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'Chaps, we are under attack. It is time to man (and I mean ‘man’) the defences. In yesterday’s Femail magazine, writer Ginny Dougary accused us of space-hogging — of taking up too much room, particularly in railway carriages.
The problem has become so common that the Oxford Dictionary now has an approved term for it: ‘Manspreading’.
Ginny described (with, it has to be said, rather brilliant gusto) how men plonk themselves down on train seats and thrust wide their beefy thighs. She was so fed up with this behaviour that she was declaring war. Her article was illustrated by a photograph of one man sitting beside three women. Whereas the ladies sat with their knees together or petitely crossed, selfish old Captain Groin had his upper legs as wide as a skier’s snowplough.
As with many gross slanders, Ginny’s article contained a grain or two of truth. Yet that picture was by no means ‘the whole truth and nothing but the truth’.
'Voices Against Violence, a group affiliated with the Counseling and Mental Health Center, launched a new program Thursday aiming to include male-identified individuals into the conversation of sexual and domestic violence on campus.
With it’s first event, “This is Men’s Work,” the program, MasculinUT: The Healthy Masculinities Project, hosted a panel of speakers which included Michael Messner, professor of Sociology and Gender at the University of Southern California, as well as UT faculty members and Student Government representatives.
“We intentionally pluralize masculinity because we want to explore the different facets of what it means to be a man in our world,” said Erin Burrows, outreach specialist for Voices against Violence. “One of the things we really landed on was most violence was committed by men but most men aren’t violent, so how do we fill that gap and really work with men to engage other men in this conversation?”
'Advocates argue that the campus system is a crucial alternative to provide some form of justice for victims who may be afraid to report to law enforcement, don’t want their parents to find out, or want action taken sooner than can occur in a lengthy legal process.
“That doesn’t mean she shouldn’t be entitled to other accommodations with classes or not have to see the accused,” said Sandra Henriquez, executive director of the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault. “She still should have the right to have all of the support and have the campus help her to complete her education.”
A backlash is growing, however, from critics who worry that schools are supplanting the criminal justice system with unfair tribunals that run roughshod over the accused. They point to proceedings run by faculty and administrators, a lower “preponderance of the evidence” standard for finding guilt, and a lack of fundamental legal protections like the right to a lawyer.
'Vanderbilt University’s Women’s Center will be hosting a week-long event dedicated to lecturing men about what it means to have “healthy masculinity.”
The “Healthy Masculinities Week” is sponsored by Vanderbilt’s Margaret Cuninggim Women’s Center, which claims to be devoted to “Celebrating Women” while “Empowering All.”
The mission of the Women’s Center is to affirm a “space for all members of the Vanderbilt community that acknowledges and actively resists sexism, racism, homophobia, and all forms of oppression while advocating for positive social change.”
...
“Healthy Masculinities Week” hopes to encourage men to “[e]xplore healthy masculinity through various lenses,” such as “American society, the gay and bisexual community, fraternities, and more.”
'Amy Huchthausen: Women are generally more empathetic and compassionate to people, (although not necessarily caretakers) and so they may look deeper into things when making decisions than men do. The richer experience and perspective you have, the better leader you become. Women have to navigate a different environment and that will impact their personal constitution, and that gives them a different perspective.
'Francisco Sousa returned to San Diego State’s campus Wednesday, speaking to media at the Conrad Prebys Student Union about the conclusion of his sexual assault case and impending lawsuit.
“It feels that I have my rights back,” Sousa said in an interview with The Daily Aztec. “It feels that I have what I should have had from day one, which (would) be (to be) able to enter freely a campus which I traveled halfway around the world to be (at).”
On Tuesday Sousa confirmed to The Daily Aztec that his suspension from SDSU had been lifted, but that he had no interest in becoming an SDSU student again.
Sousa was suspended for violating Title IX, a federal law prohibiting sexual discrimination on college campuses. He was accused of sexually assaulting a woman at a party last December and was arrested on Dec. 9 for false imprisonment and forcible oral copulation of a female. Those charges were later dropped in February.'
'Two New Jersey women faced charges Monday for allegedly staging a “fight club” among boys and girls at a day care center, Union County prosecutors said.
As CBS2’s Christine Sloan reported, investigators said the former day care workers – Erica Kenny, 22, of Cranford, and Chanese White, 28, of Roselle – referenced the movie “Fight Club” as they encouraged preschoolers and kindergartners to fight each other on the playground at Lightbridge Academy in Cranford last month.
“About a dozen children — boys and girls between the ages 4 and 6 — just fighting; throwing each other to the ground; hitting each other,” said Union County Prosecutor Grace Park.
Kenny allegedly shot video of the fights and sent them to a group of people on the app Snapchat, prosecutors said.
“Most parents would be astonished by the behavior,” Acting Union County Prosecutor Grace Park told WCBS 880’s Jim Smith.
...
Prosecutors said the former workers staged the fights for pure pleasure. Neighbors of defendant White were stunned.
'Countless children go through life not knowing the true identity of their fathers.
Shame on their mothers, and shame on the U.S. court system that — more often than you realize — forces child support on men with no DNA connection.
These false establishments of paternity, as they are called, happen in courts across the country. Our broken family-court system is intent on getting someone — anyone — on record as being responsible for the child so the state won’t be.
The result? Circles of victimized people.
First, the children who are denied the truth about who their biological fathers are, the hereditary diseases they may develop, their heritage, extended family and inheritance rights.
Then there is the innocent man and his family. They are robbed of hard-earned cash and emotional well-being, living with an unfair court order — one that demands compliance for as long as 18 years — takes a terrible toll.'
'This is an excerpt from a Rolling Stoneinterview with the author of a new book on rape culture, Asking for It. Since it is Rolling Stone, of course there is a kind of shill factor. The publication has no credibility—about anything, really, but about rape issues for certain. The book and the attitude it represents, however, are both real. From “America Has a Rape Problem—And Kate Harding Wants to Fix It”:
`Is that what you mean when you say in the book that “every American boy is at risk of growing up to become a rapist”?
'To combat wrongful accusations of sexual assault on college campuses, a pro-due process group is distributing flyers meant to prepare young men for potential expulsion.
The organization, Families Advocating for Campus Equality has already begun distributing the flyers on California campuses, where "yes means yes" consent policies were adopted last year. The policies purport to make clear what is and isn't consent, but make it impossible for accused students to prove their innocence and in fact redefine normal human actions as rape.
"This flyer was created by a small group of California mothers of sons, including some whose sons have been falsely accused, to raise awareness of the propensity of college and university disciplinary panels to find male students guilty of sexual misconduct, often with no evidence except the accuser's claim, and frequently in the presence of tangible evidence to the contrary," said Cynthia Garrett, an attorney and board member of FACE.'
'A Queens woman sporting nine fake fingernails told cops she wasn’t with her boyfriend when he was shot to death in his left side early Saturday. But the lie fell apart — leading to her arrest Monday — when a sharp-eyed detective noticed her one naked digit.
“On his body we find a fingernail and we noticed that when we talk to his girlfriend she’s missing a fingernail,” Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said. “We take her back into custody, we start speaking to her, and she makes admissions she actually killed him.”
After the murder, police say Dawn McIntosh, 46, of Long Island City, enlisted the help of her son and daughter to carry Sh-Ron McWhorter’s body to a car. He was too heavy, so McIntosh tried to burn the victim’s body to mask the crime. The mom was charged with murder, criminal possession of a weapon and tampering with physical evidence.
'University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan blamed federal privacy regulations for her school's failure to debunk the Rolling Stone gang-rape story.
Those regulations did not stop her from treating innocent people as rapists, however.
Sullivan, speaking to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, said the school couldn't counter the Rolling Stone article about a now discredited accusation of a brutal gang rape because of a law known as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
"The university couldn't say it wasn't true because of FERPA," said Sullivan, referring to federal student privacy law. "And the only reason I can say it to you now is because there's a police chief's report, which is not FERPA-protected."'
Article here. Nice to see some exposure in something like the MSM. Will it make prime time news? I doubt it. But it should. Excerpt:
'Swiss food giant Nestle is being sued in the United States for allegedly knowingly allowing its Fancy Feast cat food to contain fish from a Thai supplier that uses slave labor.
Pet food buyers who filed the class action lawsuit on Thursday in US federal court in Los Angeles seek to represent all California consumers of Fancy Feast who would not have purchased the product had they known it had ties to slave labor.
According to the lawsuit, Nestle works with Thai Union Frozen Products PCL to import more than 28 million pounds (13 million kilograms) of seafood-based pet food for top brands sold in the United States, and that some of the ingredients in those products came from slave labor.
Men and boys, often trafficked from Thailand's poorer neighbors Myanmar and Cambodia, are sold to fishing boat captains who need crews aboard their ship, the complaint said.
'California’s state Assembly on Thursday approved legislation aimed at closing the wage gap between women and men through what proponents describe as the strongest equal pay protection in the nation.
The bill by Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, would let female employees challenge pay discrimination based on the wages that the company pays to other employees at different locations. They could also base challenges on wages the company pays to other employees who do substantially similar work.'
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