October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and this year RADAR and many members of the VAWA Reform Coalition are sponsoring activities designed to counteract the fairy tales the DV industry delights in spreading around.

This year RADAR has selected the theme, "It's Time to Tell the Truth about Domestic Violence." Throughout the month, RADAR will be releasing reports that highlight how the DV myths often preclude effective approaches to reducing partner abuse, and sometimes make the situation worse!

RADAR strongly encourages you to attend at least one Domestic Violence Awareness Month event held in your area. To find a listing of local events:

1. Go to http://www.usdoj.gov/ovw/statedomestic.htm.
2. Identify the domestic violence coordinating council for your state.
3. At the coordinating council's website, look for activities listed under the Calendar of Events

Always be sure to present yourself in a polite manner. And if you really want to have fun, why not show up at the event early, dressed up as a storybook character:

Along the top of this site are links to other services I've been experimenting with offering to the community. The wiki has been very active lately, but the Planet Blog Reader is in need of some maintenance that I don't really have the time for. I'd like to know if anyone would feel upset to see it go?

Story here. Excerpt:

'DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — Duke University President Richard Brodhead apologized Saturday for not better supporting the men's lacrosse players falsely accused in last year's highly publicized rape scandal.

Brodhead, speaking at the university's law school, said he regretted Duke's "failure to reach out" in a "time of extraordinary peril" after a woman accused three players of raping at a March 2006 party thrown by the team.'

Too little, too late. Brodhead, it's time for you to step down.

Bear with us, this site has now been upgraded to the latest and greatest version of Drupal. That of course means old bugs are fixed and new ones are introduced. Please keep us posted on problems you may encounter with the new system to admin@mensactivism.org.

Story here. Excerpt:

'Gouws' interest in "men's studies," as he described the field, developed during his stint at graduate school. The classroom environment, said Gouws, sometimes enabled bigotry under the guise of feminism with nasty consequences. During a class on gender sociology, the instructor presented a paper describing a female 'wild zone' that represented an area of thinking that women alone could experience due purely to their sex.
...
The importance of male-positive masculinities cannot be understated, said Gouws. "The manhood question" - how men define themselves in relation to their gender - is an essential one, and it deserves the same attention that "the woman question" has received. And since he's not retiring just yet, Gouws and his students will have plenty of time to delve further.'

Story here. Excerpt:

"In their closing arguments, defense lawyers argued that Browne Sanders was doomed by her own failure to adapt to an organizational shake-up that began with Thomas's hiring in 2004. A series of clashes with Thomas and star guard Stephon Marbury, poor job performance and personal financial woes put her in a precarious position that prompted her to make false claims, said MSG attorney Ronald Green.

It's up to a jury to decide whose version to believe in a $10 million sexual harassment lawsuit. Deliberations were expected to begin Friday."

On Monday, October 1, Max Elliot Anderson will post a sample chapter from one of his action-adventures or mysteries, written especially for boys 8 – 13. Mr. Anderson grew up hating to read. “Now I write the kinds of books I would have enjoyed as a child,” he said.

Each chapter will come from one of his seven published books. “It’s an opportunity for children, teachers, and parents to get an idea of what my books are all about.”

These chapters can be located on his blog, Books for Boys, at http://booksandboys.blogspot.com/.

Chapters will come from Newspaper Caper, Terror at Wolf Lake, North Woods Poachers, Mountain Cabin Mystery, Big Rig Rustlers, Secret of Abbott's Cave & Legend of the White Wolf, which are compared by readers and reviewers to Tom Sawyer, The Hardy Boys, Huck Finn, Nancy Drew, Tom Swift, Scooby-Doo, Lemony Snicket, and adventure author Jack London.

“I’m interested in getting more boys to read,” Anderson said. “There is a tremendous need to write books that will capture and hold their attention. I believe I’ve written books like that.”

Others agree.

Story here.

Does Edwards really care about men, or is he simply looking for minority votes? Either way, its the first comment from a presidential candidate regarding the status of American males. Make sure you check out the video. Excerpt:

'Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards said if he isn’t elected president, the population of African-American males is likely to either wind up in prison or dead.
...
We start with the president of the United States saying to America, ‘we cannot build enough prisons to solve this problem. And the idea that we can keep incarcerating and keep incarcerating — pretty soon we’re not going to have a young African-American male population in America. They’re all going to be in prison or dead. One of the two.”'

Came across this article and thought it was a good topic to toss out there. It discusses the 'vanishing friendships' that men have with each other and how that just ain't good for us. Excerpt:

'Men who have been managing their careers for years but who find themselves, midstream, feeling bereft of the kind of friendships they once had seem to have made four critical life mistakes, according to experts. The first and biggest problem involves time constraints...

The second problem is a little more insidious and involves the way men tend to forsake their male friends and elect their wives or girlfriends as their new and primary best friends in their social worlds. Call it the Yoko Ono effect.

Story here. Excerpt:

'NEW YORK - A Family Court judge whose alleged courtroom tirades included calling one man a "pig" and another "dysfunctional" has agreed to step down at the end of the year.

Judge Marian Shelton will finish out her 10-year term and agreed not to seek reappointment. A monitoring agency called the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, said Thursday it would not seek sanctions against her under the deal.'

Thanks to Marc A. for the heads-up. Op-ed here. Excerpt:

'To Nifong: To exploit social stereotypes in order to pursue and compound an injustice against the falsely accused.

When future generations of prosecutors gather around campfires, the Saga of Mike Nifong no doubt will be a frequently told tale.
...
...What if those charged had been poor black men and the alleged victim a suburban white woman? Consider if either those charged, or allegedly victimized, were men, women, straight, gay, Asian, Latino, Native American, black, Caucasian, middle class or poor. Would this have influenced your response?

These are questions worth raising in our hometown as we consider whether justice would truly have been blind.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Women in their thirties who appear to "have it all" compared with previous generations are in fact exhausted and unhappy, a survey has claimed.

The demands of being a homemaker, mother and holding down a job is leaving them "physically and emotionally" wrecked.'

Story here. As long as Type-I male genital mutilation is legal, much worse mutilations will occur. Support the MGM bill: http://www.mgmbill.org/

Excerpt:

'MATTOON, Ill., July 18 /PRNewswire/ -- The day after birth on February 15, 2007, an infant at Sarah Bush Hospital had a standard circumcision procedure performed by Dr. Sherif Malek. However, what should have been a forgotten memory for the boy became a lifelong nightmare. Due to negligence, Dr. Malek severed the entire glans, commonly termed the head, of the infant's penis. Today, Jerry A. Latherow of Latherow Law Office on behalf of plaintiffs Boy Doe (the infant) and his mother, Jane Doe, filed a complaint for compensation for damages against Sarah Bush Lincoln Health System, Inc, 1000 Health Center Drive, Mattoon, IL, and Sherif Malek, D.O. in the Circuit Court of Coles County, Illinois.'

Story here. Excerpt:

"Under current federal law, hate crimes apply to acts of violence against individuals on the basis of race, religion, color or national origin. Federal prosecutors have jurisdiction only if the victim is engaged in a specific federally protected activity such as voting.

The House bill would extend the hate crimes category to include sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability and give federal authorities greater leeway to participate in hate crime investigations. It would approve $10 million over the next two years to help local law enforcement officials cover the cost of hate crime prosecutions."

Article here. Excerpt:

'Steven said he knows some people will think he's weak, and he wants them to know after years of abuse at the hands of his mother, it was all he knew. He said he is now happily married to a wonderful woman.

He added, "Men's hearts and feelings are like women's hearts and feelings. They feel the same. It doesn't matter if that heart is covered with muscles or breasts, the pain cuts deeply and the losses crowd in. And it doesn't matter if the world thinks men don't feel. You still hurt."'