Also in today's TNH, an article by Chris Godbout on male body image and eating disorders can be read at this link. Chris, myself and Peter Welch from the Health Ed. Dept. are working together on a presentation called Junk Male: Images of Men in Advertising which will be shown toward the end of March. This semester is looking to be a great one for awareness of men's issues at UNH!

I managed to get a biweekly editorial column in the UNH school newspaper about men's issues. You can read my first article, about how men are seen as "success objects" at this link. I hope to make use of the column to get a dialogue going about men's issues started at the university, and hopefully meet some people in support of men's rights. My articles will also be posted in the "Men in the Media" section of the new Massachusetts Coalition for Men web site, which is currently under development and will be unveiled soon.

Bill Kuhl submitted an article from the St. Lois Post-Dispatch about the way fathers are devalued in the media. The author, who once supported the portrayal of Murphy Brown in her TV sitcom to have a child on her own, has since changed his mind and strongly believes we are harming children by condoning the absence of fathers in families. "If I told you a mother was unimportant to a child's well-being, you'd look at me like I had two heads. Yet somehow, we have bought into a lie that says father is dispensable, that anything he brings to the table can be replicated by a determined single mother or, indeed, any loving person who happens to be around."

Marc Angelucci writes "During the Grammy's, a commercial depicted a child listening as a man beat his wife in the background, then gave the number 1-800-END-ABUSE to call. When you call, you'll hear a message that talks about "men" beating up "the women they promise to love." If you've got a moment, leave them a message about the harm this slanted and biased message causes. How in the world do they get away with this?" Considering the enormous viewership of the Grammy Awards, this is doing incredible damage.

Yahoo! news reports in this story that a woman from Hong Kong called her ex-boyfriend 1,000 times each day for three years. The man changed jobs and telephone numbers to get away from this psychotic woman, but eventually his new numbers were found out, and she began calling again, and making 500 faxes to him each day as well. When one day she showed up at his home to demand money from him, they got into a physical fight - and the man was arrested and carted away. This is from the "Oddly Enough" news on Yahoo!, but I feel the issue is more serious than this. This is often the kind of domestic violence that women inflict upon men - things which when taken individually don't seem harmful, but who could deny that this man was pushed over the edge by her behavior?

Along the same theme as the recent Warren Farrell article, this link submitted by Rand is about how feminism has taken over the liberal media and how challenges to this are so difficult to mount. Plenty of focus is given to Christina Hoff Sommers because she is one of the few that has been successful in doing so, and consequently is considered "Public Enemy Number One" by feminists. It's a very insightful article.

I received a short commentary from Bill Kuhl about the recent book and "movement", The Surrendered Wife. In short, the theory encourages women to submit to their husbands and let him be in charge. But is this really good for men or women? Read on for Bill's thoughts...

In part two of Arndt's series on male reproductive rights and the family courts, Arndt discusses the problems of getting access to one's children with a vindictive mother, and how blatantly obvious many women are in using the father for child support rather than for being a father. Acknowledgment is made of the unreasonable financial burden that child support can sometimes cause, and also stresses that many men still want access and are willing to pay support for children that aren't theirs. "It is all very well to say men shouldn't worry whether the children are theirs - but when they are confronted by a child-care system where men are required to pay far more than the actual costs of children and get little or no relief for costs of contact, you can hardly expect them to pay for children that are not theirs. Most step-parents value the relationship with their children and would be happy to pay to support them - provided it was a fair amount."

Not PC submitted a link to this story from the Australian The Advertiser. It mentions that a man is suing his ex-wife for $400k after DNA tests showed that he is not the father of the two children he has paid child support for the past eight years. The man says he suffered "severe anxiety and depression" from the finding, and who can blame him? When such a fundamental fact of life such as the paternity of your children and fidelity of your wife are taken for granted for so long, pain and suffering must certainly result. But no doubt he will be mocked and disbelieved for his suffering. There is little compassion for fathers and men these days.

Elliot Zaret from TheGuyCode informed me of this article they had just posted on Warren Farrell. In it, an introduction to Farrell and his work is outlined, but what I found most interesting were the explanations of how Farrell has been blacklisted by his former colleagues (including people at N.O.W.), and the sinister techniques they have used to keep the media silent about him. It's an excellent read, and in another two weeks the site will post something about Father and Child Reunion and the importance of fathers.

There was a letter (toward the bottom of the page) by Ed Bartlett in a recent issue of the Washington Times. It makes the point that men are constantly villified by women's groups in order to obtain more funding for women's causes, i.e. domestic violence legislation or funding. "Feminists have found that portraying women as the helpless victims of male battering is an extraordinarily powerful tool for provoking female anger and male guilt. The end result is to stereotype and scapegoat men...The vilification of men in the name of female liberation is frightening and needs to stop."

AngryHarry also pointed me to this story from the UK Sunday Times. It's about a father who is suing for damages after her daughter accused him of sexually abusing her after undergoing controversial "recovered memory" psychiatric treatment. "If successful, it could open the floodgates for compensation claims running into millions of pounds. The British False Memory Society has 1,400 people listed on its database who claim they have been falsely accused of sexual abuse after adult children 'recovered memories'." That is a lot of people. It will be interesting to see how this turns out.

AngryHarry submitted this article from the UK Independent, which states that the inventor of genetic fingerprinting, Sir Alec Jeffreys, believes that the benefits of collecting DNA information from everyone in the UK population would outweigh the drawbacks. Sir Jeffreys and I disagree. Genetic information is being linked to many kinds of diseases, and even mental illnesses and behaviors. Wouldn't it be convenient for the government to have access to this information once these traits are determined more precisely?

An article from the Sydney Morning Herald discusses a study which showed that women tend to use flirting techniques when meeting a male stranger, and will not give any rejection signals until she has assessed him fully. I found this interesting because men are often blamed for misreading a woman's body language, and this suggests that there is good reason for it - because she will in fact use courtship signals from the start. I wouldn't read too much into the article, though - I'm not aware of too many other studies like this one.

After SIXTY-THREE days of hunger striking to protest having his sons taken away from him in his divorce, Len Miskulin has decided to pursue other options than hunger striking. While I'm glad to hear Len will remain with us (he was willing to die this way), I am disappointed at the lack of activism that surrounded his work. This was no doubt due to the media gag order injunction that a UK judge upheld to prevent the local media from reporting on his situation. I would like to think, that if this had happened in the U.S, that there would be riots in the streets. But I'm not so sure anymore. Please drop Len a note of support at: jafp@talk21.com and wish him a speedy recovery to health. Len is currently unable to walk due to his starvation, and will need a few months to restore himself. To read Len's e-mail, click here.