Story here. Excerpt:

'Classrooms at Seattle University had a new rule on Saturday: No Boys Allowed.

That's because it's the annual Expanding Your Horizons program, bringing together 500 middle school girls from Washington State to learn about science, math and engineering.

The girls rotated through workshops focusing on veterinary medicine, infectious diseases and robotics, to name a few.

"We're not trying to exclude boys," said Jen Sorensen, the program's organizer and chemistry professor at Seattle University. "We're trying to provide an opportunity for girls who might not even realize these career opportunities are available to them."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Legislators and universities in New Jersey are changing the way rapes are dealt with on campus following two explosive incidents at local colleges and several high-profile cases that have brought national attention to the epidemic of sexual assault among students.

The allegations of rape at William Paterson University in Wayne and Ramapo College in Mahwah late last year came on the heels of incidents in New York, Florida and Virginia, scandals that prompted the federal government to push schools to be more aggressive in the handling of sexual assault cases.

But universities have struggled to investigate claims that are often difficult to prove — consent sometimes comes down to a matter of perspective, especially in young adults, and in most incidents there are no witnesses and memory is impaired by trauma, alcohol or drug use.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Encouraging parents to have their sons get the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine—rather than just trying to get more girls vaccinated—could ultimately protect more people for the same price, according to a study by a mathematician.

Whether vaccinating boys against HPV in addition to girls would only divert scarce resources from a campaign originally designed to help prevent cervical cancer has been a matter of debate.

But with HPV-related cancers in men on the rise, and HPV vaccine coverage for girls in the United States stagnating well below the critical levels needed to ensure that most people are protected, researchers have been re-examining the case for a girls-only approach.
...
Although the virus is most frequently associated with cervical cancer, women aren’t the only ones at risk. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that a third of the 27,000 cases of cancer HPV causes in the US each year occur in men, where it can cause cancers of the throat, tongue, tonsils, penis, and anus.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'The Selma Police Department arrested a woman on Friday and charged her with domestic violence after she allegedly stabbed her boyfriend twice. 

Police responded to the 1100 block of Fifth Avenue at 7:36 p.m., where the victim told officers that he had gotten into an argument with 38-year-old Brenda Jean Burns over the phone. Burns then came over to the residence where the argument continued in the front yard. It was at that point that the suspect went into the house, grabbed a kitchen knife, came back outside and stabbed the victim with the knife.

The victim was able to take the knife away from the suspect, but the suspect went back inside the house and grabbed another knife and stabbed the victim again.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Labour has announced it will pick its general election candidate in the key West Yorkshire marginal seat of Halifax from an all-women shortlist.

MP Linda Riordan said last month she was stepping down after 10 years due to ill health.

Candidates must apply by Monday and a shortlist will be drawn up early next week by the party's national executive.

The move comes after Ms Riordan warned Labour was in danger of losing the seat unless a candidate was selected soon.

At a meeting it was decided there should be an all-women shortlist for the constituency.'

Link here. Photo description:

'Meredith Kleykamp tweeted us a photo of a comment written on her 3rd grade son’s cursive homework. The teacher wrote: “beautifully written! for a boy!”

So what’s the message here?'

Story here. I wonder how much (if any) time she'll spend in prison? Excerpt:

'A man waiting for a train was pushed off the subway platform into the path of an arriving train on December 27, 2012. He died instantly.

Erika Menendez of Queens, was charged with second-degree murder as a hate crime. Menendez told authorities she "pushed a Muslim off the train tracks" because she'd hated Hindus and Muslims ever since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.

Menendez, 33, was allowed Friday to plead guilty to first-degree manslaughter, Brown said in a statement.

The judge indicated he would sentence her to 22 to 25 years in prison on April 29. Conviction on the original charge would have resulted in a tougher sentence -- 25 years to life imprisonment, Meris Campbell, spokeswoman for the district attorney's office, said Saturday.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'A Boston College graduate accused of sexual assault has filed a lawsuit alleging that the university violated federal anti-discrimination laws and its own policies governing sexual-assault allegations.

The suit, filed Wednesday in federal court, says BC rushed to find the student responsible for sexual assault and deprived him of a fair hearing. The process branded the student as a sexual predator without giving him a chance to tell his side of the story, the complaint alleges.
...
The male student was also charged in Suffolk County District Court. Those charges were dismissed in May 2014 after physical evidence and video footage exonerated him, according to the suit.

In the separate, internal inquiry at BC three weeks after the alleged 2012 incident, an administrative hearing board made up of three administrators, one professor, and one student found him responsible for indecent assault and battery and suspended him for three semesters, court documents say.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The male victim of horrendous domestic abuse has come forward to show his scars, telling men: “Being attacked by a woman is nothing to be ashamed of.”

Ken Gregory, 65, suffered first and second degree burns to 14 per cent of his body last March after his now ex-wife Teresa Gilbertson, 60, tipped a kettle of boiling water over the back of his head.
...
It was then that Gilbertson, who is now awaiting sentencing for a conviction of serious bodily harm, went to make a cup of tea but instead returned with a jug of boiling water – which she poured over her husband’s head.
...
The attack was the culmination in weeks of verbal abuse, Mr Gregory said. Earlier he had gone to hospital after his then-wife poured scalding tea over him as he slept.

"As a man who is a bit older and who isn't exactly small, there is a perception that you can't be a victim of domestic violence,” he said.

Article here. Excerpt:

'One of the most common derisive taunts thrown at feminists – and one of the oldest – is “manhater”. It’s been around since the days of suffrage, and still gets used today, though its a pretty anodyne insult. Most feminists, like me, shun the label and work to convince people that despite the stereotypes feminists absolutely, without a doubt, do not hate men.

But so what if we did?

... if the worst thing that happens to a man is that a woman doesn’t like him ...well, he has it pretty damn good. It’s not as if we’re living in some sort of Wicker Man-inspired dystopia, after all.

Article here. Excerpt:

'It’s difficult to deny this simple observation, if only because it is the empirical, statistical, plain-to-see truth. But a small and vocal minority do insist upon it.

In Canada, this group has a name: the deceptively huggable-sounding Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE). But their agenda is less pro-equality than pro-redressing what they see as a gender imbalance in the current debate about equality, namely the obvious: That women are more often the victims of sexism and abuse.

Story here. Excerpt:

'The new law provides a legal definition for femicide — the killing of a woman by a man because of her gender — and proscribes mandatory jail sentences of 12 to 30 years. In addition, the law increases the jail time for crimes against pregnant women, girls under 14, women over 60 and people with disabilities.

"For many years, the so-called passion crimes — homicides of woman by their husbands, lovers — [the perpetrators] would use the argument that 'under stress and deep emotion, this honorable man has killed his wife because she was having an affair and thus dishonouring him and his family and his children,'” Pitanguy says.

Many, many men were let off, or subject to symbolic penalty for murder.

“It in a sense reflected values that women were the property or appendix of the man,” Pitanguy says.

This new law combats that patriarchal notion.

Story here. Excerpt:

'The head of Canada’s military police is apologizing for his force’s incompetence after an inquiry found investigations into the suicide of an Afghanistan veteran were conducted by inexperienced personnel who made unacceptable errors.

Colonel Rob Delaney, the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal, said Tuesday that a highly critical report by the Canadian Military Police Complaints Commission into investigations of the 2008 death of Corporal Stuart Langridge underlines the fact that mistakes were made and he will take steps to correct them.

But Glenn Stannard, the chair of the complaints commission, said the military’s written response to his 1,008-page report was dismissive and most of the 46 recommendations were rejected or ignored.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The messages that emerge from such narratives are double-edged, adding fuel to the fire they seek to douse. A similar problem arises with broader discussions of fathers’ rights and masculinity; no one dares to say “what you have lost was never yours to begin with”. If men grow up expecting to acquire ownership of people in the same way one might acquire wealth – as easy as sticking pink and blue pegs in one’s car in The Game of Life – then they are destined to end up feeling robbed. The “masculinity in crisis” narrative already tells them they are being deprived of something essential, something to which all men who lived before them had access but to which they, inexplicably, do not.
...
Masculinity is not some fragile butterfly on a wheel. It depends on reducing other people to objects. The solution is not to recreate an imaginary golden age in which said objects were – so we tell ourselves – more pliable and less likely to disrupt the narrative. A world in which not only jobs were stable and not going anywhere, but neither were women and children. That world dehumanised over half the human raceand we should temper our sympathy for those men who would openly mourn its passing. As the feminist Kathy Miriam argues, “the problem of ‘masculinity’ has displaced a systemic, structural analysis of male power. And has displaced . . . the problem of men possessing women”. Our obsession with masculinity’s supposedly never-ending crises merely bolsters the myth that if women and children are people, men cannot be. 

Article here. Excerpt:

'According to a Razalert sent to students Wednesday (March 11), a sexual assault case reported Monday (March 9) to University of Arkansas Police is false.

In a follow-up interview, the student recanted her previous statements and admitted there was no attack, according to police.

UAPD called it an unfortunate occurrence and stated they are in contact with the Student Affairs Office and the Washington County Prosecutor’s Office to decide on appropriate course of action regarding the false report.
...
The student told police the assault happened around 6:30 p.m. after a man approached the student at the parking garage and asked for help jump starting his car, then asked for help getting home to his sick dog, according to police. The student said the man grabbed her arm with one hand and put the other underneath her clothes before she got away and into her vehicle, the report states. The student also gave police a description of the suspect.