In Australia we've recently had a minor storm in a tea cup.

Chris Gayle, a cricketer, was interviewed by a female reporter. During the interview he made a 'pass' at her, saying she had lovely eyes and that maybe they could go for a drink together. Sleazy, in my opinion, but not exactly crime of the century. He has been hit with a $10,000 fine and has been hit with other sanctions such as being banned from interviews for the rest of the season. The backlash was instant.

But today the News.com.au dared to point out the double standard - a female reporter not so long ago propositioned a half naked man on the beach, and was reported as being 'brave' for doing so. No fine, no sanctions, no crime, no backlash. Excerpt:

'When Sunrise weather presenter Nuala Hafner openly hit on a semi-naked beachgoer during a live TV segment in December 2014, there was no such outrage. While presenting for the Channel Seven morning show from Sydney’s Balmoral Beach, Hafner spotted a Speedo-clad man going about his morning exercise.

“Story of my love life, he would rather get wet than come over to me,” Nuala joked with Kochie and co-host Natalie Barr back in the studio. “Is this some kind of mating display because I’m really enjoying it,” She then interrupted her weather report to introduce herself to the man. “Hello extremely muscly, fit, agile man,” she said as she approached him. “Hi how are you? I’m Nuala. Do you come here often?” When he told her he lived “up the road”, she quickly asked if he was “single”.

Article here. Excerpt:

'I was nineteen or twenty years old when a male friend of mine, we'll call him Bill, let me in on a most shocking fact: He was missing part of his penis, and so were almost all boys and men that I had ever seen in my entire life, as well as all the anatomical diagrams that I had ever seen. Ever.

Sure, I had heard of circumcision as a Jewish religious practice, but thought myself unlikely to ever see its results. Little did I know, all the male genitalia I had seen both in real life and as depicted in American anatomy books, had been edited in exactly the same way. The shock from this revelation overwhelmed me for weeks, especially since I considered myself to be fairly knowledgeable about anatomy. (My interests included biology and drawing biological structures.)

Story here. Excerpt:

'East Carolina University students who are good at neck rubs could find themselves hauled before a sexual misconduct board under new rules approved by the board of trustees.

The new policy describes sexual battery as “the intentional or attempted sexual touching of another person’s clothed or unclothed body, including but not limited to the mouth, neck, buttocks, anus, genitalia, or breast, by another with any part of the body or any object in a sexual manner without their consent.”

The school described updates to nondiscrimination and Title IX policies in a press release dated Dec. 18, the same day as winter commencement.

Though it’s labeled “ECU News Services,” the release is nowhere to be found from the news portal. The school’s only apparent public communication of the changes appears to have been four days later on Twitter.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Due process dominated the first part of their conversation. Gertner thought it was appropriate for Harvard to create an office to ensure it was complying with Title IX, but that the process created to adjudicate sexual-assault claims was flawed in these ways:

Story here. Excerpt:

'A federal complaint against the University of Wisconsin-Madison about its handling of a sexual assault report — one of three such complaints filed against UW-Madison in 2015 — alleges the victim was subjected to a sexually hostile environment because the university failed to respond promptly and equitably.

When the woman "expressed her concern about the many inequalities in UW-Madison's procedure via her advocate, (redacted) explained: 'We are locked into a system based on the rights of the accused,'" says the heavily redacted complaint obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel through a Freedom of Information Act request.
...
Colleges need only a "preponderance of evidence" showing it's more likely than not that a crime occurred to justify meting out punishment. That's a lower standard than the burden of proof in a criminal court.

Article here. Excerpt:

'“Family disadvantages” - including poverty, low education level of the mother, and not having a father in the house - affect boys more than their sisters, according to a recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Northwestern University, and the University of Florida analyzed ten years of administrative records for Florida students born between 1992 and 2002.

They found that boys in families facing adverse circumstances significantly underperformed their sisters in behavioral and educational outcomes despite the fact that they had similar upbringings.'

Article here. Jump the login by Googling the first paragraph text and clicking the first result entry. Excerpt:

'The Pennsylvania Superior Court has ordered a Blair County judge to terminate a father's parental rights because the local man never had a relationship with his 4-year-old son.

In an opinion written by Judge Mary Jane Bowes, the state appeals court reversed an order by Blair County Judge Wade A. Kagarise that granted the father parental rights, ruling that the mother created "obstacles" to bar the father from the child's life.

The three-judge Superior Court panel that included Bowes, Judge Kate Ford Elliott and Senior Judge John L. Musmanno, summed up its argument by stating, "Here, our examination of the entire history of this case reveals the father failed to exercise reasonable firmness in order to overcome the obstacles he alleges that mother created, and he abdicated all parental responsibility with respect (to the child)."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'As a Brit I’ve often been slightly perplexed by America’s attachment to circumcision, where the majority of young boys still have their foreskins removed as babies, despite the fact that for most of them there is no real religious, legal or culturally necessary reason to do so. As I live in a land where the prepuce largely remains intact (barring for medical or religious reasons), it’s odd how passionate many Americans get about it. Indeed, when I’ve seen American doctors talking about why they still recommend it to their patients, the fact they so often seem to jump on the defensive suggests the may know it’s not as clear cut as they suggest (pun intended).

The documentary Pigs Without Blankets: The Penis Documentary wants to take a look at the world of ‘intactivists’, who go against the grain of American culture and advocate against circumcision. However, to get it made the makers are hoping to raise $25,000 via Kickstarter.

Story here. Excerpt:

'SHE was the pioneer of modern-day girl power, responsible for countless topless protests to highlight women’s rights.

But now, Sara Fernanda Giromin has backflipped, declaring war on the ideals she once so proudly bared her breasts for, describing the feminist movement as “a completely toxic environment, filled with gossip, intrigue, humiliation and persecution”.

Introducing herself to the world in 2012 under the alias Sara Winter, Ms Giromin was the founding face of Femen Brazil, a subsidiary of the Femen movement.

A group of topless activists who protest against sexism, religion, homophobia, and other social issues, the organisation says it is “fighting patriarchy in its three manifestations — sexual exploitation of women, dictatorship and religion”.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'This year may have brought about peak campus hysteria across the country. Microaggressions, safe spaces, sex assault accusations and protests made headlines around the world, often for their abject absurdity.

I've only been covering these issues since the summer of 2014, but this year I found it nearly impossible to write about anything else, since there was just so much happening on the nation's colleges.

The ridiculousness started in February when Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis penned an article about "sexual paranoia" at colleges and universities. She bemoaned the campus climate of disregarding due process in favor of political correctness and the need to believe all accusers, regardless of the facts and evidence.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'When it comes to due process on campus, Republicans in Congress, who campaigned on vows to rein in the Obama administration’s abuses of executive power, have largely acquiesced in its bureaucratic imposition of quasi-judicial tyranny. For more than four years, the White House and the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) have used an implausible reinterpretation of a 1972 civil-rights law to impose mandates unimagined by the law’s sponsors. It has forced almost all of the nation’s universities and colleges to disregard due process in disciplinary proceedings when they involve allegations of sexual assault. Enforced by officials far outside the mainstream, these mandates are having a devastating impact on the nation’s universities and on the lives of dozens — almost certainly soon to be hundreds or thousands — of falsely accused students.

Article here. Excerpt:

'In a federal lawsuit filed this fall against the University of Massachusetts Amherst and six of its officials, a male former student has joined other plaintiffs around the country in claiming that a school’s disciplinary process for handling claims of sexual assault violated his civil rights.

Disciplinary proceedings against the plaintiff and former student, Kwadwo Bonsu, began after a female student accused him of sexually assaulting her at an off-campus Halloween party in 2014.

A UMass disciplinary board eventually found Bonsu “not responsible” for any sexual misconduct — but not before he was kicked out of his dormitory, barred from attending classes and prohibited from seeking the advocacy of a lawyer in his hearing, according to the suit. The board did find him responsible for breaking the terms of his pre-hearing probation — a violation that led to his suspension in April.

Article here. It's also easy to overlook male victims of such things if all anyone talks about or cares about involving the topic is females who may be getting trafficked. I wonder how the 1-in-10-victims-are-male stat would change if anti-trafficking efforts gave more thought to finding male victims. Excerpt:

'Three young Hungarian men have helped dismantle a U.S. gay prostitution ring that enslaved them, marking a victory for local prosecutors but highlighting the difficulty in reaching and helping male trafficking victims, campaigners said.

The men's accounts of being raped, locked up in windowless rooms, and their lives threatened led to the conviction this month of Andras Janos Vass, 26, for helping to operate a male prostitution ring of gay Hungarians in New York City and Miami.
...
More than 4,000 human trafficking cases were reported in 2015 in the United States with about one in 10 involving men, according to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Men's Rights Movement begins and ends with the argument that there is no pre-existing imbalance between the rights of men and women, or that if there is any injustice it is an imbalance which prejudices men. This is dressed up in any number of concerns, some of which might seem entirely sensible, but which cumulatively amount to an activism which is hostile to women. Issues like the rights of fathers in family proceedings are used to prop up a nostalgia for a time when men had an easier time of it: a time when men could be assured of jobs, power and status, a time before feminism.

Story here. Excerpt:

'A woman who six times failed the physical test to become an FDNY firefighter is being given another chance — and this time, critics say, the fix is in.

“She’ll graduate, no question,” said an FDNY member. “The department does­n’t want another black eye.”

Wendy Tapia was allowed to conditionally graduate from the Fire Academy on May 17, 2013, even though she had failed the running test.'