Article here. Excerpt:

'The women behind the slowly growing number of ride-hailing apps catering to female passengers and drivers say the hurdles they've had to overcome to get their services on the road demonstrate exactly why they're necessary in the first place.

Women from Halifax to Vancouver Island have tried to launch female-only alternatives to services such as Uber and Lyft, but most have run into barriers ranging from municipal regulations to societal attitudes.

The founders of the handful of such services currently operating say they're experiencing incredible demand from women seeking a greater sense of safety in their daily travels.

They say it's common for women to feel uncomfortable riding alone with strangers, but some recent high-profile cases involving sexual assault allegations against drivers have further highlighted the need to provide an alternative.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'On April 10 -- Equal Pay Day -- Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., tweeted out her support for an end to differential pay for men and women.

Her tweet said, "It’s completely unacceptable that, on average, American women only earn 80 cents for every dollar a man earns for doing the same job. And the #paygap is even greater for most women of color. #EqualPayDay"

But there’s a problem: The statistics showing that women earn 80 percent of what men earn are overall comparisons and do not specifically compare men and women occupying the same jobs.

After we reached out to Smith’s office, she sent a new tweet to correct her earlier misstatement.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Just minutes away from the hustle and bustle of M Street in Georgetown, The Wing offers women of the District a space to work in no-man’s land.

The Wing – a co-working space exclusively for women with perks and amenities for its annual members – opened its doors Thursday in a 10,000 square-foot office building at 1056 Thomas Jefferson St. NW. The shared space offers a variety of areas for working, a cafe, an all-female author library and an art gallery featuring female artists.'

Also see: Are women-only members’ clubs sexist?

OK, looks like the old Slash-Blue theme (the one MANN was using) is not supported under Drupal 7. Downer. Good news is the current theme is sort of kind of close to it, though a bit less sharp around the edges and the blue isn't as dark. Still, it's not bad. Next step is to re-add the actual MANN graphics. I'll leave that for tomorrow or at worst, this coming week-end.

Hey, I got a day job and all. Just sayin'.

If anyone has suggestions for a new theme that looks more like Slash-Blue and is Drupal 7-compatible, feel free to post in Comments.

Article here. Excerpt:

'1) Our culture preys relentlessly on a boy's weaknesses.
...
2) There is a catastrophic lack of male role models.
...
3) The eduction system is designed for girls.
...
4) Masculinity is denigrated.

You might think we've already done enough to these boys. We've made our point. We've shoved sex in their face, deprived them of role models, and forced them into an education system that treats their personality as a disease. But we are not satisfied. Finally, in case any have survived the gauntlet, we attempt to bury them in self-loathing.

Femininity is attacked in our culture as well, but not nearly so explicitly or directly. Nobody would ever call femininity itself "toxic" or "fragile." Nobody talks about female "privilege," even though, as I have demonstrated, females enjoy many unique privileges. Nobody would label all women "dangerous" or "potential monsters to be feared." These are the special denigrations reserved only for manhood.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Now a survey conducted by Champneys Health Spa suggests that more than 50 per cent of married women prefer to spend time with their best friends as opposed to their husband.
...
Basically, men need to do better and be more accommodating and considerate of their wives wants and needs. It's a story old as a time that is no less depressing to hear in 2018.'

MANN uses Drupal, a site configuration/management and theming package. It's open-source. Like all software of any complexity, it comes with bugs. It also comes with "undocumented features", etc. In this case, this version has managed to whack the theme (page coloring/layout) of the site. This newer version of Drupal also does not support voting/polls with the same module as previously. First thing's first, however: Getting the theme restored. Then I go for restoring voting/polling.

I was fine with the old version of Drupal. My site host company however was not and they got on me about "upgrading". This is the result. :)

So I'll get our theme restored as soon as I can. Just not tonight, it's late. BTW, this version of Drupal will nag you when you log in to set your preferred time zone. Just FYI.

Article here. Excerpt:

'So what’s the solution? How do we engage men in discussion when the loudest voices are MRAs like former Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes’s Proud Boys or the more innocuously named Canadian Association for Equality?

“The reason MRA groups are successful is they have some really valid points around parental rights and alimony,” says Jake Stika. “Broader societal systems have changed but the justice system hasn’t, so MRAs view it as a zero sum.

Based in Calgary, Stika is the co-founder and executive director of Next Gen Men, a non-profit aimed at developing better men through youth and peer engagement, education and empowerment.

“For us, we acknowledge those are real and pressing issues, but we approach it from a ‘rising tides lift all boats’ point of view,” Stika continues. “We need more women in leadership and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math studies) just as much as we need more men in early childhood education and caregiving roles.”

Article here. Excerpt:

'A Florida woman is accused of attempted murder for allegedly dousing her ex-boyfriend in gasoline and lighting him on fire at an Easter Sunday dinner.
The Orlando Sentinel reported that Shivon Perez, 38, allegedly invited her ex-boyfriend over for Easter dinner and asked him to fix a leaky pipe under the bathroom sink.
...
When the man got down on the floor to fix it, he noticed Perez with a container in her hand, police said.

After the ex-boyfriend asked her what she was holding, she responded, “It’s gasoline, you son of a [expletive],” according to a police report.

Police said the woman held a blowtorch, sprayed him with gasoline, and yelled, “You are going to pay,” then set him on fire, WOFL reported.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Police in Derbyshire have severed ties with their own male voice choir and taken away their rehearsal room on the grounds it does not promote ‘gender equality’.

The Derbyshire Constabulary Male Voice Choir, which was founded in 1956 and has raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for charity, has been told it must rebrand and will no longer be allowed to rehearse at St Mary’s Wharf Police Station, leaving members “heartbroken and devastated”.

Chief Constable Peter Goodman said that having a male voice choir representing his “organisation”, as he termed the police force, was “incompatible” with its “need to represent our communities in every aspect of our public presence”.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'As a dramatic situation unfolded in California, feminists on social media were less concerned that a woman had just attacked several people in cold blood in YouTube's headquarters, and more concerned that "sexist" CNN was reporting that the shooter was involved in a domestic dispute.

CNN came by the information rightly: initial reports indicated that the shooter, a 39-year-old woman from Southern California was, indeed, involved in a domestic dispute and that one of the victims was her boyfriend. As facts are often hard to pin down in the midst of a major news story, it's no surprise CNN got that bit wrong, and the network eventually walked back their claim, but not before catching heat for assuming a woman would only shoot people if motivated by hormones.

Press release here. Excerpt:

'Twenty-three Cornell Law School professors have requested to file an Amicus Brief in support of a student who was accused of campus sexual assault and later suspended. The Cornell statement is the fourth statement from law professors calling for the restoration of due process rights on campus.

Two Cornell students had a sexual encounter in August of 2016. The woman filed a complaint, claiming she had consumed too much alcohol to give valid consent. The university panel later recommended that the male student, “John Doe,” be suspended for two years. The student has now appealed the suspension to the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court, which is the intermediary appeals court in that state.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Hooray for Cressida Dick, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in London, who has formally led her force in abandoning its policy of automatically believing victims of sexual assault.

As The Times of London reported Monday, since taking over the Met about a year ago, Dick has told her officers that of course they are to keep an open mind, treat complainants with respect and dignity and “we should listen to them. We should record what they say.”

But, Dick said, “From that moment on, we are investigators.”

What seems so elementary — that the first job of police isn’t to “support” victims or anyone else, but rather to investigate complaints — got lost in 2014, when the notional acceptance of victims as inherently “being truthful” went to a flat-out recommendation that “The presumption that a victim should always be believed should be institutionalized.”'

Article here. I'd like to think that these kinds of events would help bring attention to DV against men, but alas most times they are usually twisted around to impugne the victim. Nymphotropism knows no bounds. Excerpt:

'Four people have been injured by a female shooter who shot and killed herself after going on a gun rampage at YouTube's California headquarters.

The shooter, who was reportedly a white woman dressed in a headscarf, shot at her boyfriend before turning the gun on herself on Tuesday, witnesses told Fox News.  

Officers and federal agents swarmed the company's headquarters complex in the city of San Bruno just before 1pm after dozens of panicked employees called 911 to report gunfire.

Upon arrival, police found the woman dead inside the campus with self-inflicted gunshot wounds. 

San Bruno Police Chief Ed Barberini said four people were taken to hospitals in San Francisco, three of whom had gunshot injuries.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'He wanted to speak out over the Easter weekend to lift the lid on sexual abuse by nuns and encourage other victims to finally come forward after years of secret torment

While horrific historic sexual abuse of boys by priests has been widely exposed, he believes his case could be the “tip of the iceberg” in revealing how nuns may also have targeted vulnerable boys.

Mr Hayes’s ordeal over nearly three years happened at the former John Reynolds Home in Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, run by The Franciscan Missionaries of St Joseph, a Catholic congregation of nuns.

He said: “I never thought I would hate people as much as I hate those in the Church for what they allowed to happen to me.'