Rams forwarded me this article about an English professor at the University of New Hampshire who has taken a close look at boys and literacy. Prof. Thomas Newkirk argues that instead of viewing popular culture as of no intellectual value, that in the case of boys and reading, it can be a very important influence: "Newkirk interviewed 100 boys and girls in third, fourth and fifth grades in New Hampshire schools for the book, and discovered that sports, movies, video games and other venues of popular culture are a powerful way to encourage young boys to read and write. In his book, Newkirk argues against the simplistic stereotype of boys, showing that rather than mimic violence, boys most often transform, recombine and participate in storylines, and resist the unreality of popular culture." Newkirk has written a book on this subject, Misreading Masculinity: Boys, Literacy, and Popular Culture, that many MANN readers might want to check out.

frank h writes "This CNN story is on how single-sex schools are gaining popularity nationwide. It's among the few articles I've seen that highlights the advantages to boys of single sex schools; most highlight the advantages to girls. Perhaps this plays to the boys' advantage because it seems that the people who need to be convinced are feminist groups like the AAUW. Also, the article mentions the National Association for Single Sex Public Education, an organization perhaps we ought to look into supporting. Anyway, I'd like to all states REQUIRE that single sex classrooms (not necessarily whole single sex schools) be offered in public education, as it offers some tremendous advantages for BOTH boys AND girls. The men's movement, as a community of organizations ought to get behind this initiative in a big way. It may well be the "silver bullet" in solving the education gap between boys and girls."

SJones writes "A study in Australia seeks to blame men for creating sex offenders. Or at least that is the spin the headline gives it. It says bad fathers are to blame for producing male sex offenders. Mothers are given a pass. The article is here. And by all means, get on the bulletin board commenting on this article and slam the radical female supremacists who are dominating it right now."

The Gonzo Kid writes "Men's News Daily reports that an Australian woman faked the birth of a baby and forged documents in order to fleece an ex-boyfriend of nearly $25,000 dollars. Now tell me it's about the child, and not about money and revenge."

Acksiom submitted this article from NZCity and writes "New Zealand Children's Commissioner Roger McClay is going to ask the Government to consider criminalizing the routine genital mutilation of male minors. . .a big step forward for intactivism, if it happens!"

Marc Angelucci writes "Here you can read L.A. County's agenda for today. Take a look at Items 28 and 32 for more anti-male bias. Excerpt from Item #28: “specialized services in the areas of domestic violence against Cambodian refugee WOMAN and child care training and certification in total amount of $383,909...” Apparently Cambodian men are never DV victims, so they need not be included. Never mind that "approximately 1.5 million women and 834,732 men are raped and/or physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the United States." Excerpt from Item 32: “...$361,000...annually from the State Office of Criminal Justice Planning…to help combat teen pregnancy by prosecuting adult MALES who violate existing statutory rape laws with minor females and to obtain court orders against the fathers to increase child support collections, effective July 1, 2001 through June 30, 2003.” Is this a sincere effort to combat teen pregnancy? Or is it targeting men for the purpose of political grandstanding? Is imprisoning young males and then seeking child support from them an efficient, rational and effective way to use $361,000 a year to combat teen pregnancy? This is another reason we need a commission for men."

Steve Imparl's MaleDepression.com site was changed this morning, to create a memorial to the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. As a site to help promote psycholocial healing, I felt that this was very appropriate. Thanks, Steve.

If the New Hampshire primary election is any indication, Rep. David Bickford has a clear shot of being re-elected to the NH House. According to this Foster's Daily Democrat story, he received the most votes of any of the other candidates in his district. Rep. Bickford was the original sponsor of HB 587, which established a Commission on the Status of Men in this state. Many people responded from the plea on MANN to help David out, since due to redistricting he was going to have to campaign in six new towns, many of which historically vote only for Democrats (Bickford considers himself a moderate Republican). Due to the outpouring of support, David was able to buy and put up many signs in his district, and the effort clearly paid off. Thanks to everyone that gave David support in any form. His e-mail is david1@worldpath.net.

As this post on Men's News Daily states, the United States Senate will be voting in the near future on whether to ratify the CEDAW treaty, which is well known to be a piece of gender feminist propaganda with wide ramifications that would make it harder for legitimate men's issues related to discrimination to be acknowledged. You are asked to write to your Senators and voice your opposition to the treaty. Please take a moment to let them know what you think - the members of N.O.W. certainly are.

Glenn Sacks and Diana Thompson co-authored an article discussing the recent federal raids on "deadbeat dads," which resulted in dozens of arrests in recent weeks. The Sacks & Thompson duo shed light on the phenomena of "deadbeat dads," and find that unemployment, not apathy, is the primary factor in fathers who aren't paying child support. They then continue to tear down the myths about fathers who are not paying sufficient child support, discussing the need to enforce visitation rights and offer unemployed fathers more access to employment resources, rather than stigmatizing them and throwing them in jail.

Thundercloud. writes "Any one see "60 Minutes Special Edition", a few nights ago? Well, if you did, maybe you were as shocked as I was to see the Dixie Chicks taken to task about their video celebrating the murdering of men, called, "Goodbye Earl." Dan Rather (of all people), in an interview with the "Chicks", asked one of them: "Do you think it would've been OK if a male singing group had done a video showing the celebration of guys murdering a woman?" Of course, she gave the usual glib answer - she said something like: "No it wouldn't be OK. It's OK for US though, because we look so innocent..." HUH? Well, at least someone in the usually anti-male news media took these misandrists to task."

Since we're noting the possible undermining of the NH Men's Commission, I thought it would be worth pointing out the stacking of the so-called Equal Opportunities Commission in the United Kingdom. Note that the chair, deputy chair, and chief executive are all women. In total, there are 13 women and 3 men -- equal opportunity in the allegedly post-feminist, western world.

Glenn Sacks had a new article printed in the Los Angeles Daily News late last week on the topic of boys' educational needs. In it, Sacks discusses how discipline of boys is becoming a worsening problem in schools, and that this indicates how schools are failing to meet boys' needs. Sacks then goes on to make constructive suggestions on how to improve the classroom environment both to reduce discipline problems as well as be more inclusive of the teaching methods boys are most responsive to. Please pass this article around to any educators you know.

Last Tuesday, the list of nominees NH Governor Jeanne Shaheen made for the New Hampshire Commission on the Status of Men were released. Information about the seven nominees can be found on the NCFC-NH web site. However, the news is not all good. NCFC-NH members spent a lot of time lobbying for passage of this bill, and were alone through much of this process. Now that the list has been released (after tremendous delay, I might add), we are surprised to find that few of the names are even familiar to us. One individual on the list, Scott Hampton, even went on NH Public Radio debating Rep. Bickford about the legislation, saying that NH does not need a men's commission. It is suspicious, to say the least, that Hampton would then be nominated for the commission. Is the commission being sabotaged? I personally believe it is. And we only have about two weeks to stop it. For this reason, you will see a much lower number of new stories posted to MANN for the next week or so. I'm going to be putting a lot of resources into getting to the bottom of this mess and trying to do what I can correct it.

napnip sent me a link to this PDF document which announces that the National Football League is promoting prostate cancer awareness this month, particularly during Prostate Cancer Awareness Week (Sept. 15-21). As David Crawford, the founder of the Prostate Cancer Educational Council said, "There could be no better partner for reaching our target audience." Keep an eye out for players talking about this issue during this month. If you haven't already, also check out the PCAW web site.