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.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'In May, Judith Shulevitz wrote in the New York Times about how women are still responsible for most of the “worry work” in their homes—a type of labor that requires “large reserves of emotional energy to stay on top of it all.” Sociological research finds that moms continue to direct most or all of domestic and familial matters, even if fathers are increasingly helping in the execution of such tasks. “Whether a woman loves or hates worry work,” Shulevitz writes, “it can scatter her focus on what she does for pay and knock her partway or clean off a career path. This distracting grind of apprehension and organization may be one of the least movable obstacles to women’s equality in the workplace.”

Article here. Excerpt:

'2015 was the year that Emma Sulkowicz graduated from Columbia University carrying her mattress across the stage as the ultimate symbol the school had failed her as a sexual assault victim.

It was also the year that her accused rapist, Paul Nungesser, filed a federal complaint against the school, citing gender discrimination under Title IX for “condoning a hostile educational environment” against him, even after he was cleared of sexual assault charges.

The same Title IX protections that sexual assault victim advocates were using to create sweeping federal reforms began to be used by the (almost uniformly) male students who were expelled or suspended.

"I think that what’s happening is that the pendulum has swung so far over to the side of unfair campus proceedings that lawyers for some of the accused students are trying everything they can to get a fair hearing,” civil rights attorney Harvey Silverglate told The Daily Beast in April.

Article here. Excerpt:

'No single issue earned more Pinocchios than dubious claims about sex trafficking.There are not 300,000 children at risk for sexual exploitation. There are not 100,000 children in the sex trade. Human trafficking is not a $9.5 billion business in the United States. Girls do not become victims of sex trafficking at an average age of 13 years.The federal government has not arrested hundreds of sex traffickers. These were all false claims made in 2015 by politicians, advocacy groups and government officials.'

Link here. Excerpt:

'A succession of high-wattage thefts in New York has uncovered a bizarre pattern involving women who target wealthy men at nightclubs, accompany them home and then disappear with tens of thousands of dollars in cash and jewellery.
...
In a separate case, a 19-year-old woman from New Jersey, Alexandra Martinez, was arraigned Wednesday in Brooklyn Criminal Court on grand larceny charges in two incidents in which she is accused of having accompanied men home from bars, mixed them drinks that made them lose consciousness, and stolen watches and cash, according to a criminal complaint.
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The criminal complaint against Martinez says that in one incident, in September, she and another woman prepared a cocktail at a man's home that knocked him out.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Free speech and academic freedom are endangered species on American college and university campuses. Speech codes, trigger warnings, the heckler’s veto and politically correct inquisitions have become the norm.

While there are many causes for this, the main culprit is Title IX, a federal statute enacted in 1972 that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity.

Title IX goes beyond merely prohibiting sex discrimination; it also requires that schools take proactive measures to eliminate any such discrimination.

Story here. Excerpt:

'Rolling Stone magazine is urging a judge to throw out a lawsuit filed by three former fraternity members at the University of Virginia who claim they suffered humiliation and emotional distress because of the magazine's debunked article about a campus gang rape.

George Elias IV, Stephen Hadford and Ross Fowler sued the magazine in July, claiming they were defamed by the November 2014 article written by journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely, which described in chilling detail a student's account of being raped by seven men at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house in September 2012. The former Phi Kappa Psi members also sued Erdely and Rolling Stone's publisher, Wenner Media.

The men claimed the article "created a simple and direct way to match the alleged attackers" to them based on details provided in the story. For example, they said friends and family of Elias "would have reasonably concluded" that the incident happened in the man's room based on descriptions in the article.