Article here. Excerpt:

'The University of Minnesota is creating a special panel of students, faculty members and staff to decide if students accused of sexual assault should be disciplined.

Officials said they plan to train a pool of 35 volunteers to preside over hearings, as part of an effort to cope with an upsurge in complaints about sexual misconduct on campus.
...
The new panel will get 20 hours of training, compared with five hours in past years, according to Eichele. The training will include, for example, why trauma victims — especially rape survivors — often delay coming forward, as well as how to weigh the credibility of witnesses.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The timer — designed by software developer Cathy Deng — clocks the duration that a man or woman is speaking to "check who's dominating the conversation."

Deng discussed the difficulty of fostering diversity, using the tech industry as an example, on her site, AreMenTalkingTooMuch.com:

"When people talk about diversity and inclusion in tech, they often count bodies: What [percent] of women [are] at this company, what [percent of] women [are] at an event, etc. But ... inclusion is more than who's in the room. Often, in rooms that seem diverse, men still dominate conversations to a large extent.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The new interim head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has a colorful history, which includes demanding former President George H.W. Bush confess to an extramarital affair and a belief that “white boys” shouldn’t be allowed to win.
...
“[It’s not a] gender or race, it’s an attitude. A white-boy attitude is ‘I must exclude, denigrate and leave behind,” Brazile told the Post in 1999. “They don’t see it or think about it. It’s a culture.”

Brazile talked up her ability to be blunt and rude if necessary.

“I had to decide if I’d be a bitch or a whore. I chose bitch,” she told the Post. “I’d have to be strong, tough, abrasive. But I also knew I could be fair.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said that she faced an elevated “Hillary standard” on trust and honesty in a Sunday interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes.”

“People are very willing to say things about me, to make accusations about me that are — I don’t get upset about them anymore, but they are very regrettable,” she told CBS host Scott Pelley. “There’s the Hillary standard and then there’s the standard for everyone else.”

Clinton explained by citing “unfounded, inaccurate, mean-spirited attacks with no basis in truth” occurring at the Republican National Convention, where attendees repeatedly chanted “Lock her up” in response to the private email server scandal.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Emma Sulkowicz, the performing artist best known for falsely accusing a man of rape and then turning her experience into art projects, received the National Organization for Women’s “Woman of Courage Award” for being an “inspiration” to rape victims.

Sulkowicz, also known as “Mattress Girl,” was made famous after she accused a fellow Columbia University student of rape. In order to protest the school’s alleged mishandling of her case, Sulkowicz promised to “Carry That Weight”—by carrying a mattress around campus—as a performance art piece until her alleged rapist was expelled or pressured to leave. The school eventually found the student Sulkowicz accused “not responsible.”

Article here. Excerpt:

'According to SB0209, the mitigating factor can be that "at the time of the offense, the defendant is or had been the victim of domestic violence and the effects of the domestic violence tended to excuse or justify the defendant's criminal conduct."

Lillian Cartwright, training and court-watch project manager for the Chicago Metropolitan Battered Women's Network, told me this nonprofit, which oversees all other domestic violence providers, helped get this law passed because 77 percent of incarcerated women are victims of abuse and are dramatically underserved when it comes to addressing this issue.

Aiardo's case is one of the first, if not the first, to take advantage of the new law, Cartwright said, and it speaks to the larger issue of "assisting these victims who live at the margin of society, including those who are incarcerated."'

Story here. So the teachers stat. rape a minor, then sue him over the selfies of them he took, or allegedly so. Stranger than fiction. Remember: Nymphotropism knows no bounds. Excerpt:

'In response to a lawsuit by the parents of a male high school student over their son’s alleged 9-hour threesome with a pair of English teachers, one of the teachers has fired back with shocking allegations of her own.

The teacher, Shelley Dufresne, taught at Destrehan High School in Destrehan, La., about 20 miles from New Orleans.

Police say the ménage à trois featuring Dufresne, the other teacher, Rachel Respess, and the unidentified, then-16-year-old male student occurred in the fall of 2014 at Respess’s apartment.

Dufresne, a married mother of three, was 32 at the time.'

Story here. If these were women being treated this way, it'd be front page news. Excerpt:

'Turkish troops imprisoned after the failed military coup are being raped, starved and left without water for days, it is claimed.

Many of the 10,000 detainees are locked up in horses’ stables and sports halls - some hogtied in horrific stress positions, according to human rights campaigners.

Amnesty International has called for immediate access to prisoners after the coup a week ago which sparked a brutal crackdown and a three-month state of emergency.

More than 200 died in the uprising which aimed to topple dictatorial President Recep Erdogan - and 1,500 were injured.

Amnesty says it has ‘credible evidence’ Turkish police are holding detainees in stress positions for up to 48 hours, denying them food, water and medical treatment and in the worst cases some have been subjected to severe beatings and torture, including rape.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Rollings Stone recently “terminated” its contract with Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the reporter who wrote the debunked article about the gang rape of a University of Virginia student.

Erdely’s status with Rolling Stone has been kept under wraps since UVA dean Nicole Eramo sued the magazine for defamation because of its reporter’s Nov. 2014 article “A Rape on Campus.” In previous disclosures Erdely appeared to still be employed by the magazine.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'New court documents filed in the defamation lawsuit against Rolling Stone reveal that disgraced reporter Sabrina Erdely knew her story about a gang rape at the University of Virginia (UVA) was deeply flawed, but refused to change it because improving it would simply be too much work. They also reveal that Rolling Stone attempted to stem a rising tide of bad press by seeking a “sympathetic” MSNBC reporter who would let Erdeley defend herself without pushing back too much.

The revelations comes in a court filing made Friday by by attorneys representing UVA dean Nicole Eramo. Eramo is suing Rolling Stone for $25 million, claiming the magazine’s 2014 article “A Rape On Campus” defamed her by portraying her as indifferent towards the gang rape of student Jackie Coakley and unwilling to take her claims seriously.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The end of an era is near, and it’s a little sad. Michigan State University says it will reopen the now-closed women’s lounge at the MSU Union as a generic space for both sexes.

University of Michigan-Flint professor Mark J. Perry, like a skunk at a lawn party, has filed a civil rights complaint, saying that men’s rights were violated when the university spent money on a space that doesn’t welcome the guys.

Though the university says the lounge was being converted before the complaint was filed, Perry has been beating this drum for awhile.

Perry, who blogs for American Enterprise Institute, has a point. We wouldn’t tolerate, nor should we, an enclave that served only men. So how can we flip the script and use different rules when it comes to a special lounge for women?'

Article here. Excerpt:

'A new ride-sharing company is hiring female drivers only, with plans to cater to only woman and children.

"She Drives Me" will match women drivers with women passengers who may fell less comfortable with a man behind the wheel.

The company also plans to do extensive background checks and drug testing.

It's set to launch this fall in Dallas, Texas, and several other cities nationwide. You'll be able to book a ride through an app.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'While women own more than a third of all businesses in the U.S., companies run by them get only about 3 percent of venture capital funding. Is that one more example of sexism in Silicon Valley?

Maybe not, according to a new study by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, which found that the lack of funding may be partly explained by what it calls a gender patent gap.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Four teenage boys have worn skirts to school in protest at being disciplined for wearing shorts on the hottest day.

The year nine students at Longhill High School in Rottingdean, East Sussex, were among about 20 boys who wore PE shorts instead of trousers on Tuesday.

Some were sent home, and others kept in isolation and excluded the next day.

When the four boys turned up in school skirts on Thursday, head teacher Kate Williams said they could "wear any part of the agreed school uniform".

The mother of 14-year-old Michael Parker, who was one of the group, said three of the boys were initially told to remove the skirts, but all four of them kept them on.'

Article here. The Lutheran church votes overwhelmingly to protect women from the draft, but not men. As men flee churches, it becomes abundantly clear that churches really don't care about men. Jump the paywall by Googling the first paragraph text. Excerpt:

'For its modest size and relatively apolitical ethos, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod seems to be having more than its share of days in court. Three years ago the Supreme Court unanimously vindicated one of its congregations in Hosanna-Tabor v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which recognized that churches have broad autonomy over whom they hire. This fall the justices will take up Trinity Lutheran v. Pauley, a dispute over whether states can deny funds to schools with religious affiliations.