Column here. Excerpt:

'...commentator Melanie Phillips is adamant: “What we know beyond a shadow of a doubt is that children need their fathers.”

Really? Why? What for? And when did anybody last even ask? It might be very nice indeed for a child to have a dad around the house — provided, naturally, that he's the proper kind: the devoted, sober, gentle giant much given to manly rites of passage like the proud purchase of a brace of season tickets to Arsenal. But nice is not the same as need and certainly not as “rights”; further, if the hands-on presence of a father were actually so imperative, our species would have died out in the primordial swamp.'

From a press release from Men's Health Australia:

'This Sunday is White Ribbon Day (WRD) and the start of the 16 Days of Activism to Stop Violence Against Women. However the 2005 Personal Safety Australia survey found that in the past 12 months almost twice as many men as women (808,300) were victims of all types of violence; twice as many men as women (485,400) were victims of physical assault; nearly a third of sexual assault victims were men; 864,300 men were harassed and 110,700 men were stalked. The same study found that men were almost as likely as women to experience physical violence within the home (half from females, half from males) and were just as likely as women to experience physical violence from perpetrators who were known to them. Yet the WRD campaign focuses solely on the prevention of violence against women by men.

Via Marc A. Story here. Excerpt:

'(IsraelNN.com) A new Knesset subcommittee for fathers' rights in divorce and child-custody proceedings held its first meeting Monday.

The Subcommittee on the Family Crisis in Israel was presided over by its chairman, MK Chaim Amsalem (Shas). Committee member and initiator Avraham Ravitz (UTJ) delivered the opening statement which ignited a stormy clash between government representatives and rights groups.
...
Dr. Orli Iness of the University of Haifa told the committee that “when the Knesset adopted legislation on the matter of protecting women from violence, it was reported that about 20 percent of complaints filed were false, but it adopted the legislation as the price to pay in order to protect the weak… Presently, there have been reports that in some precincts the figure [for false complaints] is as high as 50%. If that had been the case at the time, the Knesset would have thought differently about the matter.”

Story here. Excerpt:

'Police say the boys -- who are 8 and 9 years old -- are in a Cobb County youth detention center but face adult criminal charges.
...
Police reports show the girl went to authorities Saturday for the alleged attack, which she says happened Thursday.'

I know none of the details of the case but my gut says that there is some hysterical overreaction going on for what were most likely innocent childhood games. No matter what happened, I can't conceive any valid reason to charge boys this young as adults.

Via Marc A. Article here. Excerpt:

'MEN'S groups are calling for mandatory paternity testing of all newborns as it emerges a record number of men are finding they are not the fathers of children they believed to be theirs.

Almost a quarter of paternity tests conducted by one of Australia's largest DNA laboratory companies show the man submitting a sample is not the father, compared to an estimated one in 10 "exclusions" 10 years ago.

...
Thousands of men are turning to DIY testing kits - available online - to discover whether they are the biological father while they are still in a relationship and without telling their partners about their suspicions.
...
Professor Margaret Otlowski, deputy director of the University of Tasmania's Centre for Law and Genetics, said: "I don't think mandatory testing is a good idea.

In a report to Congress on services provided to domestic violence and sexual assault victims, the U.S. General Accounting Office identified a number of grant programs whose funds are used to provide direct services to victims.

RADAR then submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking data on the services provided to victims, categorized by gender. On October 23, 2007, the Office on Violence Against Women responded to the RADAR request.

Via Marc A. Article here. Excerpt:

'The Reuters report stands in stark contrast to the politically correct — but empirically incorrect — Associated Press story that blanketed the nation on April 23, 2007. The AP story was based on the advocacy press release of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) that claimed after one year out of college women earned 20 percent less than men and that the gap widened 10 years later to 31 percent. The AP did not tell the nation that statistical analyses accompanying the press release reduced the two purported gaps to 5 percent and 12 percent respectively...'

A friend sent me a link to this on-line version of part of the book "Shyness & Love: Causes, Consequences, and Treatment", which is now out-of-print. I read some of the parts available for reading and found the author's direct candor about men and where they are at very refreshing, though a number of his comments seemed clouded by "normative expectations" and the kind of judgmentality seemingly reserved more for men than women. Food for thought and debate for sure; doubtless you will read it and agree to some stuff, disagree with others. Excerpts:

From the chapter The Male Lesbian, read:

Marc Rudov calls women that buy tasers "Jane Bond" with a license to kill men. Mr. Rudov points out a few incidents where men have been murdered via the 50k volts that tasers deliver to men and now women are being sold these weapons to use against men with impunity. Taser International does not require that these women have permits for these weapons. Men are now at the whim of women whom are armed with weapons to use against anyone they choose.

Marc Rudov recently debated feminist Lis Wiehl concerning this matter.

The debate can be viewed here.

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Ed. note: If you have trouble loading the video via the the target page to the link above, the direct link is here

Article here. Excerpt:

'ScienceDaily (Nov. 12, 2007) — Physical dating violence (PDV) affects almost one in every 11 adolescents, according to research presented at the American Public Health Association’s 135th Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.

The study, which looked at data from the 2005 National Youth Risk Behavior Study, also found that contrary to common general perception, males and females equally report being victims of PDV. The researchers found that in their study population of 6,951 male and 6,807 female students in grades 9 through 12, 9 percent of boys and 9.2 percent of girls responded yes to the question “during the past 12 months, did your boyfriend or girlfriend ever hit, slap, or physically hurt you on purpose.”'

Story here. Excerpt:

'EAGLE POINT — A first-grader was suspended Tuesday for drawing a stick figure shooting another in the head with a gun and allegedly threatening students.

Little Butte School officials sent 6-year-old Ryan Weathers home after receiving complaints from parents saying he threatened their children, said Douglas Weathers, the boy's father.
...
The disciplinary report given to Weathers stated the reason for the suspension was the boy "threatened to shoot two girls in the head."

The drawing was inspired by an episode of "The Simpsons," Weathers said. In the television cartoon, a character displays a drawing of a student being shot by a gun.

Weathers said he understands the concerns other parents may have, but felt the school went too far in suspending his son for one day.

"You can't blame the parents," he said. "I told the principal that I agreed that he shouldn't have done the drawing, but suspending him seems like a policy with no intelligence behind it.

Story here. Excerpt:

'Authorities said Kennedy plunged her son into the water on Christmas Day 2005. The boy suffered severe burns and went a week without treatment before dying.

"You took away his life in a way that was preventable," Circuit Judge Jeffrey Levinson told Kennedy. "You subjected him to pain, you subjected him to suffering, and you let him wither."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Clinton was playing the gender card -- even if she denied doing so.

"I'm not playing, as some people say, the gender card here in Las Vegas, I'm just trying to play the winning card," the candidate chirped. "I understand very well that people are not attacking me because I'm a woman. They're attacking me because I'm ahead."

The senator was having it both ways. Even as she cashed in on the fact that she is mounting a historic campaign for the presidency -- not the first by a woman, but the first in which a woman might prevail -- Clinton said she was not "running because I'm a woman." Rather, she said, "I'm running because I think I'm the best qualified and experienced person to hit the ground running."'

Video report here. Some good lines include:

"...it was not a student-teacher relationship." (So it wasn't so bad then? "Relationship".)

"... is accused of having sex with a 15-year-old boy..." (There it is again, "having sex with", as predictable as the tides.)

Article here.

I once heard someone say at an MRA event that it's OK to acknowledge the traumatic experiences of women but not men. Another time I heard a therapist mention that the grief of men was taboo but not of women. Things like this documentary only point up these observations. Traumatized men are casualties. Traumatized women are victims. It matters not, it seems, whether the person wears a uniform, but only if that person is male or female.