This week is National Men's Health Week, and ABCnews is running a series of on-line chat sessions with health experts and doctors on various topics related to men's health. You can read the transcripts to the already completed ones at the address linked to above.

An unlikely source for this kind of news, Wired magazine posted this article about new legislation that would repeal the Pennsylvania law which prohibits men from requesting paternity tests on children born during their marriage. Obviously, knowing whether you are the true father or not is very important in deciding child support and custody issues, and it's appalling that men don't have this right in PA.

Fred Reed, a conservative writer, wrote this piece which is a sort of review of the book From Courtship to Courtroom by Jed Abraham. He talks about the dark side of marriage - divorce. And with statistics as they are, it is becoming less cynical to dispense this type of advice. I was hesitant to post this, but the facts must be known. It can and does happen.

Salon magazine has printed a few articles on Fathers, and a particularly good one written by Cathy Young on the topic of "Maternal Chauvanism", the idea that women consciously or subconsciously try to sabotage fathers from being as good parents as mothers. There's lots of insight in this article, and good food for thought.

More news from Britain: Stockport College, of Greater Manchester, has recently decided to ban the use of a few dozen "offensive" words, according to this Telegraph story. And we're not talking terms such as "nigger" or "bitch", but rather "lady", "history", and references to "the blind", among others. More shocking news on the censorship front.

In America, 250,000 paternity tests are done each year (15,000 per year in Britain). The Sunday Times printed an article about the rise of DNA paternity tests, and some of the issues surrounding them. The question of men's reproductive rights and custody issues is briefly mentioned, but the article in general is of interest to men.

This AP news article reports that the alleged gender "pay gap" that feminists are often quick to promote is being challenged in a Congressional Testimony where at least two female economists denied that the gap was due to discrimination. Shameless plug: I might add that recently I did some research on the pay gap and printed my results here.

Carl Friedan, former husband of Betty Friedan, has created a web site to speak out against the "misleading allegations of spousal abuse made by my ex-wife", which were made in Betty Friedan's recent book Life So Far. According to Mr. Friedan, the claims made in Life So Far are misleading at best, and he paints a much more complex description of their marriage. Particularly relevant is the "Living with Insanity" section of his site. Note also that in a recent Washington Post article, Betty Friedan is quoted as saying "I almost wish I hadn't even written about it, because it's been sensationalized out of context...My husband was no wife-beater, and I was no passive victim of a wife-beater. We fought a lot, and he was bigger than me", which sounds much like a weak admission that things weren't quite as she made them out to be.

John Leo, a columnist for US News and World Report, wrote a recent article exposing several hate crimes at universities which were faked. As a university student myself, I can tell you that colleges are places where you can find the highest sensitivity for victims of any kind, and also the ones most likely to enact draconian rules to 'empower victims' and persecute 'opressors'. Leo's articles are consistently of high quality, and this one is no exception.

Mike Spaniola composed an insightful essay that examines the politics of domestic violence and looks at why men take so much abuse with so little protest. Read on for Mensactivism.org's first feature article submission...

ABCnews ran a story about an embryo custody court battle, where a woman's right to decline maternity was upheld. It was made clear during the case that this was a decision about forcing someone into parenthood, and that the woman "had a constitutional right not to have children, if she so chose." The case is headed for The Supreme Court on Monday. These precedents are very useful for supporters of Choice for Men, who can make use of them in a Constitutional equal protection argument. This is good news!

mfitzgerald asked that I post a review of his work Sex-ploytation: How Women Use Their Bodies To Extort Money From Men. The review initially appeared in NCFM's journal Transitions, and I've received permission to re-print it on this site. Click below to read on...

Matthew Fitzgerald submitted a story from the Britain Sunday Times by Andrew Sullivan which touches upon the many ways boys and young men are being implicitly told that masculinity is bad and dangerous. A good article from someone who 'gets it'. Please send The Sunday Times some positive feedback on this one.

krob4399 submitted his personal account of being abused by his wife and the brainwashing done to him when he was forcefully committed to a mental institution. Apparently, they tried to make him think the abuse happened in his childhood rather than in his marriage. A chilling account of a worst-case scenario of domestic violence. Click below to read his story...

The Philadelphia Associated Press printed a story today reporting that women's advocates will be reviewing previously "unfounded" sex crime cases, in the hopes of re-opening many of these cases, and convicting more criminals. While the idea sounds interesting at first (it is mentioned that homicide experts are often called in on murder cases which are difficult to solve), I am not so sure that most women's advocates are objective 'experts' on sexual assault. Can you say witchhunt?