Article here. Excerpt:

'The head of the National Organization for Women announced Sunday that she would leave her post before Labor Day, citing health issues as the reason.

NOW president Toni Van Pelt sent an email to colleagues stating “very painful health issue” as her reason for stepping away and claimed her doctor had been urging her to take this step for months, according to The Daily Beast.

That political site notes that Van Pelt’s resignation follows an internal investigation that concluded “governance issues and evidence of a toxic work environment.”

The Daily Beast reported in June that there had also been multiple allegations of racism at the senior level of the 54-year-old civil rights organization, but NOW’s internal examination claimed those accusations could not be substantiated.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'If you want to entrench a government policy, make sure someone’s job depends on enforcing it. Even if that person isn’t a true believer in the program initially, she will be by the time her first paycheck arrives — and increasingly after that. That’s certainly the case with the education system’s Title IX coordinators, who are charged with overseeing schools’ compliance with federal sex discrimination statutes and questionable regulatory dictates.

What do Title IX coordinators do? Their core job duty, at least in theory, is to monitor their institution’s compliance with Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which helps ensure that institutions receiving federal money do not tolerate sexual harassment that effectively bars the victim’s access to educational opportunity.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'While the Trump administration has been awful about following the Administrative Procedure Act (and, as a result, has had many of its policies struck down by the courts) it has been far better than the Obama administration concerning Title IX. It revoked the OCR letters and, as of last Friday, replaced them with a detailed set of rules that were subject to vigorous public comment. Substantively, while imperfect, they are a vast improvement.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A Jefferson City woman who was accused of luring her ex-husband to his death has been sentenced to five years of supervised probation.

The Jefferson City News-Tribune reports that Suzanne Ponder, 48, also was sentenced to 60 days in jail but given credit for time served after pleading guilty Friday to an amended felony charge of abandonment of a corpse. She previously was charged with first-degree murder in the Nov. 24, 2015, death of Jon Williams.
...
Ponder reportedly told the inmate she had lured Williams to a creek in Moniteau County under the guise of using methamphetamine. The inmate said Ponder's then boyfriend, 58-year-old Sandy Gallaspie, who faces a first-degree murder charge, killed Williams when he arrived, according to court records.

Essay here. Long but worth it. Excerpt:

'There are a number of points within Critical Social Justice Theory that would see having a debate or conversation with people of opposing views as unacceptable, and they all combine to create a mindset where that wouldn’t be something that adherents to the Theory are likely or even willing to do in general. This reticence, if not unwillingness, to converse with anyone who disagrees actually has a few pretty deep reasons behind it, and they’re interrelated but not quite the same. They combine, however, to produce the first thing everyone needs to understand about this ideology: it is a complete worldview with its own ethics, epistemology, and morality, and theirs is not the same worldview the rest of us use.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Yesterday, a Dallas judge took away Jeffrey Younger’s say in his son James’ medical, psychological, and psychiatric care, giving that power to James’ mother, who wants to “transition” him into a “girl.” After receiving national attention in October 2019, the bitter parental dispute had ultimately resulted in both parents getting a say in decisions regarding James and his twin, Jude; this ruling effectively reverses that.

James Younger’s mother, Dr. Anne Georgulas, will now be able to enroll the eight-year-old in school as a “girl” named “Luna” and subject him to transgender medical procedures.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'A federal lab reportedly hosted a three-day mandatory training for its white male executives where they were instructed to apologize for their privilege, along with other tasks such as acknowledging the connection between “white male culture” and mass killings, per leaked documents reported by Christopher Rufo.
...
A ticket to the event is $3,000. It purports to teach participants to “recognize themselves as individuals and as members of the white male group” and “gain a systematic perspective and understanding of the costs of racism, sexism, heterosexism, oppression and unexamined privilege.”
...
White male culture is reportedly characterized as “rugged individualism,” “a can-do attitude,” “hard work” and “striving towards success” — all of which are “devastating” to women and people of color.

The men then reportedly apologize for their “privilege” and pledge to become “better [allies].”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Media organizations have just been warned by the Democratic Party machine that they better be very, very careful with how they cover Joe Biden’s vice presidential choice — just revealed to be Kamala Harris. Any criticism of the expected woman will be considered racist and sexist, we are told. Oh, they wrap up that threat in a word salad, but that’s the bottom line: There should be second and even third thoughts about any criticism of Mr. Biden’s VP pick.

An actual memo went out from an ad hoc group of Democratic operatives (pretending to be advocates for women) to media organizations with orders on how to proceed with their coverage. The fact that they expected this partisan missive to be accepted and adhered to by media entities tells you all you need to know about the problem with today’s legacy media.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Nearly 80 House Democrats, including a constitutional law professor, signed a friend-of-the-court brief in a lawsuit against the Department of Education’s Title IX regulation on campus sexual misconduct investigations, slated to take effect this month.

For anyone educated on the issue, the brief shows either stunning legal ignorance or stunning indifference toward students of all races and genders who may find themselves defenseless against university lawyers seeking to protect the institution’s image.

It begins with an explicitly sexist message, purporting to “promote the safety of women and girls” and equating females with “victims.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit delivered a win for students accused of sexual misconduct on July 29, reinforcing the use of a “far simpler standard” for judges to determine whether colleges discriminated against these students based on their gender while investigating them for sexual assault or harassment.

Three federal circuit courts have now adopted the standard of “plausible inference,” as it is called, to rule on cases where a student claims their institution conducted a biased investigation against them using procedures developed under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the law that prohibits such discrimination at federally funded institutions. Under the standard, accused students must only “raise a plausible inference that the university discriminated” against them, which is less demanding than standards used in other circuits for similar claims.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'A teenage boy alleges he was given the female hormone estrogen after he was diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder while in custody at a Los Angeles County juvenile hall last summer, a complaint filed in Los Angeles Superior Court last month states.

The boy, then 16, was given the medication without his or his parents' consent, but took it anyway because he feared if he didn't, he would face more severe punishment, court documents allege.

He alleges the medication caused him to develop an enlarging of his breast tissue and he suffered from symptoms of depression, anxiety, insomnia and headaches, among other problems, the complaint states.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The French feminist movement is split over the rise of an activist who advocates lesbianism and warns that all men are potential predators.

Alice Coffin, 42, is under police protection, having become the target of online insults and death and rape threats after her election in June as a councillor for the Europe Ecology Green Party in Paris.

She is facing anger from other feminists. Some accuse her of importing a man-hating form of feminism that has long been eschewed in France.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Since then, crew members, celebrities, and media personalities have publicly spoken out about DeGeneres' character and accused her of problematic behavior. Corden himself has also faced criticism following the news that he might be DeGeneres' successor, leading to backlash on Twitter from people accusing the "Late Late Show" host of trying to lower young writers' salaries or saying he acted in a similarly entitled way as DeGeneres has been accused of.

But regardless of your feelings about Corden or DeGeneres, the news that Corden could replace the longtime host points to a larger, more disturbing trend of talented women (especially queer women and women of color) consistently being sidestepped to pave the way for male comedians.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Girls are more engaged in school than boys, and that is a big reason girls (and women) tend to do better educationally. But rather than thinking of engagement as an educational advantage, we might better consider it as protective to girls, who confront many other disadvantages in school and life.

This is the takeaway of a research brief I recently published in the journal Educational Researcher. Nationally, girls do better than boys on reading tests but trail boys on math tests. I analyzed nationally representative data on boys’ and girls’ fifth-grade reading and math test scores and reports of their classroom behavioral engagement throughout elementary school. I found that if there were no gender differences in behavioral engagement patterns through elementary school, fifth-grade reading test score gaps could reverse and math test score gaps could triple in size.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Sex discrimination is a possible explanation for the University's approach to a sexual misconduct case from late 2014, according to an opinion from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals posted Wednesday.

David Schwake, the plaintiff in the case and ASU alumnus with a master's degree in microbiology, was accused by a classmate for inappropriately touching her without her consent. Three weeks after Schwake received notice of the initial complaint, the University ruled that Schwake was "responsible for disciplinary charges," court documents said.

Schwake later took the case to a federal court in Arizona on the claim that he was discriminated against based on sex because of the University's handling of the case against him. A judge at the lower court immediately dismissed the case, saying that Schwake did not have a plausible claim for violation of his rights under Title IX.