Article here. Excerpt:

'In his final year in office, President Barack Obama is returning to an issue that was at the heart of the first piece of legislation he ever signed at the White House: equal pay.

Obama on Friday unveiled new rules that would compel companies with more than 100 employees to provide the federal government annual data for how much they pay employees based on gender, race and ethnicity.

That information would be used to help public enforcement of equal pay laws while giving more insight into discriminatory pay practices, he said from the White House.

“What kind of example does paying women less set for our sons and daughters?” Obama asked.

The proposal would cover more than 63 million employees — potentially providing a new wealth of data for understanding the pay gap issue and determining whether certain workers are getting short-changed.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU) rejected the last appeal by the Men’s Issues Awareness Society (MIAS) to become an officially sanctioned student group.

RSU president Andrea Bartlett said that the group cannot appeal any further.

MIAS, which styles itself as “a space for Ryerson students and affiliates to discuss the issues facing men and boys today,” first applied for campus group status in October. The RSU’s Board of Directors has consistently rejected the group — the latest attempt to establish a men’s issues organization on campus.

“What we’re doing is really raising issues that have never been [talked] about or usually disregarded,” said Kevin Arriola, MIAS’s president."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'“We shouldn’t be afraid of the word ‘feminist’. Men and women should use it to describe themselves anytime they want,” said Justin Trudeau, as the audience at Davos World Economic Forum broke into hoots and applause. We’ve heard this before, from Malala Yousafzai, from Emma Watson, Beyoncé, Ellen Page, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Louise Brealy, and John Legend. Every time someone, as well-known as they are, has made this point, there’s a sizeable dent in the patriarchy-sized wall we’ve been trying to smash so long. But if I had a dollar – or a British Pound, I hear it’s doing better – for every time a politician made this statement, well, let’s say I’d be eating a cheap breakfast, because feminist politicians are hard to come by.

Trudeau’s election was a special one from the beginning. He kicked off his campaign at the Vancouver Pride Parade. And when he did win, he brought in an ethnically diverse and gender-balanced cabinet of ministers. And last Friday, he boldly embraced feminism, personally and politically. But what’s most important about his Davos speech is what came before that.

He talks about how he wants to raise his sons “to be feminists like dad,” and that it was his wife Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau, who brought up the issue in the first place. Feminist parent duo to raise feminist daughter and sons? Yes, please!

Article here. Excerpt:

'False rape accusations are a lightning rod for a variety of reasons. Rape is a repugnant crime—and one for which the evidence often relies on one person’s word against another’s. Moreover, in the not-so-distant past, the belief that women routinely make up rape charges often led to appalling treatment of victims. However, in challenging what author and law professor Susan Estrichhas called “the myth of the lying woman,” feminists have been creating their own counter-myth: that of the woman who never lies.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Last week, a fight broke out on a 5 train in the Bronx when a woman allegedly cursed & spit in a man's face during a verbal argument, and the man in turn pummeled the woman's boyfriend. The incident, which was captured on video, played out like a lot of other anonymous, violent, more-sad-than-anything-else subway fights. But a week later, both parties are talking about how a bare minimum of subway etiquette could have prevented the fisticuffs—because the fight, it turns out, was allegedly sparked by manspreading.

The incident happened around 3:30 p.m. last Wednesday on a northbound 5 train. Queen Muhammad, the woman who has been portrayed as initiating the fight, told the Newsthat she never spit on alleged attacker Patrick Crow. "This manspread thing is getting out of control," she told tabloid. "I was embarrassed but now I'm quite happy that this video came out and I hope that men are willing to respect women on the subway and buses more."

Article here. Excerpt:

'The number of universities accused of Title IX violations and subjected to federal investigations by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has skyrocketed in recent years, even as an increasing number of lawmakers and law professors accuse the office of abusing its power regarding how to lawfully interpret the gender-equity law.

Federal Title IX investigations into the mishandling of campus sexual assault cases stand at nearly 250 since 2011, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, whichreleased an online database detailing the probes. The Chroniclereports over the past year and a half, the number of pending cases nearly tripled — and today there are 197 open investigations targeting 161 institutions.

Meanwhile, as the Office for Civil Rights claims it needs to hire hundreds of new employees to handle its increasing backlog of nearly 200 unresolved cases, more observers have come out to say the office has vastly overstepped its authority.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Matthew adored his small liberal arts college—until he was charged with and, ultimately, issued a semester-long suspension for non-consensual sexual intercourse with another male student.

“One of the key phrases was ‘We found you guilty. Plan on not booking a flight back.’ That still punches me in the stomach,” Matthew told The Daily Beast. “The following day, I had an 8 am flight, I was up ‘till 3 am. I had to pack up all of my room.”

His love and trust in his college completely changed when he was notified that school was “investigating two alleged incidents of nonconsensual sexual intercourse,” according to the letter Matthew received from the Office of Title IX Coordination, which he shared with The Daily Beast. (Title IX is a statute that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools that receive federal funding, and it is often applied to enforce sexual assault reform.)'

Story here. Excerpt:

'University of Missouri (Mizzou) Professor Melissa Click, who garnered national attention after attempting to remove a student journalist from a November protest, was formally charged with assault Monday morning,ABC 17 reports.

In November, Click was caught on video threatening a reporter who requested an interview with her during an on-campus protest at Mizzou. Click immediately turned down the reporter’s request for comment and told him he needed to leave the protest. The reporter stood his ground causing Click to call out for “muscle” to forcibly remove the reporter from the protest. The video shows Click swinging at the reporter’s camera, leading some to believe she assaulted a student.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'A Georgia legislator responsible for appropriating state funds to colleges and universities is threatening to halt budget discussions with his state's schools unless they adopt basic due process protections for accused students.

State Rep. Earl Ehrhart, chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on Higher Education, told college presidents in no uncertain terms to adopt such protections.

"You think you've got an issue with federal bureaucrats threatening your federal funds?" Ehrhart said at the close of a hearing on due process. "This committee controls your funds, Mr. President, and I want to see a clear statement from all of you — beyond what the [Board of] Regents is requiring — before I'm even going to have a conversation with you about your budgets, presidents."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'During her two presidential campaigns, Hillary Clinton has consistently drawn greater support from women than men. Is this gender lag due to retrograde misogyny, or does Hillary project an uneasiness or ambivalence about men that complicates her appeal to a broader electorate?

As a career woman, Hillary is rooted in second-wave feminism, which began with Betty Friedan’s co-founding of the National Organization for Women in 1967, while Hillary was in college. Friedan sought to draw men into the women’s movement and to ally with mainstream wives and mothers. But after a series of ideological struggles, she lost her leadership role and was eventually eclipsed in media attention by the more telegenic Gloria Steinem, who famously said, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”

Article here. Excerpt:

'Hopkins suggests that we create “euthanasia vans” that drives door-to-door and kills off the elderly.

“We just have far too many old people,” the feminist says. “It’s ridiculous to be living in a country where we can put dogs to sleep but not people.”

According to Hopkins, this can be carried out stylistically, you know, with a flair.

“Euthanasia vans — just like ice-cream vans — that would come to your home,” Hopkins says “It would all be perfectly charming. They might even have a nice little tune they’d play. I mean this genuinely. I’m super-keen on euthanasia vans. We need to accept that just because medical advances mean we can live longer, it’s not necessarily the right thing to do."'

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Wikipedia on Katie Hopkins here.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Advocates for due process on college campuses have come out in full force in the first months of 2016. Law professors, legislators, editorial boards and even a presidential candidate have stepped up to defend the constitutional rights of those accused of sexual assault on college campuses.

Stop Abusive and Violent Environments, an organization working to protect all students (both victims and the falsely accused), has detailed the advocacy in a press release sent Monday morning.
...
Last week, a federal court in Kentucky ruled that campus hearings are "quasi-criminal" in nature, which should make a good argument going forward that students deserve due process rights. Also last week, the Oklahoman posted an editorial about the need for reform in campus sexual assault policies, calling the current model a "constitutionally dubious regime."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'As if to make a massive display of their dearth of self-awareness, Twitter feminists have spent the past few days nagging the Oxford English Dictionary over its definition of the word ‘nagging’. They have also rabidly denounced its definition of ‘rabid’. And they have deployed shrill lingo to slam its definition of ‘shrill’.

Story here. Excerpt:

'Florida State University agreed on Monday to pay $950,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a former student who accused the former Seminoles football star Jameis Winston of raping her in 2012.

The settlement also commits Florida State to five years of sexual assault awareness programs and to the publishing of annual reports on those programs, although the university did not admit liability. Winston was never criminally charged in the case, in part, the local prosecutor acknowledged, because a number of shortcomings in the police investigation left him without the evidence needed to sustain a charge of rape.

Article in French here. English translation here. Excerpt:

'Data made public by Statistics Canada this week come debunk some myths about domestic violence.

Thus, contrary to popular belief, the 2014 General Social Survey on victimization tells us that men are just as likely to be victims of spousal violence than women.

If this data does not surprise the experts, some are still surprised to see the fall of domestic violence, which fell by nearly half, and see the extent of violence against men.