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.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The common sense and resolve shown by several members of Harvard Law School’s faculty in responding to hot–button issues – notably fair treatment in campus sexual assault and harassment proceedings – hasn’t always been matched by their administrators.

Dean Martha Minow recently addressed graduating students at her alma mater, the University of Michigan, for the school’s winter commencement, The Harvard Crimson reported.

Telling students to be “upstanders” – those who intervene when they see injustice – Minow compared apartheid and forced segregation of public schools to … accidentally offending someone:

“Taking even seemingly small acts in one’s own school can build the culture that prevents violence, bullying, sexual assault, and racial microaggressions,” she said.

Seriously? Dean Minow cites three categories of intentionally threatening language and action andthen tags on a phenomenon that, by its very definition, is unknown to those who practice it.'

Artivle here. Excerpt:

'A few days ago, I saw one of those stories that keeps coming around. A mom was lamenting the emptiness of her empty nest after her last child went to college. And thinking about how happy she will be to see her children again at Christmas.

But for many of us, the empty nest happened when the children were six, not 17, and they will not be back home for Christmas.  It is eternally amazing to me that the media never make the connection between these two stories, one a story of children naturally taking wing from the nest, and the other an unnecessary tragedy caused by the fecklessness of the family courts. The connection is the human heart.

So, for many of us, Christmas will not be the joyous celebration of faith and family that we see on television.  The absence of those precious children will make Christmas more like the opening of a wound than the celebration of life and hope.

Article here. Excerpt:

'In one part, the mother writes: 

"I want to beg Senators [Claire] McCaskill and [Kirsten] Gillibrand to see the destruction of an innocent life, to feel his pain, to see his trauma, to know what it's like to pick up your child who is in a crumble on the campus lawn, to ask them why his life doesn't matter," she wrote, "but the silencing continues, and the war wages on."

It is doubtful that her pleas would have any effect on Senator McCaskill who has written this in an opinion piece in Time Magazine about her efforts to reform the UCMJ:

"As a former sex crimes prosecutor who’s personally held the hands of victims and fought to put rapists behind bars, I’ve judged each policy idea with one yardstick: Will it lead to better protections for victims and more prosecutions of predators?"

Video here. Description:

'"Rwanda is beating the U.S. In Gender Equality" That is a headline from a recent news story in the Washington Post. Well, could it be true? Let's check the facts.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Just days after a judge denied a Georgia Institute of Technology student's request for a preliminary injunction to halt an expulsion, another student has filed a gender discrimination claim against the school.

John Doe, as he is referred to in court documents, has filed a lawsuit against the university and the same administrators who failed to follow school procedures against the other complainant.

The twist in this case is that Doe is also bisexual, and is alleging that Georgia Tech has not only a bias against male accused students, but an exceptional bias against non-straight male accused students.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Four former students of William Paterson University who were accused of raping a student on campus last year have filed a lawsuit against the school, alleging that they were falsely arrested, maliciously prosecuted and subjected to civil-rights violations that left them with ruined educational futures and permanently tarnished reputations.

The students, who were arrested and charged with aggravated sexual assault and numerous other offenses, were suspended from the school in November 2014. University President Kathleen Waldron at the time issued a statement in which she sympathized with the accuser and said she was “angry and dismayed that this crime was committed on our campus and allegedly by students.”

A few months later, however, a Passaic County grand jury refused to indict and all charges were dismissed against all five defendants: Noah Williams of Camden, Garrett Collick of Paterson, Darius Singleton of Jersey City, Termaine Scott of Vineland and Jahmel Latimer of Hoboken.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'“Next thing we do, pay equity for women workers. Women should not be making 79 cents on the dollar compared to that.”

—Sanders

There is clearly a wage gap, but differences in the life choices of men and women — such as women tending to leave the workforce when they have children — make it difficult to make simple comparisons.

Sanders is using a figure (annual wages, from the Census Bureau) that makes the disparity appear the greatest—21 cents on the dollar.

But the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the gap is 18 cents when looking at weekly wages. The gap is even smaller when you look at hourly wages — 13 cents — but then not every wage earner is paid on an hourly basis, so that statistic excludes salaried workers.

Article here. Excerpt:

'At Saturday night's Democratic presidential debate, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said he would fix the economy in part by closing the gender wage gap. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also brought up "equal pay for equal work," implying that is not currently the case and that there is some unspoken rule in business that women can be paid less.

The problem with this statement is that the gender wage gap is due to the choices women make and is therefore not fixableunless those choices are controlled — which is a ludicrous suggestion.

And it's not even properly called a "wage gap," it is more appropriately called an "earnings gap," because that is the claim that women earn 77 or 78 cents on the dollar compared to men.'

At a reader's suggestion I have enabled upload of images along with story content. Let's see how this works. Images will be scaled so that they are no larger than 640x640 pixels and limited in size to 1 MB, with 100 MB/user as the total upload limit. I don't imagine we will see too heavy usage of this feature but it's nice to have it when posting information better shown graphically, or when an original story depends on an image to make its point.

How to add an image to your submitted story? When creating a story, click "File Attachments" and use the "Browse..." button to browse to the image you want to attach and click "Attach" after choosing it. Obviously, all images should be 'G' rated and if for some reason you feel it necessary to post something NSFW (e.g.: original images of topless crazed feminists throwing pies at Vladimir Putin or something), please indicate such in the content. To demonstrate, attached is a screen cap of the "File Attachments" section of the content options found under the text area for a story. Should be easy enough to figure it out.

Enjoy the new feature.

Article here. Excerpt:

'McCaskill: There are people who have legitimate concerns about false accusations and the impact that can have on a young person's life when they have been falsely accused. Kirsten and I are not unaware that that is an issue we need to be concerned about, and that's why we have made changes in the legislation to address not just the rights of the victim, the accuser, but also of the accused. And that's where you're seeing some of the pushback—from families who believe that a loved one was accused unfairly. But the truth is kangaroo courts don't help anybody. They don't help the accused. They don't help the accuser. We want to make sure there's no more of that. We want to make sure there's transparency and due process and fairness. Because that will benefit everyone.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'What if men seeking erectile dysfunction drugs in South Carolina had to go through the same process as women seeking abortions?

This is the novel question that state Rep. Mia McLeod (D) is exploring in a bill that she pre-filed last week in the South Carolina House of Representatives. While she doesn’t expect it to pass in her “male-dominated” legislature, McLeod told NBC she hopes it will broaden the discussion surrounding abortion services in the state.

“I purposely tried to make it as invasive, as intrusive, as hypocritical and unnecessary as possible to make the point,” she said.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Gloria Steinem — the grande dame of feminism herself — responded to the Chatelaine survey results on a visit to Toronto earlier this week. “Carefully nurtured stereotypes [are to blame]: Feminists have no sense of humour, they’re anti-men, they’re anti-sex. It’s all bullshit,” she said.

Perhaps the most heartening response came from the son of one of the women who participated in our This is 40ish video shoot last month.

“Just watched this video with my kids,” Jacki Yovanoff wrote on Facebook. “My 8-year-old son said “I’m a feminist!”'

[The rest of the article lectures women on why they should adopt the cliche.]

This is dated but relevant to current events. (I found out about it from this article.) Excerpt:

'A few months ago I accepted an invitation by the Oxford Students for Life to debate Brendan O’Neill on the subject “This House believes Britain's Abortion Culture Hurts Us All". The setting was Christ Church College and around 60 people signed up to attend on Facebook. To be clear: this wasn’t a pro-life demo and the subject wasn’t whether or not women should have the right to choose abortion. Even though I was speaking for the proposition, my speech would’ve begun with noting that the motion has nothing to do with abortion rights per se and was simply a consideration of how having effective abortion on demand affects wider society. Brendan, speaking for the opposition, would've doubtless done a fine job and probably run rings round me. It was a fair and free debate that I half expected to lose.
...
The university’s students’ union also issued a statement that took aim at Brendan and me for being so offensively attached to our God-given genitals: “The Women’s Campaign (WomCam) condemn SFL for holding this debate. It is absurd to think we should be listening to two cisgender men debate about what people with uteruses should be doing with their bodies.” Next, the Christ Church Junior Common Room (posh talk for “the committee that run the students' bar”) passed a motion asking their college to decline to room the debate. Eventually, the college caved-in on the grounds that, “there was insufficient time between today and tomorrow to address some concerns they had about the meeting”...
...