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'The Legislative Council of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) convened on March 26 for a meeting that lasted more than six hours. Some of the issues addressed included ongoing research into McGill’s equitable hiring practices, SSMU’s stance on the debate over women-only gym hours, anti-austerity mobilization, and opposition to the development of harmful military technology. Council also discussed the results of the recent online referendum on sustainability, and the motion on accessible education that failed to pass at the last General Assembly (GA) due to lack of quorum.
...
Also on the table was a motion brought forward by VP University Affairs Claire Stewart-Kanigan concerning the recent proposal to institute women-only hours at the university fitness centre. The motion asked McGill to reopen negotiations on this highly contentious issue, and work toward a compromise.
Article here. Jump the log-in requirement by Googling the first paragraph and click on the first search result. Excerpt:
'The string of higher-education lawsuits over alleged violations of due process in sexual-assault cases is no surprise (“More Men Fight College Allegations of Sexual Assault,” U.S. News, March 20). College professors and deans lack the training and experience to investigate and fairly determine guilt and innocence. Charges of such major crimes are properly the domain of police and the courts.
The federal government has placed colleges in an impossible position. Title IX enforcers threaten schools for not aggressively prosecuting cases independent of the criminal-justice system. But bungled cases mean that the guilty walk and the innocent suffer, and that colleges will pay the price in civil lawsuits. The heavy burden—and responsibility—of playing detective, judge and jury in these serious matters is not one colleges could ever competently undertake.
The truth is hard to face sometimes, but at other times, not so hard. It's especially easy when you already had figured out what was going on. But I'll let the speaker in the video here do the talking.
'The project aimed to draw attention to the issue and create “activity for change,” according to Kirby Dick, the film’s writer and director whose previous work has been nominated for an Academy Award. Since its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, the film has drawn national attention and received a number of favorable reviews. A New York Times review called the film a “must-watch work of cine-activism, one that should be seen by anyone headed to college and by those already on campus.” The Boston Globe gave it three and a half stars.
The film, however, presents at least some information about Harvard inaccurately.
In one sequence, a series of slides lists various schools and the number of sexual assaults reported there in a given time period compared to the number that led to expulsion. The film lists that from 2009-2013, Harvard College saw 135 cases of reported sexual assault, but only 10 expulsions.
'Italian artist Vincenzo Aiello is celebrating the foreskin—and protesting male circumcision with the aid of a Kickstarter campaign.
His project, titled "HUFO: The Missing Link"[link added] (shorthand for "HUman FOreskin") is dedicated to raising awareness about circumcision and the negative impact that circumcision can have on a man's emotional health and sex life.
Aiello creates hyperrealistic foreskin sculptures using silicon resin and is selling them, displayed in frames inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, for $1,000 a pop as part of an "intactivist" Kickstarter campaign. ...
Smaller pledges will earn you a print or T-shirt showing the piece, which Aiello created after carefully studying circumcision surgeries to determine how the foreskin, dubbed "America's censored body part," is removed. For $10,000, the artist will build one of his signature mosaics in which the sculpture will be displayed.
The HUFO projects questions whether it's "ethical for parents to remove functional tissue from their children's bodies to conform to social or cultural norms," and compares the American propensity for male circumcision to widely decried African traditions of female circumcision. Aiello claims that the foreskin is important erogenous tissue, and that the surgery to remove it is painful and potentially traumatizing to infants.
"Circumcision has become so commonplace in the US that parents often forget that circumcision is a surgery," Aiello states on the Kickstarter page. "Every other surgery in Western medicine requires both compelling and urgent medical reasons to perform without consent."
Instead of carrying on about the evils of peeing standing up, perhaps Swedish and indeed many other feminists can take a lesson from the example set here. When feminists start taking their (supposed) mission seriously, then maybe, just maybe, others will to. Until Ms. Wallström's example becomes typical of feminists instead of atypical, they will continue to remain exactly what they have been for years: the butt of jokes, but one that must be addressed head-on. After all, some jokes or butts thereof are no laughing matter. Excerpt:
'A few weeks ago Margot Wallström[link added], the Swedish foreign minister, denounced the subjugation of women in Saudi Arabia. As the theocratic kingdom prevents women from travelling, conducting official business or marrying without the permission of male guardians, and as girls can be forced into child marriages where they are effectively raped by old men, she was telling no more than the truth. Wallström went on to condemn the Saudi courts for ordering that Raif Badawi receive ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes for setting up a website that championed secularism and free speech. These were ‘mediaeval methods’, she said, and a ‘cruel attempt to silence modern forms of expression’. And once again, who can argue with that?
'A Memorial Serice today for 20 years of service firefighter vet - Kevin Hegarty's - who took his own life on March 1, focused attention on PTSD risk among firefighters and other Emergency Responders was held in Surrey B.C.
Hegarty, 53, was an acting captain and had been with the Surrey Fire Service for nearly 20 years.
...
Firefighters, police, military and other first-responders in emergency situations are among those who can suffer from job-related post-traumatic stress.'
He is among a number of suicides that have recently been reported across the country including that of Greg Turner, an Edmonton paramedic.
'Women are not equal to men; they are superior in many ways, and in most ways that will count in the future. It is not just a matter of culture or upbringing. It is a matter of chromosomes, genes, hormones, and nerve circuits. It is not mainly because of how experience shapes women, but because of intrinsic differences in the body and the brain.
Do these differences account for all the ways women and men differ? No. Are all men one way and all women another? Also no. But none of those considerations seriously impede my argument or deflect its key conclusion: Women are superior in most ways that matter now.
'When entrepreneur Dr. Catriona Wallace wanted to grow her tech start-up and saw there were no shared workspaces specifically catering to women, she came up with a whole new business idea.
That business is The Ventura, Australia’s first co-working space designed specifically for the needs of female entrepreneurs in the early stages of their careers in business.
The first such co-working space is located on Sussex Street in Sydney, with hopes to expand to other spaces across Sydney and Australia. It aims to provide an opportunity for entrepreneurs to enjoy a shared workspace without the heavily male-dominated culture that so many co-working spaces currently feature.
“I currently own three businesses and one of them, Flamingo, is a tech startup.
Last year we reached a stage where we needed our own space, but because rental prices in Sydney are very hard to manage in the early stages of a business I thought I would do what other startups do and investigate co-working spaces,” Wallace told Women’s Agenda.
'This year, nearly all college students in New York and California started their spring semesters under a new state-mandated regime of sexual policing called affirmative consent (“yes means yes”). Under these policies, any student who cannot prove that he obtained active, ongoing, unambiguous consent to any sexual activity will automatically be guilty of violating campus sexual assault policies. These draconian new rules are binding only on college students. They do not apply to college faculties and administrators, and they certainly don’t apply to the legislators who passed these laws.
'Ellen Pao, interim chief executive of Reddit, has lost her “landmark” gender discrimination case against venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. Pao had alleged that the firm denied her a promotion and eventually fired her on account of her gender. But after deliberating for more than two days, a jury of six men and six women dismissed all charges brought by Pao against the firm.
...
Despite the verdict, feminist activists and their sympathizers in the tech media have sought to spin Pao’s defeat as a ‘win’ for women in Silicon Valley. They argue that Pao’s case has, somehow, shone a light on gender discrimination in tech, despite the fact that the jury found that Pao experienced none. It’s a contortion of which Houdini would be proud.
'The Scottish National party has voted heavily in favour of introducing all women shortlists and “balanced” regional lists, reversing decades-long opposition to positive action.
SNP officials refused to disclose the voting numbers and would not allow media into the debate – fearing it would be heated, but in a closed session of the party’s pre-election conference at the SECC in Glasgow delegates gave the party’s national executive three new powers to push women candidates forward.
The vote, which saw two amendments against the motion defeated, has empowered the NEC to:
'WASHINGTON / March 26, 2015 – In the aftermath of the recent Charlottesville, Virginia police report of “no evidence” of an alleged gang-rape of “Jackie” during a University of Virginia fraternity party, commentators on all points of the political spectrum are deploring the harmful effects arising from the incident.
SAVE, a national organization working to end sexual assault, has compiled a listing of over 50 commentaries on the Rolling Stone allegations. These editorials abhor how the Rolling Stone story has exacerbated rape-hysteria on college campuses, contributed to the wrongful expulsion of innocent college men, injured the reputation of the University of Virginia, wasted scarce law enforcement resources, undermined basic notions of journalistic integrity, and damaged the credibility of women claiming to be victims of rape.'
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