Article here. Excerpt:

'But come 2022, there will be a literary award no North American man is eligible for: The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. And this one pays more than most of the other awards.

First reported by The New York Times, the award will honor the best in North American fiction among women and nonbinary authors. It was co-founded by award-winning authors and poets and supported by Margaret Atwood, Jodi Picoult and Jane Smiley, among other notable writers.

The only criteria: Literary excellence, written by a woman or nonbinary author.

Susan Swan, a Canadian novelist and co-founder of the prize, said the founding board noticed the discrepancy: Male authors have historically been awarded far more often for their work than women, even as the number of published works by men and women evens out. Nonbinary authors are recognized far less.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The new DC Universe film ‘Birds of Prey’ is populated by despicable men, and feminist women who want to be just like them. The outcome: financial losses and moral bankruptcy.

‘Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)’ opened on Friday and stars two-time Academy Award nominated actress Margot Robbie reprising her role as DC Comics supervillain Harley Quinn.

Article here. Excerpt:

'In a 2018 poll of 548 experts on women’s rights that recently went viral, the US was voted the tenth most dangerous country in the world for women. It was also voted the third worst country in the world for sexual violence, which put it ahead of South Sudan, where forced marriages are common and mothers routinely teach their daughters how to survive a rape, Afghanistan, where rape victims are often punished instead of their rapists, and South Africa, where lesbians are raped because it’s believed it can make them straight and virgins are raped because it’s believed to cure the rapist of HIV (which is epidemic in the country).
...

The 2018 poll, therefore, seems anomalous. But what could account for 548 experts suddenly deciding that one of the countries considered safest for women had become one of the most dangerous?

Article here. Excerpt:

'Children are being circumcised without both of their parents’ consent at a private clinic in Leicester, according to health inspectors.

Staff from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) visited the Community Health Centre on Melbourne Road where a private twice weekly circumcision clinic is run.

A summary of the service provided in the report said: “The service provides circumcision to those under 18 years of age for non-therapeutic reasons under local anaesthetic.
...
The service was rated requires improvement, in part down to the fact that children were being operated on without evidence that both parents had agreed to the procedure.

Article here. Excerpt:

'After she became a face of the #MeToo movement in Arizona that led to the expulsion of State Rep. Don Shooter, there are now accusations that Rep. Michelle Ugenti-Rita sexually harassed a former lobbyist.

Ugenti-Rita was one of the women who accused Shooter of sexual harassment, allegations that eventually got him kicked out of office. The accusations against Ugenti-Rita come from a sworn deposition that was just released Wednesday. Investigators interviewed a woman about various times she was made uncomfortable by Ugenti-Rita and her now-husband, Brian Townsend.

The lobbyist’s sworn claims happened before the allegations that ended Shooter’s political career. She says Ugenti-Rita and Townsend were trying to recruit her as a partner for sexual acts when Ugenti-Rita was still in the Arizona House of Representatives from 2013 to 2015.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Judge rules pop star Kesha guilty of defamation for texting rape allegation about former producer. The pop star and the producer, Lukasz "Dr. Luke" Gottwald, have been in a long-running legal battle, with Gottwald suing Kesha for alleged defamation and breach of contract. On Thursday, New York State Supreme Court Justice Jennifer G. Schecter granted summary judgement to Gottwald on both claims.

Kesha "made a false statement to Lady Gaga about Gottwald and that was defamatory," Schecter wrote in the decision. In a private text message exchange, Kesha accused Gottwald of having raped singer Katy Perry—a claim Perry later denied in court.

Kesha has also publicly accused her former producer of drugging and raping her. Gottwald alleges that she made up the story to get out of her recording contract with him.'

Video here.

'At Golightly, all properties are owned or managed exclusively by women. The renters have to be ladies too, but men can travel with them.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'You don’t have to look very hard to realize that modern society is going through a breakup with masculinity.

While macho men used to be all the rage, in recent decades, culture has shifted away from glorifying them in a big way.

The driven CEO is now seen as an abusive anger case. The creative, visionary rockstar is now seen as an out-of-control sex addict. Police are seen as violent enforcers of the status quo, politicians are seen as sexist and power-hungry and so forth. Everywhere you look, once-respected emblems of masculine power are being recast as villainous entities.

As a result, it can be a deeply weird time to be a guy. Hearing that your heroes are now the bad guys is a deeply unpleasant experience, and hearing that you might be one of them, too, is another level of frustration altogether.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'California prosecutors are dropping all charges against an Orange County surgeon and his girlfriend after concluding that the previous district attorney “manufactured” the high-profile 2018 case in which the couple was accused of serially drugging and raping women.

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a news release Tuesday that after his office reviewed the case, investigators found “no provable evidence” to support the charges against Grant Robicheaux, a 39-year-old orthopedic surgeon and former reality TV star, and his girlfriend Cerissa Riley, a 33-year-old dance instructor.

The decision caps a key part of a lengthy legal saga that drew international headlines for the splashy details befitting Robicheaux’s status as a short-lived reality TV star on the Bravo dating show, “Online Dating Rituals of the American Male.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Johnny responds, upset about the violence he claims was perpetrated against him:

“Amber, I lost a f**king finger man, c’mon. I had a f**king, I had a f**king mineral can, a jar, a can of mineral spirits thrown at my nose.”

That’s when she gets utterly dismissive of his accusations against her, even apparently taunting him about the idea of going public with them:

“You can please tell people that it was a fair fight, and see what the jury and judge thinks. Tell the world Johnny, tell them Johnny Depp, I Johnny Depp, a man, I’m a victim too of domestic violence.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Last spring, during my first week as a janitor at a Dave & Buster’s, I struck up a conversation with a co-worker who served 17 years in prison. Swapping life stories, I sheepishly divulged that I used to work for The Washington Post, that I had a book published by HarperCollins, and that I had been the editor of a popular website.

He fixed a look at me. “So what are you doing here?” he asked.

For the life of me, I couldn’t begin to explain how I went from having a life and career I felt proud of, to being publicly shamed by my peers and punished for things I didn’t do.

In October 2017, I was one of roughly 70 men included in the ­Sh-tty Media Men list, a crowdsourced spreadsheet of anonymous, unvetted allegations of sexual misconduct and assault. No words can describe my astonishment at finding myself accused of “harassment,” “stalking” and “physical intimidation.” Even more agonizing was seeing this supposedly private listing swiftly leaked to the public via several major online media outlets as well as social media.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Among the tidal wave of sexual misconduct allegations in the early days of #MeToo, one little-noticed story concerned an indie country-rock emo band called Pinegrove. On November 21, 2017, the band canceled its tour because of a “sexual coercion” charge against lead singer Evan Stephens Hall. A lengthy message from Hall on Pinegrove’s Facebook page asserted that the accusation stemmed from a complicated, intense relationship that he believed to have been mutual and “based in love.” However, the singer also castigated himself for having “monumentally misread the situation.” In particular, he wrote that he “should have more actively acknowledged my position of power as a public figure, and also as a man.”
...

Article here. Excerpt;

'A judge has sided with an accused student against the University of Connecticut after the school ignored evidence that challenged the female accuser’s version of events.

The male accused student, referred to as John Doe in court documents, was one semester away from graduating when a female student, referred to as Jane Roe, accused him of sexual assault. After a campus process that denied John the ability to question Jane’s credibility, he was expelled. He then sued the university and was granted a temporary restraining order blocking the school from implementing his punishment based on an unfair procedure.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Aquaman star Amber Heard admitted to "hitting" ex-husband Johnny Depp in a recording made in 2015, while the two were still married. The recording, obtained and published by The Daily Mail Friday, was allegedly made when the two tried to talk through their marriage issues. Heard and Depp married in 2015, and finalized their divorce in 2017.

"I'm sorry that I didn't, uh, uh, hit you across the face in a proper slap, but I was hitting you, it was not punching you. Babe, you're not punched," Heard tells Depp in the recording, referencing an incident the night before. "I don't know what the motion of my actual hand was, but you're fine, I did not hurt you, I did not punch you, I was hitting you."'

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The Terrible Masculinity of Johnny Depp

https://medium.com/@karaschlegl/the-terrible-masculinity-of-johnny-depp-a7f632ffb42e

Article here. Excerpt:

'A Texas mother attempting to transition her seven-year-old son into a girl has lost again in court, with the judge ordering that both the boy's mother and father, who is opposed to the transition, have joint conservatorship over the child.

The long, contentious battle over James Younger's fate has played out over several months. In October, a jury ruled that James' father, Jeffrey Younger, should be stripped of his conservatorship role over the boy, leaving James' mother, Anne Georgulas, in charge of James' medical decisions. The boy's mother is determined to transition James into a girl, while the father does not want it to happen.

A judge later ordered that Younger was to share joint conservatorship over the child. Texas Gov. Greg Abbot subsequently declared that the state would investigate the circumstances surrounding James' rearing.'