The Sydney Writers Festival is hosting a panel on the recently published "Boys to Men: The Masculinity Crisis" by Clementine Ford (4 May 2019).

Ford, an Australian radical feminist with a long and turbulent history of misandry and gendered hate speech (#KILLALLMEN), has plenty to say about how badly men do masculinity, how damaging it is to boys and women and how she can fix it.

The Panel consists of one celebrity chef and two radical feminist, including Ford. For a panel focused on masculinity, a few more men might have been appropriate. But who needs men when you have so many feminists wanting to femsplain masculinity.

Article here. Some toxic masculinity in action, indeed! All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing. Excerpt:

'Bikers with tattoos who look really intimidating have saved numerous animals in the US. They investigated cases of animal abuse, came to really violent owners and convinced them to give their pets away. The men made agreements with animal shelters, have helped animals with rehabilitation, and found new families for cats, dogs, and horses.

Bright Side looked into the activities of the Rescue Ink organization and was amazed at how they managed to take away animals from cruel owners when the police were helpless.

Rescue Ink is a non-profit animal rights protection organization that originated from a group of volunteers in New York. The team consists of bikers, ex-bodybuilders, powerlifting champions, former military personnel, police detectives, and lawyers. The team was at its peak of activity from 2008 to 2014.'

A response to Matt's question. Link here. Excerpt:

'Experiences like Ms Montague Mackay's are at the heart of a growing push to have employers help female employees negotiate this time of their life, just as they might during pregnancy.
...
The ideas are detailed in a new Monash University resource to help more workplaces become menopause friendly.

Professor Kat Riach said it made economic sense, with some studies suggesting between 40 and 75 per cent of women said they felt menopause affected their productivity.
...
Academics at the Monash Business School estimated there were 1.3 million Australian women between the ages of 45 and 55 who worked in the health and education sectors alone and one in four were likely to experience significant menopausal symptoms.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The “Gender in Air Operations” doctrine informs pilots what they should do before dropping bombs in war zones to ensure women aren’t placed in danger, according to the Sydney Daily Telegraph.

One hypothetical example included in the RAAF guide highlights how destroying a bridge, being used by enemy forces, could force local women to walk further to perform basic domestic chores. The doctrine said:

Although destroying this target may provide a military advantage against the enemy, the second order effect may mean that, due to the gendered social roles, women need to travel further afield, on unfamiliar and less secure, well-known or well-lit routes to gather water and firewood.

The program has been designed to encourage a “new way of thinking” in which vulnerable women aren’t at an increased risk of violence or threat, the Telegraph reports.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Former Starbucks CEO and Independent 2020 presidential hopeful Howard Schultz said that if he were elected he would form a diverse cabinet, one that would potentially include more women than men.
...
Host S.E. Cupp then jumped in to ask him to clarify what he meant by “heavily weighted toward women.” Schultz explained that “we have more women running for president than any other time in the history of the country. This is an opportunity to demonstrate that women should have the opportunity to serve the government in high positions.”

Cupp then asked if the former CEO would be interested in having women “outnumber men” in his cabinet.

“I would,” Schultz immediately responded. “I would, I think it’s a benefit for the country,” he added.'

On Thursday we held a press conference in Washington, DC titled, "The Multi-Million Dollar Fallacy of 'Victim-Centered' Investigations."

The presenters were:

• Trent Cromartie: "I Was a Victim of a 'Victim-Centered' Investigation"
• Cynthia Garrett: “Trauma-Informed Theories Disguised as Evidence"
• Eric Rosenberg: “Victim-Centered Investigations in Title IX Disciplinary Proceedings: A Litigator’s Perspective”
• E. Everett Bartlett: “Start By Believing: Good for Counselors and Therapists, Bad for Detectives and Investigators"

The event was well-received. The link is here.

Our online petition now has 1,229 signers: https://www.change.org/p/congress-stop-sham-start-by-believing-investigations

Article here. Excerpt:

'Muffet McGraw, the head coach of the Notre Dame women’s basketball team, explained why she plans on no longer hiring men.

In a recent interview with Think Progress, the 63-year-old Hall of Fame coach, said she would never hire another male assistant coach and believed women can do more to help each other. When asked by the media outlet if she ever planned on hiring another male coach, she said, “No.” McGraw has had an all-female staff for the past seven years.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Ahead of former vice-president Joe Biden’s expected 2020 presidential bid, women are speaking out about their personal interactions with him — alleging he physically touched them in ways that made them feel uncomfortable. Last week, the Cut published an essay by Lucy Flores, a former Nevada lieutenant governor nominee, who wrote that Biden smelled her hair and kissed the back of her head at a campaign event in 2014. In the week since, six more women have come forward.

Below, here’s a running list of the allegations against Biden.

Lucy Flores
On March 29, in the aforementioned essay published on the Cut, former Nevada lieutenant governor nominee Lucy Flores alleged that Biden smelled her hair and gave her “a big slow kiss” on the back of her head at an event for her 2014 campaign. In that moment, she wrote, she felt “embarrassed” and “shocked.”

Article here. Excerpt:

'Court documents revealed this week confirmed that the father of 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand once worked as a lobbyist for a secretive sex cult, but left after the upstate New York group sued him, according to a report.

The documents backed up previous accounts that the New York Democrat's father, Doug Rutnik, worked for Albany-based Nxivm for four months in 2004 at a rate of $25,000 per month, Big League Politics reported.

Rutnik was sued when he attempted to distance himself from the group before reaching a settlement.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Middle-school teacher Lauren Miranda was eventually fired after what The New York Times reports was "a meeting with mostly men" that featured a picture of her bare breasts for all to see on a computer monitor.

While a teachers union representative claimed that it may not have been Ms. Miranda in the picture, she acknowledged that the photo was indeed of her, and that she had sent it "to a colleague she had dated."

The school became aware of the photo because it had somehow come into the possession of a student.

Ms. Miranda has since filed suit against the school district and the superintendent for gender discrimination, claiming that they would "not have fired her had she been a male teacher and taken an identical topless photo."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'A former substitute teacher from Louisiana, who has admitted to having sex with three underage boys, will not serve any jail time and won't even have to register as a sex offender as part of a plea deal.

Heidi M. Verrett, 34, pleaded guilty last month to three misdemeanor counts of carnal knowledge of a juvenile and one count of contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile, the Houma Courier reports. The former substitute teacher was arrested in 2016 for having sex with three 15- and 16-year-old boys at her home. She was also accused of sending inappropriate texts to a 12-year-old boy.

Verrett has been handed down a suspended six-month sentence, two years of unsupervised probation and and a $900 fine.

She could technically be teaching after that probation is over, WDSU reports.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Former Tenaya Middle School teacher Justine Karen Nelson knew that her relationship with a student was wrong. But she said what began as simple flirting quickly turned to coercion and sexual contact.

Nelson, who is charged with felony counts of lewd or lascivious acts with a minor and oral copulation, testified Wednesday that she fell prey to the attention and kind words of one of her students.

Their friendship began innocently enough with talks in her classroom. That soon progressed to direct messages on Instagram and later to much more secretive text messages. At first, they talked about routine things, like basketball and school. And then it became more personal.

Nelson acknowledged having trouble with her marriage during this period in 2016. She and her husband, who was a physical education teacher at Tenaya, would argue often, even at school and in front of students. Nelson said she appreciated the student’s friendship. Early on, she even sent him a photo of herself at a bachelorette party.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'An ex-professor’s claim that he was unfairly caught up in the Me Too movement and dismissed from the University of the Arts without a hearing -- after the university ignored his own sexual harassment claim -- just cleared a major legal hurdle. A federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled that photographer Harris Fogel’s "erroneous outcome" case under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits gender-based discrimination, may proceed.

The judge also said Fogel could proceed with a defamation claim against his faculty accuser, who allegedly talked about him negatively to colleagues at a conference, and with a related invasion of privacy claim.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Joe Biden is now living in the world of accusation he helped to create. It is one of peril for the accused, in which they are subjected to expansive definitions of sexual misconduct and little benefit of the doubt. Biden helped to bring it about as the leader of the Obama administration’s cornerstone effort to end sexual assault at colleges and universities, a worthy undertaking that quickly spiraled into overreach. The goal, as Biden often says, was to remake sexual culture on campuses and in society at large—a goal that’s reached remarkable fruition in the MeToo era. Now, as he mulls whether to enter the presidential race, Biden is finding himself ensnared by some of the doctrines he has advocated over the last several years.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The University of Kansas is offering a course on angry white men and the role of “dominant and subordinate masculinities” as they connect to “rights-based movements of women, people of color, homosexuals and trans individuals.”

“Angry White Male Studies” (HUM 365), which is being offered during the fall 2019 semester, will explore “the deeper sources of this emotional state while evaluating recent manifestations of male anger” in Europe and America from 1950 to present, according to the course description.

The course is cross-listed under both the Humanities department and the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies department at KU and is an option to satisfy a Humanities course requirement.'