Article here. Excerpt:

'Almost a decade ago I wrote that rape might as well be legal. I feel the same way today. In 2013-14 in England and Wales, about 16,000 rapes were recorded by police, but only a third of these cases were sent to the Crown Prosecution Service. Approximately 15% of the recorded offences resulted in a charge. The actual attrition rate – meaning from reporting to conviction – is estimated at about 6%.

Please enjoy these two book reviews by J Steven Svoboda. In these, Steve covers The Empress is Naked: From Female Privilege to Gender Equality and Social Liberation and The Dadly Way: 10 Steps to More Active Fatherhood and Equal Parenting.

Review: Empress
Review: Dadly

Article here. Excerpt:

'Earlier this week, the National Post's Jen Gerson suggested "setting men up to unrealistic standards of beauty" is "fair play." She called it "turnabout," which sounds harmless, but sexism would have been more accurate.

Gerson used the recent shirtless photographs of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to establish criteria, not unlike a judge in a beauty pageant, placing the PM in that category of men she calls "attractive in a stereotypically placid way. Baby-cheeked and fit without being distractingly muscular."

Maybe Gerson's detached assessment of the PM's physique wasn't as demeaning as measuring the gap between a woman's thighs, but in terms of objectification it was in the same ballpark.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Concerns that the crusade against "rape culture" is creating an accusation-equals-guilt mindset in sexual assault cases have been mostly aimed at colleges. It's campuses that employ extralegal tribunals to settle rape disputes—tribunals where the accused often do not have the right to an attorney, to cross-examine their accusers, or to examine the evidence against them. But the latest contentious rape case comes from a real court—albeit in Canada, where feminist activism has been much more successful in influencing the justice system than in the United States.

On July 21, Mustafa Ururyar, a 29-year-old York University graduate student, was found guilty of sexually assaulting fellow grad student Mandi Gray, 28. The verdict was handed down by Ontario Court Judge Marvin Zuker in a non-jury trial. The alleged rape—and I say "alleged," because after reading the 180-page judgment I see no grounds for a finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt—happened in the early morning hours of January 31, 2015.

Article here. Excerpt:

'An organization dedicated to overturning and preventing wrongful convictions is calling on presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to denounce "victim-centered investigations."

The Center for Prosecutor Integrity works with prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement and the falsely accused to prevent wrongful convictions and over-criminalization. The group says victim-centered investigations have led and will lead to more wrongful convictions and false accusations.

"Victim-centered investigations emphasize the collection of evidence supportive of the complainant and discourage the collection of exculpatory evidence, thereby increasing the likelihood of a guilty verdict," the group wrote in a press release. "Victim-centered investigations represent a departure from ethical standards of investigative impartiality, neutrality and objectivity."'

PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Chris Perry
Telephone: 301-801-0608
Email: cperry@prosecutorintegrity.org

CPI Calls on Candidates Clinton and Trump to Renounce ‘Victim Centered Investigations’ as an Affront to Justice

WASHINGTON / August 11, 2016 – Today the Center for Prosecutor Integrity (CPI) is calling on presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to issue a call for the end of victim-centered investigations (VCI) in sexual assault cases.  Victim-centered investigations represent an biased approach to sexual assault investigations that openly favors the accuser and eliminates the presumption of innocence, SAVE charges.

Both the Democratic and Republican political platforms, approved last month, specifically call for fairness in handling criminal offenses. The Democratic platform highlights the need to “ensure a fair process for all on-campus disciplinary proceedings and in the criminal justice system.” (1)

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Trades Union Congress (TUC) report which claims workplace sexual harassment is on the rise was produced with “destructive” feminist campaign the Everyday Sexism Project, which critics say risks “making all sexual advances ‘misogynist'”.

TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady and Laura Bates, founder of Everyday Sexism, have today hit the media circuit to publicise the report, which alleges that the majority of women have been sexually harassed at work.
...
The main finding of the study, entitled “Still just a bit of banter?” was that 52 per cent of women reported having experienced sexist harassment while at work.

Employing a loose definition of sexual harassment, the report notes that respondents’ most common complaint was “hearing comments of a sexual nature about other women”. Thirty-five per cent of women reported having heard such comments.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'One decries the way analysts focus on the appearance of female Olympians, not their athletic accomplishments. The other features a slideshow of mostly shirtless, nearly naked men, with an invitation to “Come, join us on the official horndog tour of Rio.”
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In sports, as in the workplace, men have been privileged, their athletic prowess not slighted in favor of commentary about their bodies. “When we objectify men, their economic and professional power isn’t reduced or threatened,” writes Daisy Buchanan in Marie Claire UK.
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After Cosmopolitan magazine found itself under fire in 2014, when they posted an Olympic bulge breakdown that drew criticism, it defended the compilation of not-safe-for-work images: “Athletes and performers’ bodies are their tools, so I’m not calling for everyone to suddenly stop judging them on their looks or physique. But it’s only fair that both sexes are objectified equally.”'

Guess you can file this one under "stereotype busters". Excerpt:

'It’s not exactly front-page news that when it comes to conflict, men and women usually behave very differently. The way they resolve those conflicts also tends to differ.

While men can be aggressive and combative, a new study shows that, from the tennis court to the boxing ring —modern equivalents of one-on-one conflict — men are more likely than women to make peace with their competitors after the competition ends.

Using videos of four sports in 44 countries, Joyce Benenson, an associate of Harvard’s Human Evolutionary Biology Department and a professor of psychology at Emmanuel College, and Richard Wrangham, the Ruth B. Moore Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology, found that men are far more likely to engage in friendly physical contact — handshakes, back pats and even hugs — following competition than women are. The study is described in the journal Current Biology.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Last month I looked at Hillary Clinton’s higher education proposals in this Clarion Call, and found nothing to praise in them. They merely deepen the already ruinous federal involvement in subsidizing college.

Now it’s time to take a look at the higher education ideas that have been advanced by Donald Trump and the Republicans.

I will start with the Republican Platform even though it’s not clear how much the nominee is committed to it. Several pages are devoted to higher education.

The first issue raised is the problem of Title IX and its abuse by federal bureaucrats. “We emphatically support the original, authentic meaning of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972,” the platform states.

That provision, it continues, was intended to ensure that girls and women would have the same educational opportunities as males, but has been perverted to “impose a social and cultural revolution upon the American people by wrongly defining sex discrimination to include sexual orientation and other categories.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Vice President Joe Biden called on university presidents Monday to help “change the culture” on campuses in terms of responding to reports of sexual assault.

“That message starts from the president on down at the university,” Biden said in a conference call with university officials. “It really, really matters.”

Biden said there is no justification for students to be sexually assaulted on campus and that schools must do a better job of responding to sexual assault complaints. He said universities must gather their own information through surveys to understand the specific issues on their campus.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'I told my son that he should include that warning in his speech to his oldest boy, who is heading to college as a highly recruited athlete. A prominent criminal attorney in his community, my son quickly agreed, having on occasion defended young clients against serious allegations of rape and assault stemming from too much partying.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A former Augustana University student who was expelled after being charged with rape has filed a federal lawsuit against the school after prosecutors dismissed the case.

Koh Evan Tsuruta filed the lawsuit against the university seeking damages for loss of educational opportunities, emotional injury and future income. No specific amount of damages was listed.

The lawsuit states that the university employees handling his case weren’t properly trained in investigating and adjudicating allegations of rape.

This, he said, resulted in failing to consider factors he claims could have worked in his favor, including interviewing witnesses who could have balanced the account and the alleged victim, who threatened to make a false rape allegation against a former boyfriend.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'One of our classes involved training on deadly force, which covers the protective procedures utilized when an officer is under attack. One student, playing the perpetrator, crouches over another student, playing the officer, and pretends to strike the officer in the face. In self-defense, the officer rolls the perpetrator over, changing positions to neutralize the threat.

For purposes of this training exercise, I was the designated “perpetrator” and a female student in the class the designated “officer.” The demonstration proceeded uneventfully and the class dismissed.

But at the next class, I was called out of the room and escorted to the administrator’s office. At that time, I was accused of “inappropriate contact” with the female cadet during the training demonstration.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The makeup of Australia's new federal Parliament has finally come together, and with it comes some joyous news: a whopping 73 of our 266 parliamentarians are now women, or 32.3 per cent. That puts us in the illustrious company of countries like Laos, Guyana and Nepal, and even sees us inch ahead of Afghanistan, that renowned stronghold of women's rights.
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But an outfit in the US is pushing back against that dynamic. Most American political action committees (or PACs for short) are little more than fundraising avenues for Presidential and Congressional candidates, but the delightfully named Can You Not PAC has a different goal: to discourage straight white guys from running for office and throw their support behind women, people of colour and LGBTQ people instead.

Started in 2014 by co-founders Jack Teter and Kyle Huelsman – two college-educated white guys themselves – the PAC's target audience isn't the under-represented groups it's trying to empower. Rather, Can You Not direct their message at "egregiously overconfident white men" who are so convinced of their own unique ability to solve all the world's problems, they run for office despite being manifestly unqualified.
...
"We challenge brogressives and others to reject any notion that they are uniquely qualified or positioned to seek political office in districts that don't need them," Can You Not's website explains. "As well-represented white dudes, we feel it is our obligation to know when to shut up and Not."