Those who don't learn history not only are doomed to repeat it, but may also miss crucial perspectives on a current narrative. I hadn't heard of this marvelous piece of work, one Rebecca Latimer Felton, first female US senator (albeit for a mere 24 hours, as she died the day after she was sworn in before she could do any further damage), committed third-wave feminist before the term had even been invented, and unapologetic pro-genocidal racist. Excerpt:

'Rebecca Ann Latimer Felton (June 10, 1835 – January 24, 1930) was an American writer, lecturer, reformer, and politician who became the first woman to serve in the United States Senate. She was the most prominent woman in Georgia in the Progressive Era, and was honored by appointment to the Senate. She was sworn in November 21, 1922, and served just 24 hours. At 87 years, nine months, and 22 days old, she was the oldest freshman senator to enter the Senate. To date, she is also the only woman to have served as a Senator from Georgia. Her husband William Harrell Felton was a member of the United States House of Representatives and Georgia House of Representatives and she ran his campaigns. She was a prominent society woman; an advocate of prison reform, women's suffrage and educational modernization; and one of the few prominent women who spoke in favor of lynching. Bartley reports that by 1915 she "was championing a lengthy feminist program that ranged from prohibition to equal pay for equal work."
...

Article here. Excerpt:

'This was supposed to be the year that everyone banded together to end campus sexual assault by any means necessary — even if it meant improperly branding young men across the country as rapists.

The focus on sexual assault in 2014, which began in January when President Obama announced a task force to combat the issue on college campuses, can be no coincidence. The “war on women” narrative worked quite well for President Obama and Democrats in 2012, and the 2014 midterms were expected to be challenging for the party. Combine that with the fact that young, unmarried women overwhelmingly voted for Democrats two years ago and it becomes clear why there was such an intense focus on the issue.
...
It started in July when eight U.S. senators introduced the Campus Accountability and Safety Act, which included a list of instructions for how schools should handle sexual assault but included no due process rights for students accused. At the end of September, California passed its “yes means yes” law, which defined consent so narrowly as to make nearly all sexual activity illegal unless no one reported it as such.

Criticism of that legislation, as well as tales of students railroaded by campus kangaroo courts and growing numbers of young men suing their universities for denying them due process, turned the tables on radical activists who determined that convicting more young men, regardless of innocence, was the best way to eradicate sexual assault.
...

Article here. Excerpt:

Story here. Excerpt:

'So, what did Dan Joseph find out when he interviewed students on campus? Unsurprisingly, he found that students were angered by RS’s awful journalism. Some felt that this exercise in journalistic negligence didn’t take away from the validity of Jackie’s claims. Then again, while other students refused to question her claims, they didn’t take it as absolute fact either.

One female student said UVA never struck her as a school infested by rape culture. She also felt RS was more concerned with tearing down UVA than supporting Jackie–and that she doesn’t feel for her safety when she goes to parties.
...
When Joseph asked if the accused deserve due process, another female student said, “Well, I think that we need to be careful of believing them over believing the survivor.”

Story here. Excerpt:

'On Christmas day a topless Femen protester stormed the nativity scene at St. Peter’s Square and stole a statue of the baby Jesus after the Pope’s Christmas address.

A Vatican guard quickly cornered the protester, covering her with his cape and took back the statue.

According to AFP, protester Inna Shevchenko had the words “God is woman” written across her chest. After being captured by the Vatican guard she was taken to the local police station.

Femen has “staged similar stunts at the Vatican,” including one last month where they tried to thwart a Papal visit by showing [up] wearing “only leather mini-skirts and flower garlands in their hair.”'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Touted as an “innovation” in personal safety technology, a new 3D-printed dress designed by Anouk Wipprecht has been turning heads thanks to its “sinister” spider-like appendages.

These limbs attack all who come too close to the garment.

“It works based on an Intel Edison chip, stored inside, and linked with nearness and breath sensors,” writes FlightCentric. “However, the sensors cannot be perceived by any admirer.”

The dress has three spike-tipped limbs radiating from the area of the wearer’s collarbone.

“If you enter the wearer’s personal space aggressively, the dress attacks,” the FlightCentric piece explains. “Animatronic arachnid limbs attached to its shoulders lash out at intruders. But if you approach calmly and slowly, these limbs might beckon you forward.”

Already, some are advocating the use of such “technological couture” as a means of passively protecting women, who seem to be vulnerable at all times to incursions into their personal space. Women, in fact, are presumed by many within the “social justice” activism circuit to be completely incapable of coping with either unsolicited invitations to converse or any physical violation of what they perceive, rightly or wrongly, as their personal space.
...
While Cooper’s hysterically racist reaction (it’s within the realm of physical possibility that the man wanted to sit down and thought she was being rude, which she was) pegs the needle of social-justice hand-wringing to reductio ad absurdum levels, it is typical of “progressive” female reactions to benign, routine social exchanges. Today’s progressive women are so utterly incapable of coping with any condition, word, deed or interaction that does not conform precisely to what they desire that they go to pieces the moment something unpleasant (or just unexpected) happens to them.
...

Letter here. Excerpt:

'Not long ago I read of a woman charged with shoving her baby into a deep drain and leaving it to die. I also saw footage of two women assaulting and spitting on a Tongan bus driver in Brisbane. After that I saw footage of another pair of women assaulting and racially abusing an elderly indigenous man on a Gold Coast bus. And of course we all know of the woman in Cairns charged with murdering eight children. On Tuesday, I read of two Canberra women charged with assaulting, spitting on and racially abusing a servo attendant in Weston ("Charges for attack on servo pair", December 23, p6).

Yet Jenna Price ("Real terrorism is that of violence against women", Times2, December 23, p5) tells us real terrorism is male violence against women and children.

Campaign to stop violence by both sexes by all means, Jenna, but please stop male-bashing. You are making a fool of yourself and damaging The Canberra Times' reputation for quality journalism.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Last month, the MTA announced a new campaign for NYC subway etiquette. This week, it revealed the new posters for "Courtesy Counts, Manners Make A Better Ride," targeting offenders like the pole-hogger, the door-blocker, and Public Enemy #1: the manspreader.

"Dude…Stop the Spread, Please," reads the sign. We might have gone with something more emphatic, like, "Dude, Your Balls Are Not That Big, Seriously," but either way, the sentiment is clear. Other posters provide more firm but gentle reminders for riders:

"It’s a Subway Car, Not a Dining Car."
Read: We don't want to sit in your Chipotle leftovers.

"Step Aside to Let Others Off First."
Wait your turn, jerk.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Any woman travelling by public transport will be aware of manspreading – where a male passenger sits with his legs splayed out, totally oblivious to the woman next to him who’s forced to double cross her legs for lack of space.

In New York, the anti-manspreading movement has grown so much that its attracted the attention of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).

The MTA is now set to unveil public service ads to encourage men to sit with their legs together.

‘Dude… Stop the spread, please. It’s a space issue’ is just one of the slogans to be used on the new advertising campaign.

But manspreading is not confined to the New York subway – it’s a global issue and now annoyed Londoners are calling for Transport for London to follow in MTA’s footsteps with a similar campaign. '

Article here. Excerpt:

'Feminists in France say they have secretly inserted tracts inside children's toys from Barbie dolls to plastic guns issuing a warning that "this toy is sexist".

Hundreds of French girls and boys will open Christmas presents at the foot of the tree to find an unexpected accompanying note resembling those found in Chinese "fortune cookies".

Except in this case, the message will neither provide instructions nor predict the future. It will read: "Warning, this toy is sexist:"

The operation was launched by feminist group FièrEs, which said that it had inserted "around 500" such tracts into a range of toys in a dozen shops in Paris.

"We targeted games that are emblematic of boy-girl stererotypes," said Delphine Asian, legal representative for the feminist group, who added: "We have caused no damage or ripped any plastic. We simply slipped the message in boxes, or in books."

Article here. Excerpt:

'Who needs facts and statistics when you have a good narrative?

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., during an interview reported by Chuck Raasch of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, indicated that she was not happy about disputing statistics regarding campus sexual assault.

“Frankly, it is irritating that anybody would be distracted by which statistics are accurate,” McCaskill said.

Article here. Excerpt:

'It’s the oft-repeated lie that may have finally died:

[A]s updated campus sexual assault figures for the years 1995 through 2013 have been released by the U.S. Department of Justice, we find that the “one in five” statistic has been fully debunked, with the real figure being 1 in 41 for all the years covered by the report, and 1 in 52.6 for the four most recent years from 2010 through 2013.

The collapse of the “one in five” claim, and the weakness of the statistics behind it, can be seen in the actions of the President’s political supporters in office and in the media, who are now trying to quietly drop their previous touting of the figure from public view.'

Article here.

'In attempting to inculcate young girls with his administration’s “War on Women” theme, Barack Obama made a point of making the central theme of the 2014 White House Science Fair last May the paucity of women in the sciences. To show how much he identified with women’s plight, he donned a tiara while posing with the Girl Scout Troop 2612 from Tulsa, Oklahoma.

At the Science Fair, Obama continued his implicit implication that the War on Women crossed all barriers, noting, “fewer than 3 in 10 workers in science and engineering are women… we’ve got to change those numbers.”

Article here. Excerpt:

'Draft federal recommendations don't usually raise eyebrows, but this one certainly will — that males of all ages, including teenage boys, should be counseled on the health benefits of circumcision.
...
But the pediatricians' focus was on parents considering infant circumcision. The CDC's proposal opens the door to circumcision becoming a topic of conversation any time an uncircumcised male goes to a medical appointment.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The bill would remove the presumption of non-imprisonment for first-time offenders, meaning incarceration would be a viable punishment. Under current law, pretrial intervention (PTI) is the usual route.

“It essentially puts a little more heat on the defendant,” said Assemblyman Joseph Lagana (D-Paramus), a co-sponsor of the measure. “Oftentimes, the punishment does not fit the crime.”

The measure would also allow the domestic violence victim to have more of a say on whether or not their accused attacker should enter PTI. Plus, a defendant would be required to enter a guilty plea before PTI consideration. With that clause, Lagana said, a defendant can be sentenced to prison immediately following any type of PTI violation.

“People should not get a free pass,” he said. “If you’re going to act a certain way, then society’s going to hold you accountable.”'