Article here. Excerpt:

'This week, headlines in newspapers across the country trumpeted the troubling findings from a massive new survey on campus sexual assault. “1 in 4 Women Experience Sex Assault on Campus,” declared the New York Times. “One in four female undergraduates reports sexual misconduct, survey finds,” reported the Los Angeles Times. “More than 1 in 5 female undergrads at top schools suffer sexual attacks,” offered the Washington Post. Conducted last spring by the Association of American Universities, the survey of students on 27 campuses, including all but Princeton University from the Ivy League, would seem to confirm the assertion by President Obama that “1 in 5” young women are victimized during their college years. This was the key statistic the president cited when he announced last year that campus sexual assault would be a signature issue for his administration.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A new report in PEOPLE Magazine claims that the graduation of the United States Army Ranger School’s first two female cadets was rigged from the start.

According to PEOPLE‘s Susan Keating, the graduation of First Lieutenants Kristen Griest and Shaye Haver was a heavily politicized event, even before the possibility of their ever graduating from the school became a reality in August. The news comes just days after Rep. Steve Russell (R-Oklahoma) requested documentation relating to the matter from the Department of Defense over concerns that “the women got special treatment and played by different rules.”

Multiple unconfirmed sources told Keating that an unnamed general told subordinates that “a woman will graduate Ranger School” back in January. “At least one will get through,” he concluded at the time.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The 2015-16 academic year has opened with a predictable collection of demands for banning certain views, often involving sexual or racial matters. Many are couched in convoluted claims that disagreeable speech is making students feel "unsafe."

Much of the squelching aims to fend off challenges to some of the more ludicrous theories of victimization. Well-constructed thoughts on social injustice can be defended in debates.

But the concern here goes beyond the issue of free speech. What do these bizarre definitions of sexual or racial harassment do to the students' heads? They, too, are free speech, but when they are shielded from counterarguments, they take on the air of "facts." The students leave school with "givens" that are not givens 5 feet outside the campus gates.

Story here. Excerpt:

'"I love my circumcised penis!”

This is one of the more colorful things David Atkinson, 27, often hears while protesting male circumcision across the country. Passers-by outside City Hall on Thursday were more curious than crude towards the group of a dozen men, who wear all-white clothing with fake bloodstains splattered on the crotch. Their signs carry messages like “Stop cutting baby penis”, “Foreskin theft” and “His body, his choice.”

Atkinson belongs to Bloodstained Men, a California-based organization raising awareness about male genital mutilation. They’re not religiously affiliated, though they note that circumcision is “a freedom of religion issue.” Moreover, the group says it doesn't do any political lobbying for their cause.

“It’s not really very effective in the current legislative climate,” Atkinson said. “What’s more effective is public awareness, because parents are the ones who decide whether or not their child gets to keep his whole penis.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Girls now make up a larger share of the juvenile justice population, according to a new study released Friday.

The report, “Gender Injustice: System-Level Juvenile Justice Reforms for Girls” by the National Crittenton Foundation and the National Women’s Law Center, said arrests of girls increased by 45 percent over the past two decades, while court caseloads and detentions increased by 40 percent and post-adjudication placement rose by 44 percent.

A number of the girls coming through the system were found to have been victims of violence and sexual abuse at home and in their communities. 

“The traumatic and unhealthy social environments in which many girls live result in behaviors that are criminalized or are mishandled by other systems, resulting in girls’ entry into the juvenile justice system,” the report said.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'In a report released yesterday, entitled “Cyber Violence Against Women And Girls: A Global Wake-up Call,” UN Women, the group behind last year’s risible “He for She” campaign, called on governments to use their “licensing prerogative” to ensure that “telecoms and search engines” are only “allowed to connect with the public” if they “supervise content and its dissemination.”

In other words, if search engines and ISPs don’t comply with a list of the UN’s censorship demands, the UN wants national governments to cut off their access to the public.

So, what sort of content does the UN want to censor? ISIS recruitment videos, perhaps, which lure women into lives of rape and servitude? Live-streamed executions from Syria? Revenge porn or snuff videos? There’s no shortage of dangerous and potentially traumatising content on the web, after all, much of it disproportionately affecting women.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Two recent findings from the federal government regarding how school's handle campus sexual assault cases have had a disturbing similarity: Both schools were faulted for not investigating an accusation even when the accuser didn't want it investigated.

At Michigan State University, the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights determined the school failed to provide a "prompt and equitable" response to an accusation because it failed to investigate an informal complaint — one where the accuser chose not to go through the school process of a formal hearing. Now the same accusation (among others) has been made against the University of Virginia.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Those familiar with #GamerGate should recognize some of those people right away, but suffice it to say that group does not consist of cyber security experts, criminal investigators, master psychologists, or pretty much anyone who could contribute productively to stopping Internet trolls from making life miserable for everyone. Instead Google Ideas picked out a handful of the same feminist agitators, social justice warriors, professional victims, and all around despicable personalities that have been the bane of the Internet for at least a year now.

Of the bunch, Anita Sarkeesian is probably the one most recognizable to HotAir readers since Jazz reported on her cancelling a talk last year. She’s made a small fortune off accusing the video game industry of being a misogyny factory with her Feminist Frequency videos, and she’s parlayed the inevitable backlash she’s received into being the go-to spokesperson for anyone interested in talking about women getting harassed online.

Story here. Excerpt:

'Police have charged an 18-year-old woman with making a false complaint after she alleged she was accosted and raped this week while running in Napier.

The woman claimed she was attacked on Monday evening along the river stopbank near the Pettigrew Green Arena in Taradale.

The claim prompted a police plea for sightings of men seen acting suspiciously in the area.

The woman will appear in the Hastings District Court next week and police said she had been referred to mental health service providers.

Police said she was charged after an "extensive investigation" into her allegations.

She has also been charged with theft, which police said was an unrelated event.
...
"This sort of activity is very frustrating, but police have to take every complaint seriously and we will investigate any allegations, especially ones like this of a serious sexual nature," he said.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Cathy Young is a widely admired libertarian “equity feminist” American journalist, whose considerable critical skills often deployed in dismantling the “rape culture” narrative, continually ruffle ideologues’ feathers.

Young was scheduled to speak at the University of Toronto tonight, Thursday, September 24th, on “The Politics of Gender and Victimhood,” an event planned by the University of Toronto Men’s Issues Awareness Society (UTMIAS) and sponsored by the Canadian Association for Equality (CAFÉ), on whose advisory board I sit.

But some nasty words on the Internet and a moral panic over them conspired to push the event off campus at the U of T’s insistence, and so Ms Young will be speaking instead at Intercontinental Yorkville (7 pm). She will speak in Ottawa Sept 25.

Article here. Excerpt:

'One group pushing for more college involvement in campus sexual assault accusations wants to make sure there's a black mark on the transcripts of any student punished for assault or harassment.

This suggestion by the Association of Title IX Administrators might be a good one if today's campus climates were different. As matters stand, not one in which students who probably didn't commit acts of sexual violence are routinely punished anyway.

To brand someone a rapist based on colleges' preponderance of evidence standard — that is, based on 50.01 percent certainty the assault happened — is a dangerous precedent in itself. To brand someone for life in this way, effectively making transfers impossible, is even worse. I get where ATIXA is coming from, but if we're going to try and keep a student from having a future, we probably need more certainty that he deserves it.

Article here. Excerpt:

'“When you look at the way feminists have responded to men’s issues it’s a pretty bad record,” said American journalist Cathy Young at a controversial event in Toronto Thursday night. A movement that was once about equality seems to have transformed in strange ways, its excesses amplified by the internet and campus theatrics.

It’s sad that I even need to describe Young’s talk, entitled “The Politics of Gender and Victimhood”, as “controversial”.

Young - whose writing has appeared in The New York Times, Daily Beast, Reason and more - was initially a feminist when she arrived in the U.S. from the USSR in 1980. But after following the movement questions arose and she’s now a critic.

Her engaging and fact-based speech was a far cry from the angry, misogynist chest-thumping “men’s rights” shindig that opponents of similar events on campus have tried to label them.'

Earlier this week, the Association of American Universities (AAU) released a study on campus sexual assault. The study is deeply flawed, and needs to be restudied.

To determine whether or not sexual misconduct or assault occurred, the study used definitions of these crimes far beyond any state criminal law and far beyond most school policies.

In fact, a majority of the schools that participated in the study (15 out of 27) did not even have an affirmative consent definition, but the students' activity was categorized as 'misconduct' if the students didn't follow this illogical, unconstitutional standard.

The survey is already being used to drive the campus rape hysteria hype. We need AAU to retract its biased and flawed survey. Accuracy matters.

Call: AAU President, Hunter Rawlings, at (202) 408-7500 today.

Gina Lauterio, Esq., Policy Program Director
Stop Abusive and Violent Environments   
www.saveservices.org

Story here. Excerpt:

'A faculty resolution passed at American University (AU) in Washington, D.C., stands out as one of the most vocal and direct condemnations of the “trigger warning” phenomenon sweeping college campuses.

The resolution, passed unanimously by AU’s faculty senate, lays out in no uncertain terms that trigger warnings are wholly incompatible with the intellectual environment a university is supposed to foster.

“For hundreds of years, the pursuit of knowledge has been at the center of university life,” the resolution declares. “Unfettered discourse, no matter how controversial, inconvenient, or uncomfortable, is a condition necessary to that pursuit.”'

Letter here. Excerpt:

'In the well-written City Weekly cover story on circumcision ["Circumcision Decision," Sept. 17], the God of the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions is credited with beginning this practice: God demands that the 99-year- old Abraham cut off his foreskin in order to prove his loyalty. God further demands the same of all Abraham's male offspring.

Why was God so fascinated with an old man's penis? If God required a physical proof of a man's membership in this limited fraternity, why not something more easily visible? A tattoo on the upper arm would have sufficed. Only a complete body search would reveal this mark of the chosen ones.

Today, it would be considered pretty sick and against the law if the coach of a football team required circumcision of the players. Likewise, it would be very strange if a corporate CEO demanded that all male employees show proof of not having foreskin.'