In today's Boston Globe, Cathy Young wrote a column on the recent press conference on public health research which demonstrated that women have never been neglected by NIH research studies. There are lots of good statistics here, and from my personal contact with Ed Bartlett, the reception of this news went well - he did not have one person come up and challenge him after he released the report. Now we just need to keep promoting this and get it to trickle up to the national media. Update: I've fixed the link now. Sorry about that.

I'm transferring the management of the Mensactivism.org domain name to a new registrar, in order to fix some quirks of this site's current setup (namely, the frames issue and not being able to bookmark individual stories). If things start acting funny this week please bear with me - everything should be changed over by the end of Friday.

In today's edition of the University of New Hampshire school newspaper, this article presents amazing statistics about violence against women and women's overall fear of violence. Some choice statements from the article: "67.6 percent of women surveyed
said that they would be afraid to walk alone at night, while only 4.4 percent of men said the same...[A UNH Police Officer] said this is due to the higher number of assaults on women than on men." Update: I am in the process of composing a response to this article. My results will be posted to Mensactivism.org when it is printed in the newspaper.

In this acticle (from July), George W. Bush tells us of his "Promoting Fatherhood" initiative, an $185 million program to help strengthen the role of fathers. While he does come at this from the highly dubious "responsible fatherhood" angle, he also says "Our nation must reverse the trend toward fatherless homes." It seems that the problems of fatherlessness are slowly starting to get noticed - keep up the great work people!

This article by Stephen Baskerville in DadMag.com is on the trials and tribulations that fathers go through in family court. None of this should be news to most readers of Mensactivism.org, but Baskerville as usual does an excellent job explaining the dangers of divorce to men, and DadMag.com is not really a "father's rights" magazine - so the word is getting out to new people.

Rand wrote in about this story from the UK Independent. It discusses a major study done on domestic violence by Prof. John Archer from the University of Central Lancashire. It is noteworthy that in his conclusions, Archer finds that Western women are more violent because they are "economically emancipated and therefore not afraid of ending a relationship." The article also mentions a forthcoming article in the Journal of Men's Studies that traces battered men in history, including John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, and Abraham Lincoln.

Ed Bartlett of Men's Health America has issued a press release on the myths of gender health research today at the American Public Health convention in Boston, MA. This event is a very big deal. We expect a lot of mainstream coverage of this "atomic bomb", as Ed describes it, and Mensactivism.org will be actively monitoring major media outlets for coverage of this event. For now, click here to read a ton of facts on gender in health research that were presented in the press release.

We received an excellent feature article this week from Thomas Golden. Tom is a psychotherapist who approaches his work from a male-affirming perspective, and recently put out a book on the ways that men deal with loss. The feature article is an excerpt from his book Swallowed by a Snake: The Gift of the Masculine Side of Healing. Whether you've lost a loved one recently, gone through a bad divorce, or have to struggle very day to maintain your sanity while trying to get custody of your children back, we have all felt pain and loss at some point of our lives. Tom acknowledges the unique ways that men deal with hurt and loss, and honors them with the essays and healing methods he describes in his book. This is one issue every man must confront, and Tom's writing is rare in how it speaks to men in such positive, productive ways. Click "Read More" below for the text of his essay...

This story from Reuters news at AOL examines the misandrist messages in Hollywood movies, taking Charlie's Angels as a case in point. "Charlie's Angels opened to a record $40 million last weekend, and it's no surprise audience were anxious to see it. Sony did a bang-up job in marketing the film, including an action-packed trailer: One man gets thrown to the ground, two men get slugged and seven men get kicked in the face...Why do men put up with this persecution?" I'm not much of a movie-goer myself, and this has quite a bit to do with it.

Marc Angelucci writes "Well, look at this story. Sonia Flores, the former lover of L.A.P.D. Officer Rafael Perez, after telling authorities Perez killed people and buried them in Mexico, now admits - after her story was discounted - that she lied. Why? Because he didn't marry her. According to her own attorney, she 'made up the stories because she still feels jilted by Perez and wanted to see him spend the rest of his life behind bars.' Imagine the terror he's been feeling all this time, with nobody to believe him. Her attorney puts it quite nicely: 'She's a woman scorned . . . She had everybody fooled.' This is a great opportunity to write letters and op-eds to our local papers on false accusations." I've put some details about suggested research sources for false accusations info in the extended body of this story. Click Read More below to read it.

Dean Tong forwarded me some detailed instructions for men who are falsely accused of domestic violence. Dean is a Trial Consultant who believes that the recent passage of VAWA is going to increase the number of men falsely accused of domestic violence. Click "Read More" to read his advice. Note: The Men's Activism News Network is not responsible for the results or application of any legal advice presented through this web site.

Today is Veteran's Day - a day to honor and reflect upon the contributions that war veterans have made to protect the freedoms we currently enjoy in this country. Obviously, this shouldn't be the only day we pay respect to those who have struggled and fought for us, but I hope we will all take some time today to think about what it really means to have risked one's life in wartime. You can visit the Veteran's Day Home Page by the US Dept. of Veteran's Affairs here. Also, read on for a message that I found distributed on the internet last year.

An anonymous reader sent in this link to a Boston Globe article related to politics in domestic violence. Apparently they were on an Oprah Winfrey talk show where Oprah falsely portrayed them as battered women. Was this the intentional misrepresentation of domestic violence, or a legitimate mistake? I don't know, but the women suing thought they were on the show for reasons completely unrelated to domestic violence.

Despite the large amount of depressing and frustrating news, good things do get into the newspapers occasionally. Here's a story from the Houston Chronicle about a 6 year-old boy who emerged from a car crash in heavy rain and flagged down help for his grandmother and brother who were stuck in the car. This little guy deserves a lot of praise.

Marc Angelucci writes "The L.A. Times printed this article that repeats the "women earn 74 cents to a man's dollar" myth. A few letters to the L.A. Times (letters@latimes.com) might help get a response printed. Go here for some facts to use in response." The facts Marc refers to were actually compiled by me, and I hope others might find the collection useful.