U.K. Parliament debates male suicide and International Men's Day

In case you missed it (most here probably didn't) Thursday 19 November 2015 was International Men's Day, A debate was had in Parliament in the London. It was proposed by MP Philip Davies and mocked by MP Jess Philiips saying “every day is International Mens’ Day”. If you’re not in the slightest worried about male suicide, men’s health, workplace deaths, treatment in the family courts or constant vilification of men then maybe you could agree with her. In spite of her objections it did go ahead. It was held in Westminster Hall, not in the main House of Commons where other debates were considered more important.

You can watch it here:
Westminster Hall
Thursday 19 November 2015 Meeting started at 1.30pm, ended 4.31pm
Parliament TV
or read the transcript here:
Hansard transcipt
or download it here (read pages 71-94 (marked 241WH to 288WH at the top of the page):
Download PDF

You can see the comment by MP Jess Phillips.
27 October 2015: Jess Phillips MP mocks an application to debate men's issues on Intnl Men's Day

And other comments like:
From the Independent (UK newspaper)
Need some reasons why we don't need International Men's Day? Allow me to enlighten you

From the Guardian (UK newspaper):
Relax, guys – it’s International Men’s Day (the official one)

Story here. Excerpt:

'A mother who left her newborn baby in a Christmas manger inside a New York City church will not be prosecuted, authorities said Wednesday.

"After a full review of all the facts and circumstances surrounding the discovery of a newborn infant this past Monday in a creche inside of Holy Child Jesus Church in the Richmond Hill section of Queens County - including locating and interviewing the mother - my office has determined that no criminal prosecution of the child's mother is warranted," Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said in a statement.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Women’s Aid is feeling extremely fortunate. The chancellor has just announced that we will be sharing a fund of £2m to work with another domestic abuse charity, SafeLives, to improve early intervention in domestic abuse: something we have long argued is essential.

This work is being funded through the proceeds of the tax on sanitary products. There is good in this, but questions are inevitable and we are glad the government will continue to work to get rid of this tax.

However, we must take every opportunity to loudly and clearly affirm that women alone are not responsible for ending domestic violence.'

--

NISVS Infographic

Story here. Excerpt:

'A GamerGate supporter who snuck into an anti-GamerGate panel at Northeastern Illinois University and streamed it online was reported to campus p0lice and falsely accused of making “threatening comments.” He caught the whole thing on film.

Cristian Flores, who goes by the Twitter username “Experiment #626,” was roaming the corridors after the panel, at which feminists bemoaned the lack of “safe spaces” to “protect” them from gamers, when he was approached by a campus police officer and told that someone matching his description had been reported for making threats. As the video below clearly shows, he had done no such thing.

The GamerGate supporter, who identifies himself by name to the officer around 1 hour and 48 minutes into the footage, had been fooling around to amuse his viewers. He had picked up a packet of Ritz crackers and placed one of them on a sign, and turned a tap on and off again at the request of his fans.

Article here. Excerpt:

'When students of color don’t feel welcome on campus, it’s just as serious as rape.

That’s the impression that Wesleyan University’s Antonio Farias, vice president for equality and inclusion and Title IX officer, gave the campus community in his response to recent student protests.

Following up on President Michael Roth’s promise to “communicate better” about the school’s existing system for reporting incidents that are “concerning, harmful and/or contrary to” community standards, Farias wrote:

"We cannot fix what we cannot see, and it is apparent from the heartrending stories I’ve heard from marginalized students that our system of documenting and investigating instances of discrimination is not sufficiently understood and used across the campus. Reporting is an essential first step to get at the root causes of discriminatory behaviors that are caustic to the learning process."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Most mainstream news publications publish, you know, news. Except when it’s about “rape culture” on campus, when no news is also considered news. Case in point: following a winter survey they initiated last year on campus sexual assault, CBC News this fall conducted a survey of 87 post-secondary institutions to investigate the reporting of sexual assaults in 2014 on and off their campuses.

Since the received activist wisdom on the subject assures us that one in four (or five, depending on the polemicist) women on campus will be sexually assaulted during her college tenure, the researchers were chagrined to find that the actual number of reports came to 700 – averaging out to 1.85 per 10,000 students – a figure that jibes with rates of sexual assault in the general population. In 16 schools – seven in Quebec and nine in western Canada – not a single sexual assault has been reported in the last six years.

Story here. Excerpt:

'A Georgia Tech student expelled in April after a sexual misconduct investigation has filed a lawsuit alleging that the review was unfair and violated his rights.

The lawsuit said the university's Office of Student Integrity found the student, identified as "John Doe" in the suit, responsible for non-consensual sexual and intercourse and coercion against a female student at an October 2013 event where they had been drinking. Doe received little information about witnesses' statements and couldn't defend himself, the lawsuit said.

The male student wants a judge to allow him to take spring classes and complete his degree on Georgia Tech's Atlanta campus while the suit is argued. The suit seeks unspecified punitive and compensatory damages and a jury trial.

The suit names the school's president, the dean of students and Director of the Office of Student Integrity Peter Paquette as defendants along with a board that oversees public colleges in Georgia.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'The Obama administration’s Department of Education is seesawing back toward sanity, after creating a reign of terror on campus in response to evidence-thin sexual-assault allegations.

Texas A&M University is under federal investigation following its suspension of a male student for sexual assault – allegations that went nowhere with law enforcement authorities, The Texas Tribune reports.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'When you're committed to perpetuating the myth of a rampant "rape culture" on college campuses, evidence to the contrary becomes baffling.

And so it goes for the American Association of University Women, which analyzed 2014 reporting data from colleges and universities across the country and found that 91 percent of schools had no reported incidents of rape. Most people would see that number and cheer. Hooray! College women aren't being raped in the U.S. at rates on par with the Congo!'

OK, so it took me awhile. Like, 10 years. Or more. But finally, the brilliant idea occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, there is a "like" module for Drupal that I can implement quickly and easily that allows readers to indicate their appreciation of an article or other reader's comment without needing to log in and comment. And DUH!, a couple Google searches later, I done found something that'll work.

I could have set the "Like" feature to have a rating number system, which I thought was too much mental overhead for the casual reader. (I mean, it is for me. I don't want to think that hard, even about a good article. "Is it 5 stars? Maybe 4? Maybe it's really just 3? To hell with it!" Then not do anything.) I mean, life's hard enough, right? No need to spin one's wheels over rating a bloody Internet post. :)

Article here. Excerpt:

'The blonde, attractive, and seemingly-affable young senior was the model victim, according to American cultural consciousness; she was an older JonBenét Ramsey and received ample media attention as a result.

As reports surfaced about Del Vesco’s criminal allegations, the narrative of a feeble woman killed by a deranged male high off the drug of patriarchy became slightly complicated. “At the time of her death, Del Vesco was facing drug-related charges. On July 8, she pleaded not guilty to charges of possessing Ecstasy, LSD, methamphetamine and Psilocybin, officers said,” reports CBS Los Angeles News. "According to the Superior Court’s website, she was scheduled to appear in court [the following week].

The following is from Tom Martin at Sexism Busters. I've decided to coin this incident "protestgate", since the authorities have involved themselves in an apparent attempt to at least obscure the truth if not try to side-step it, despite some honest officers changing their initial accounts. From Tom:

I just attended court, where unbelievably, the Crown Prosecution Service decided to proceed with the case, despite the fact that the police now admit, in their OWN statement, that I was indeed hit with the placard first - something they had all previously denied witnessing. The police statement falsely claims that I was aggressive and had my finger in the protesters' faces beforehand, when in fact, I stood at a safe distance with my thumb down, shouting "Stop sex-segregating" as the crowd streamed by.

The police statements were submitted to the court outside the time limit, and not signed, so my court-appointed lawyer is pushing to get their case against me for Criminal Damage thrown out on this technicality - an outcome I believe the police are secretly hoping for as well - to save them the blushes of a court case that will established they wrongfully and maliciously arrested me on a trumped up charge.

CCTV was found by the police, but it mysteriously did not show the incident - another cause of concern for my lawyer. Criminal Damage cannot be brought against a case of self-defence, as the prosecution have to prove I had malicious intent to break the sign, when in reality, I was responding to an assault, removing the assault weapon (it doesn't matter how violent the assault was - unwanted contact of any degree is assault.)

The case has been adjourned until December 15th, at 9.30am - the National tabloid press photographers and journalists were there having read the above press release - they interviewed me and were very supportive.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Pity today’s male undergraduate, tasked with navigating his way through the thorny thicket of university gender politics.

For surely Oliver Cromwell himself, history’s most notorious puritan, would have admired the zeal of the new generation of self-styled feminist campaigners, with all their fury over perceived grievances.

The latest target of their rage is George Lawlor, a second-year politics and sociology student at Warwick University, who dared to question the effectiveness of sexual consent workshops run on his campus.
...
But those engaged at the forefront of gender politics do not tend to appreciate people challenging their viewpoint.

I am not remotely under-estimating the seriousness of rape and sexual assault. Apart from murder, they are among the darkest crimes known to humanity. But it is precisely because they are so serious that they should not be used as vehicles for doctrinaire point-scoring or political power games.

Story here. You can be 1000% certain that if these were camps filled with women, the merest suggestion that they be evicted and made to pay for hotel housing instead of much more affordable employer-sponsored housing would be met with demands for the suggester's resignation followed by a "ribbon campaign" to raise money for the many "poor women" in need of *whatever*. Instead, men in this condition are met with rejection. Excerpt:

'Providers of temporary housing for North Dakota's oilfield workers are fighting a plan by the state's energy capital to evict their "man camps," fearing it could set an example for others and add to the sector's woes caused by a global commodity slump.

Earlier this month, the Williston City Commission voted 3-2 in favor of an ordinance that would deny "man camps" occupancy permit extensions beyond July 2016.

Article here. Excerpt:

'In the face of threatened legal action from the football star Jameis Winston, CNN did not back away from broadcasting “The Hunting Ground,” a documentary about sexual assault on college campuses that has stirred controversy since its January debut at the Sundance Film Festival.

“CNN is proud to provide a platform for a film that has undeniably played a significant role in advancing the national conversation about sexual assault on college campuses,” the network said in a statement. The film was shown on the network at 8 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday.