Review here. Excerpt:

'Rebecca Wald and Lisa Braver Moss have followed a time-honored tradition in Judaism, one followed by Rabbis, scholars, and the Jewish people for centuries. They've looked at our world, the way we practice Torah, live our lives, and proposed adjustments to accommodate a more ethical approach. The guide, titled Celebrating Brit Shalom is the first published prayer book for leaders of this new Jewish ritual. So far, the book has won good reviews from Jewish celebrants in the UK, progressive Jews in California,Orthodox-raised Jewish Intactivist Jonathan Friedman and others.

Story and video here. Excerpt:

'Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) called on U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati to "actually conduct a thorough investigation" into women's national team goalie Hope Solo and domestic violence accusations against her.

Blumenthal also suggested that U.S. Soccer "reconsider Hope Solo's position as an active member of Team USA," in a letter dated Thursday.

"Domestic violence is unacceptable," the letter said, "particularly for an athlete representing the United States of America on the global stage."

Outside The Lines, with new court documents and an interview with Solo's half-sister Teresa Obert, took an in-depth look into Solo's actions that led to her arrest in June 2014 after an altercation with Obert and Solo's teenage nephew.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Carly Fiorina is rivaling Sen. Rand Paul in trying to be the most heterodox candidate in the Republican presidential field. And now, she may well be the first Republican feminist to run for president.

Fiorina, who is set to deliver a speech to the Competitive Enterprise Institute Thursday night, has staked out her place in the Republican primaries as someone who is not afraid to hit Hillary Clinton, the only other woman in the race, and hit her hard.
...
"Today, only 23 percent of women identify with the term feminist. Liberal ideas aren't the answer. Their version of feminism isn't working. It is time for a new definition," Fiorina's prepared remarks for Thursday night read. "A feminist is a woman who lives the life she chooses. We will have arrived when every woman can decide for herself how to best find and use her God-given gifts. A woman may choose to have five children and homeschool them. She may choose to become a CEO, or run for president."
...
"Feminism began as a rallying cry to empower women—to vote, to get an education, to enter the workplace. But over the years, feminism has devolved into a left-leaning political ideology where women are pitted against men and used as a political weapon to win elections.

Being empowered means having a voice. But ideological feminism shuts down conversation—on college campuses and in the media. If you are a man—or a woman—who doesn't believe the litanies of the left, then you are "waging a war on women" or you are a "threat to women's health" or you are variously described as "window dressing" —Joni Ernst—or offensive as a candidate—Carly Fiorina.

Article here. Excerpt:

'June 21 is Father’s Day, and a local group says celebrating Dad should also mean taking a stand to end domestic violence.

The Father’s Day Pledge to End Gender Violence encourages people, particularly men, to sign a pledge that indicates their commitment to the prevention of domestic and sexual violence and abuse.

The pledge, which was launched just last year by the Southwest PA Says No More initiative, calls for men to not use violence in their own relationships and also to intervene when they see another man harming women or girls. Many notable locals, including Mayor Bill Peduto, University of Pittsburgh Head Basketball Coach Jamie Dixon and CEO of Peoples Natural Gas Morgan O’Brien have already signed this year’s pledge.

Story here. Excerpt:

'A Wood River woman has been charged with making a false police report alleging she had been raped.

Kiersten Cherry, 19, came to the South Roxana Police Department with her boyfriend on May 20 and reported that she had been raped by a resident of South Roxana, according to police. An investigation led to Cherry’s admission that the sex was consensual, according to police.
...
Coles said he was “disturbed” by false reports, which he said in this instance was motivated by a guilty conscience from multiple consensual contacts.

“The stigma from being accused of a sexual offense is not something that goes away when guilt or innocence is proven,” he said. “It can haunt the person for the rest of their life.”

Cherry has been charged with disorderly conduct, a Class 4 felony punishable by one to four years in prison or up to two and a half years’ probation.

A warrant has been issued for her arrest, but she was not in custody as of late Tuesday. Coles said he expected her to be apprehended shortly.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., called U.S. Soccer's explanation of its handling of Hope Solo's domestic violence arrest "tone deaf" and "nonsensical" in an exclusive telephone interview Saturday afternoon with USA TODAY Sports.

"I saw the response, which unfortunately and regrettably is really tone deaf," Blumenthal said. "Most striking in this response is the use of the term 'he said, she said.' Most commonly, that's the reason given by prosecutors for failing to take effective action in domestic violence cases. That comment reveals a mindset that is part of a culture that fails to successfully prosecute domestic violence in this country."

On Thursday, Blumenthal, who was outspoken in his criticism of the NFL's handling of the Ray Rice incident last year, released a letter he sent to U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati, calling for the federation to "conduct a thorough investigation into (the Solo) incident."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Late this morning, the Washington Post sent a “News Alert” e-mail announcing the results of an “exclusive” poll it conducted together with the Kaiser Family Foundation. The poll purports to find that “20 percent of young women who attended college during the past four years say they were sexually assaulted.” This is an explosive number — and not just because the very thought of one in five women being sexually assaulted on campus is horrifying.

The number, it turns out, exactly mirrors the percentage announced in a 2007 federally funded study of two universities, which has been cited by President Obama, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and the Department of Education as proof of a campus sexual-assault crisis. This has, in turn, provided the justification for the ongoing, draconian crackdown on free speech and due process at colleges across the nation, one that has done real harm to innocent young men.

The original 20 percent number was suspect from the start. The 2007 survey used an exceedingly generous definition of sexual assault and its response rate was relatively low. A more comprehensive and rigorous Bureau of Justice Statistics survey subsequently put the rate at 6.1 per 1,000, and found that sexual assault was 1.2 times more frequent for nonstudents than students and had — in fact — been declining since the 1990s. When confronted with the BJS survey, even Senator Gillibrand removed the one in five number from her website. So the Post number, if valid, would give a second wind to an Obama administration crackdown that was running on factual fumes. Unfortunately for the Post and the administration, the study’s number is not even close to valid. Even worse, in its main story about the poll, the Post misleads about the key question — the source of its one in five headline.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'If we are honest with ourselves, we have long known that masculinity kills men, in ways both myriad and measurable. While social constructions of femininity demand that women be thin, beautiful, accommodating, and some unattainable balance of virginal and fuckable, social constructions of masculinity demand that men constantly prove and re-prove the very fact that they are, well, men.

Both ideas are poisonous and potentially destructive, but statistically speaking, the number of addicted and afflicted men and their comparatively shorter lifespans proves masculinity is actually the more effective killer, getting the job done faster and in greater numbers. Masculinity’s death tolls are attributed to its more specific manifestations: alcoholism, workaholism and violence. Even when it does not literally kill, it causes a sort of spiritual death, leaving many men traumatized, dissociated and often unknowingly depressed. (These issues are heightened by race, class, sexuality and other marginalizing factors, but here let’s focus on early childhood and adolescent socialization overall.) To quote poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “tis not in death that men die most.” And for many men, the process begins long before manhood.

Article here. Excerpt:

'If you want to get a distilled version of the present moment in American politics, it’s not a bad idea to listen to what poets are saying, believe it or not. Right now, of course, a lot of the arguments are about identity. Elisa Gabbert is a poet and essayist who lives in Colorado and is the author of The French Exit and The Self Unstable. Last week, in an advice column for Electric Literature, she answered a note from a white male poet worried that “the need for poems from a white, male perspective just isn’t there anymore.” The column ran under the provocative headline “Should White Men Stop Writing?” and caused a storm on social media. The letter summed up a conversation about writing and gender and race and identity that's been going on for a long time but building momentum again since the poets Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young's paper about gender balance in experimental poetry journals and anthologies, "Numbers Trouble," was published in 2007. And then with the annual VIDA counts that break down contributions to literary magazines by gender, and more recently ethnicity. I was on a airplane when the storm over Gabbert’s column hit, but we’d corresponded in the past, so I asked her about it.
...

Article here. Excerpt:

'If you've ever been forced to stand for a long journey on a bus as some average-sized bloke spread his thighs across three seats, or spent an entire flight with your knees in your nostrils because the guy next to you was carelessly spreading his legs, you will be familiar with "manspreading".

It's a newish buzzword for an old bugbear. For some men, it almost seems the different poles of the earth pull their knees in opposing directions as they sit, hoarding space between their legs.
...
Like people who think their bags are too precious to sit on the floor or in their laps, and instead give their inanimate belongings a seat of their own, manspreading reeks of entitlement.

There was plenty of publicity and appreciation then, when New York City, where I now live, appeared to declare war on manspreading six months ago. It started with a public awareness campaign, and escalated recently with reports that two men had actually been arrested.'

Story here. Robert Franklin reports on a study by a Dr. Brenda Williams that reveals some troubling information about child support enforcement. Some excerpts:

Blacks are 87% of those incarcerated:

"My non-profit group, The Family Unit, recently studied the incarceration of non-custodial parents in Sumter County for non-payment of child support. We found that 87 percent of those incarcerated are African-Americans and the majority are indigent, don’t have a high school diploma, live in low-income neighborhoods and are unemployed."

Fathers are 98% of those jailed:

"Based on all the incarcerations of parents for child support arrears in the state except three counties, those data revealed that some 98% of those incarcerated were fathers."

NCPs are jailed for failing to pay attorneys:

Story here. Excerpt:

'A WOMAN held up a provocative sign dismissing the idea of a 'rape culture' in the West at a feminist rally which was trying to raise awareness of sexual assault.

Lauren Southern, a reporter with TheRebel, held up the controversial placard on the steps of a march organised in association with SlutWalk in Vancouver which read: 'There is no rape culture in the West' and then documented what happened.

She describes how she got into a "huge confrontation" with those involved, and claims that her cameraman was shoved, her sign torn up and that she was the victim of misogynist language - from other women.

Ms Southern also wrote that she decided to perform the stunt as a way to "challenge the fear mongering feminist narrative about men, women and violence".

"It is intellectually dishonest to think we are living in a rape culture," Ms Southern says in the introduction to the video.'

Video here.

Article here. Excerpt:

'It takes courage to tell a bunch of Canadian feminists marchers against ‘rape culture’ that they are talking rubbish. And courage is something Lauren Southern, a reporter for The Rebel, appears to have in abundance. She had the guts to go to a ‘SlutWalk’ in Vancouver holding a sign that said: ‘There is no rape culture in the west’. You can see her video above.

Lauren made the not unreasonable point that Canada is hardly a rapist’s paradise. ‘Rapists go to prison here,’ says Lauren. ‘Rapists are actually hated here. Rapists are fired from their jobs. Men who make rape jokes are fired from their jobs.’ But it is lost on the SlutWalkers, who are so desperate to talk about — and display — their bodies that they will not listen to reason.

Article here. Excerpt:

'In a Time op-ed, she made two alarming claims, claims that — if true — would mean that the plight of women on college campuses truly was a national crisis, one that should command the attention of all levels of government. First, she echoed President Obama and the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, declaring that “the price of a college education should never include a one in five chance of being sexually assaulted.”

Article here. Excerpt:

'One of the most frustrating things about debating feminists and feminist academics is how readily they reach for words such as “abuse,” “harassment” and “safety” – particularly, it seems, when they are losing the argument.

Yesterday I debated Dr Emily Grossman on women in science and, sure as night follows day, she reached for the same vocabulary afterwards, claiming on Twitter that she was “absolutely reeling” from the “mysogynistic [sic] backlash” and that she “hadn’t quite realised the extent of #everydaysexism.”