption: "Web cams in school-issued laptops allegedly photographed students at home."

Saw How to Train Your Dragon recently and can say it was a great movie in many ways. A cute, heart-tugging tale, with some father-son stuff in there, too. My favorite character was the main dragon character, "Toothless".

But like any MRA, I can't just turn it off. One recurring image was that of the heroine-girl (Astride) often punching the hero-boy (Hiccup) in the arm and chest to show her disapproval of what he does or says. This is on top of the repeated depictions of the other boy characters as being incompetent and acceptance-dependent on Astride, who also knocks them around some. And some of us wonder how is it girls come to the conclusion that it's OK for them to hit boys but not the other way around. Answer: We are teaching them this.

Story here. (Related report here). No, a woman would never do that. Not in a million years. Excerpt:

'The system that Lower Merion school officials used to track lost and stolen laptops wound up secretly capturing thousands of images, including photographs of students in their homes, Web sites they visited, and excerpts of their online chats, says a new motion filed in a suit against the district.

More than once, the motion asserts, the camera on Robbins' school-issued laptop took photos of Robbins as he slept in his bed. Each time, it fired the images off to network servers at the school district.

Back at district offices, the Robbins motion says, employees with access to the images marveled at the tracking software. It was like a window into "a little LMSD soap opera," a staffer is quoted as saying in an e-mail to Carol Cafiero, the administrator running the program.

Barbara Kay gives a fairly decent account on the need for Male Studies here. There isn't much time to leave comments, so have at it! Excerpt:

'The 93rd anniversary of the battle of Vimy Ridge, considered one of Canada’s defining moments as a young nation, was commemorated at the National War Memorial last Friday.
...
But of course, it was not “young people” who “braved gunfire,” it was young men.

This is just horrible. Apparently, it's OK for a mother to put a child up for adoption without the father's consent. Excerpt:

'John Wyatt raced to the hospital, excited to be a father but worried about the mother.

His girlfriend had promised to call him the moment she went into labor, but she'd turned off her cellphone. Wyatt had been calling it for hours. Finally, an operator at Potomac Hospital in Woodbridge confirmed the news: His girlfriend was there, and his daughter had been born.

When Wyatt arrived at the hospital that morning of Feb. 11, 2009, he got the shock of his 20-year-old life: Administrators insisted that no such baby was there -- and no such mother.

Court records show that Wyatt's daughter, Emma, was born Feb. 10, at that very hospital, and that she spent the next week at two Woodbridge hotels before being put up for adoption -- in Utah. "We just want Emma to come home," says Wyatt's mother, Jeri. "My son wants his child. I want to see my granddaughter."

Story here. Excerpt:

'WHEN JANINE Giandomenico's son explained his school project to her, she dismissed his worries and figured she'd have to fork out a few bucks for poster board, magazines and a glue stick or two.

Then she read the letter that accompanied the project, over and over again, and believes that her son's third-grade teacher at the Maude Wilkins Elementary School in Maple Shade, Burlington County, was asking the class, including the boys, to dress as women during a fashion show for a Women's History Month project.

Blog entry here. Excerpt:

'Education | The academic gender wars got a bit more spirited last week, Inside Higher Ed reports, with the creation of the above-named interdisciplinary effort, announced at a conference at Wagner College on Staten Island, to study malehood in all its power and powerlessness. Quote:

Lionel Tiger, a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University, said the field takes its cues “from the notion that male and female organisms really are different” and the “enormous relation between … a person’s biology and their behavior” that’s not being addressed in most contemporary scholarship on men and boys.

“I am concerned that male-averse attitudes are widespread in the United States and that masculinity is becoming politically incorrect,” said Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of “The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men.”

By now some of you have heard of this incident in Maryland near the University of Maryland. As the video shows, the kid was doing nothing wrong but skipping down a sidewalk. When an officer on horseback approached him, he got scared and backed away. Then a number of other police descended on him and beat him into unconsciousness. The police then lied about the incident in official reports, all the while thinking that they were not being filmed.

So my question to you is this: Had he been a she, would this have happened, even if all those police had been female? I don't think so. I think this is a further example of how men, and young men in particular, are viewed as fair fodder for things like beatings and abuse by the authorities. After all, if they can be drafted into the armed forces to get blown to bits, then why shouldn't the state or its agents feel they can get away with beating them senseless whenever they feel like it?

Men's rights are human rights. After all, we're human... right?

Release here. Excerpt:

'(I-Newswire) April 13, 2010 - ROCKFORD, Illinois: Children’s adventure and mystery author, Max Elliot Anderson, has signed contracts for 11 books to be published by two publishers.

Comfort Publishing, in Concord, North Carolina, will republish his first 7 titles after the original publisher could not withstand the economic pressures that have hurt so many small businesses.

The titles to be republished by Comfort Publishing include Newspaper Caper, Terror at Wolf Lake, North Woods Poachers, Mountain Cabin Mystery, Big Rig Rustlers, Secret of Abbott’s Cave, and Legend of the White Wolf. A new book, Barney and the Runaway, will also be published.

Comfort Publishing has also contracted a first right of refusal option on another 16 titles and wants to pursue an extensive series with him. This could become a 24 book deal. “These books are already written,” Anderson said, “although I'm doing a revision on each one to increase the word count.”