Article here. Excerpt:

'Networking. Sharpening skills. That's the concept of an initiative organized last summer that is hosting Karen Pence's former chief of staff at a June 1 forum.

Brenda Gerber Vincent will speak at a free, women-only event that First Fridays is holding at Sweetwater Sound. Seating is limited, and those interested in attending must RSVP through eventbrite.com for the 8 a.m. event. More information is available at www.firstfridaysfw.com.'

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Ending men-only panels is a spur to creativity

Article here. Excerpt:

'From our news headlines to sitcom punchlines, we're awash in a culture that portrays men as knuckle-dragging troglodytes. The trope is so pervasive that we've come to blame such poor behavior on masculinity itself. We've taken tremendously positive strides in addressing gross generalizations about women. That doesn't require us to concede completely irresponsible stereotypes about men.

Men, husbands and fathers aren't a poison to American culture; they're an essential part of its success.

In a 2014 study entitled "The Causal Effects of Father Absence," Sara McLanahan, Laura Tach, and Daniel Schneider found "strong evidence that father absence negatively affects children's social-emotional development, particularly by increasing [problematic behavior]." They concluded, "father absence can affect child well-being across the life course."

Article here. Excerpt:

'The U.S. Department of Education has launched a Title IX investigation into Yale University amid allegations that the institution offers educational programs and scholarship opportunities that exclude men.

According to a letter dated April 26, the department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is investigating seven Yale initiatives, including the Yale Women Faculty Forum, the Working Women’s Network, the Yale University Women’s Organization, and the Yale Women’s Campaign School.

These initiatives allegedly provide, to varying degrees, scholarships, professional development, academic opportunities, and summer programs exclusively to female students and professors, the complaint alleges.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Mexican-born actor, a leading voice in the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements, said highly paid male stars would have to make sacrifices.

“It is not just the producers” who have to change if the huge pay gap is to be closed. “It is actors too,” she said.

“Time’s up. You had a good run, but it is time now to be generous with the actresses,” she told a Women in Motion talk at the festival.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'While movements like #MeToo ensure that women’s voices are heard and have helped usher in a new era of celebrating more female heroes, Michelle Kennedy, founder of the "Tinder for moms" app Peanut, wonders what this means for her 4-year-old son, Finlay.
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Eldor: Do you believe we’re now swinging too hard the other way to only promote amazing women? And if so, what effect do you think that imbalance will have as we raise kids?

Kennedy: It's less that I think we are, and more that there is a danger of doing so. The consequence in decades to come, is creating a group of disenfranchised young men, questioning their own self-worth. That's so sad and so scary, we don't need to do that. We can address that now, by continuing to call out where we need change, but also to celebrate people who are brilliant, regardless of gender.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'After a three-month national debate and lobbying from all over the world, a parliamentary committee in Iceland has shelved a proposed ban on male circumcision. The penalty for performing or organising a circumcision would have been a sentence of up to six years in prison.

The ban was proposed in February by Silja Dögg Gunnarsdóttir of the Progressive Party in the Althing, Iceland’s parliament. She described her bill as an attempt “to protect the interest of the child”. Circumcision of females had already been banned, she reasoned, why not of males? “Every individual, it doesn’t matter what sex or how old… should be able to give informed consent for a procedure that is unnecessary, irreversible and can be harmful,” she declared. “His body, his choice.”

Article here. Excerpt:

'A Maryland House candidate says in a new ad that she is running for Congress because there is too much "mansplaining" in the federal government about health care.

Nadia Hashimi says in an ad announcing her campaign for Maryland's 6th District that Congress has “too many multimillionaires and politicians ‘mansplaining’ health care."

“Is there a female doctor in the house?” a narrator asks in the 30-second ad, running on Maryland television stations, as the camera shows the exterior of Hashimi's home. “There is in this house.”

“But zero female doctors are in this house,” the narrator adds, as the camera changes to show the U.S. Capitol.'

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Dr. Nadia Calls Out "Mansplaining" in Congress

Article here. Gee, I always thought it was the right of any given eligible adult citizen in a republic like ours to try to run for political office. Guess if they're not of "the right sex", SOME people think otherwise. Excerpt:

'Just as the women’s marches and #MeToo helped define 2017, the surging numbers of female candidates have defined the midterm races now underway. Yet for all that, the November elections may not produce a similar surge in the number of women in Congress.
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Republicans, meanwhile, have endorsed a woman, Pearl Kim, a daughter of South Korean immigrants and a former county prosecutor and deputy state attorney general who could appeal to the well-educated women who have long been considered swing voters in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

“I honestly feel the men who stepped in are out of line,” said Rachel Amdur, the vice chairwoman of the Haverford Democratic Committee, which has stayed neutral in the race. “This is what women do, women recognize it’s not their year all the time. Men do not.”

Article here. Excerpt:

'Two men who wrongly served a combined total of almost 39 years in prison for a gang rape that never happened were exonerated by a Manhattan court on Monday.

VanDyke Perry and Gregory Counts were convicted of kidnapping, raping and sodomizing a woman in New York’s Central Park in 1991, but the woman made it all up, the Manhattan District Attorney, Cy Vance, told Acting State Supreme Court Justice Mark Dwyer on Monday.

She did it, Vance said, so that her boyfriend could escape a debt he owed the men.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Suffering sells, especially when it’s women who are doing the suffering, and as with any trend, the pressure is for each new iteration to outdo what came before. The results sometimes skirt absurdity: in Vox by Christina Dalcher, due to be published in August, women are fitted with bracelets that deliver electric shocks should they speak more than their allotted 100 words a day. And there’s more to come. At the London Book Fair in March, the big announcements were driven by stories of dreadful things happening to women: Joanne Ramos’s The Farm, to be published by Bloomsbury next year, is set in an industrial surrogacy facility; Vardø, by Kiran Millwood Hargrave, about 17th-century witch trials, was acquired by Picador for a six-figure sum after a 13‑way bidding war. In YA, the same fascination holds sway: Louise O’Neill’s Only Ever Yours, published in 2014, established the tone, revisiting The Handmaid’s Tale for the teen market.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Alfred Rava, a San Diego lawyer, counts himself as a fierce warrior in the fight against gender discrimination, but not in the way most people think. His targets have been women’s organizations and women-only events which, he says, are illegally biased against men.

Over the last dozen years, Rava, 62, has gone after the Oakland A’s for giving away swag to women on Mother’s Day, forced a San Diego fire agency to cancel a “girl’s empowerment camp” and won a landmark ruling from the California Supreme Court challenging a supper club’s higher admission fees for male patrons. He says he’s “batting a thousand.”

Article here. Excerpt:

'A tiny, new community is taking shape within Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood with the aim of helping homeless women return to sheltered living.

Tucked between a bank’s parking lot and a four-story apartment complex off 15th Avenue Northwest, a nondescript fenced-off lot will soon be home to 16 “tiny houses,” capable of temporarily sheltering up to 20 women at a time.
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This tiny house village — funded through public and private donations — will be the eighth of its kind in Seattle but the first that will serve exclusively one gender.

“It’s a need in the community. There’s a lot of homeless women. Some of them feel more comfortable in a single-sex environment,” said Sharon Lee, executive director of the Low Income Housing Institute, an affordable housing developer that manages the city’s tiny house villages.

Lee said the village will welcome women who are mothers or are pregnant, seniors, veterans and same-sex female couples.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'From the #MeToo movement, which has gone too far, to the gutting of boyhood under the banner of equality for girls, the progressive agenda seeks to dismantle masculinity. But progressive attacks on the male domain won’t elevate women so much as destroy some of the best that American life has to offer.
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Because of concepts such as the Protestant work ethic, we consider it honorable for males to labor. Contrary to the view that masculinity serves only to represses women, this masculinity has improved life for everyone. We will lose this value set if we continue dismantling masculinity.
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Progressives cry “toxic masculinity rears its head yet again!” every time guys balk at these options. But construing masculinity as dysfunctional won’t cause men to be more like women. It will cause them to do the opposite. They will drop out of society and the workplace.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A male Durham University student was so moved by the suicide of a close male friend that he felt compelled to start a society for other men who may need support – only to find it blocked by the Student Union this week for being too “controversial”.

When Adam Frost, 21, a third-year Italian and French student, proposed the Durham University Male Human Rights Society, he was ridiculed on campus, with remarks such as “Isn’t this a bit like starting a society for white people’s rights?”

Adam told me: “Last October, a friend who was depressed reached out to me, but I didn’t know what to say. I tried to help, but two weeks later I found out he’d killed himself. That hit me hard. I started looking into male suicide and found some shocking statistics. The reason behind that is that male depression isn’t taken seriously – we’re supposed to just ‘man up’ and deal with it. Men are ridiculed.

Article here. Excerpt:

'For the second time in three years, state Rep. Kenny Havard, R-St.Francisville, offended his female colleagues in the Louisiana House of Representatives by making comments that women in the chamber considered derogatory.

"We all want to be equal until it is time for men to be equal," Havard said while discussing a bill aimed at protecting women prisoners Thursday night (May 10).
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Havard drafted an amendment that would have made the same restrictions apply to women correctional officers that work in male prisons.
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But the women in the House chamber were upset that Havard had chosen this particular piece of legislation -- which is meant to address safety and hygiene issues for women prisoners -- to make a point about political correctness in the media.
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"There are some vulnerabilities that women have that men don't have," Stokes said.

"Tell me what they are because I thought we were all equal," Havard replied.