Article here. Excerpt:

'Universities’ mishandling of sexual assault allegations has been making the news -- but not in the way feminist activists and progressive politicians had hoped. Swarthmore College settled a case brought in federal court in Pennsylvania by an undergraduate wrongly expelled by means of a severely defective disciplinary process. A federal court in New York rejected Colgate University’s motion to dismiss on the pleadings former student Abrar Faiaz’s claim that in the rush to expel him for pushing two women, the university falsely imprisoned him, and Colgate has not challenged his federal and state discrimination claims.
...
Our universities have promoted a narrative that converts all women into victims and all men into villains. This narrative originated among radical feminists but it has been widely internalized in universities. It claims that discriminatory norms and nefarious institutions established by men to serve male power render women unfree and incapable of thinking and fending for themselves. It legitimated University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan’s decision in late November, in swift response to what has turned out to be an invented tale of a brutal gang rape reported in Rolling Stone, to suspend all fraternities. Those women who think they are free to choose and capable of taking care of themselves without intrusive university or government assistance only demonstrate the power of patriarchy to delude and degrade them. And those men who think they are innocent are blind to the guilt they incur from perpetuating, consciously or unconsciously, male privilege.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Zerlina Maxwell wrote that we should "automatically" (see the URL for the original headline) believe rape victims. That goes against everything our system of justice stands for, as we base cases on the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. I’m not going down that rabbit hole–and neither should any American who believes in law and order. Dates, names, and physical evidence, need to be analyzed, cross-examined, and pieced together to build a case against the alleged perpetrator.

Again, you probably already know this, but some liberals seem to think otherwise. Why is that? Why is it that for other crimes they believe in the process, but when it comes to rape, it’s an automatic guilty verdict for the accused.
...
Despite what feminists and liberal Democrats have been espousing for years regarding the rates of sexual assault, it’s a little dubious to say there’s a rape epidemic. The figures they give on rape and sexual assault rival that of the Congo in Africa, where it’s being used as a vehicle of war.
...
Hence, we come back to the issue of having healthy criticism when rape claims come forward. The mantra of the feminist left is to believe alleged rape victims because women don’t lie, or something.

After the Duke lacrosse fiasco, where the three young men were allegedly involved in sexually assaulting a stripper, they were declared more than just not guilty, but innocent by North Carolina’s Attorney General Roy Cooper.

A MANN reader in India has submitted a summary of laws he identifies as denying men and their relatives the rights of presumed innocence and due process (among other things) in several important contexts including marriage, criminal accusations of rape or child abuse, etc. His summary has been added to the Documents, Downloads, and Off-Links section (currently as item #6) and the direct download link is here. Thanks for sending this along, Ravi!

Article here. Excerpt:

'The girl at the University of Virginia, who allegedly falsely claimed she was gang raped at a campus fraternity house, was introduced to Rolling Stone magazine by an activist from the university with connections to White House advisers, making several visits to the White House herself.

Emily Renda worked at the Eisenhower Executive Office with her associates at the White House to develop resources such as websites and documents concerning the Obama administration's sexual assault policies, The Daily Caller is reporting. 

Article here. Excerpt:

'Salon and Alternet seem to exist only to provide click-bait for kooks. Alternet certainly succeeded with their Sunday article entitled, “Why rape is so intrinsic to religion” which was also cross-posted on partner site Salon. In the article by Valerie Tarico, she tries to argue that the virgin birth of Jesus Christ was God raping Mary, similar to Greek and Hindu tales of gods raping women. “It’s a common theme in the history of religion, and it’s more than a little rapey,” Tarico claims.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) report, "Rape and Sexual Assault Among College-age Females, 1995-2013," should be an early Christmas present for President Obama.

On Jan. 22, 2014, Obama established a special White House Task Force to Protect Students From Sexual Assault. He stated, "It is estimated that one in five women on college campuses has been sexually assaulted during their time there. ... It's totally unacceptable."

The BJS data released on Dec. 11 finds the actual rate of sexual assault for female students to be 6.1 per 1,000 per year or 0.61 percent; this is the mean for the years 1995 to 2013. The rate of general sexual assault for males was 1.4 per 1,000.
...
The BJS compares its methodology to that of other studies. For example, the BJS's expansive but reasonable definition includes actual, attempted and threatened rapes and sexual assaults. By contrast, "[t]he NISVS [National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey] uses a broader definition of sexual violence, which specifically mentions incidents in which the victim was unable to provide consent due to drug or alcohol use; forced to penetrate another person; or coerced to engage in sexual contact (including nonphysical pressure to engage in sex) or unwanted sexual contact (including forcible kissing, fondling, or grabbing); and noncontact unwanted sexual experiences that do not involve physical contact." [Emphasis added.]

Noncontact sexual experiences also include behaviors such as harassment or telling lewd jokes. This sort of broad and vague definition is what leads to the one-in-five figure.
...

Article here. Excerpt:

'December has not been a good month for the feminist crusade against the “rape culture.”

Story here.

'Leaders with the University of Virginia are seeking felony charges against whoever is responsible for vandalizing the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house.

The vandals threw dangerous objects, including bottles and glass at a private home and the damage to the house may add up to more than $1,000.

The face of the fraternity house was destroyed following accusations published by Rolling Stone magazine made by a girl named "Jackie," who said she was raped by several members of the fraternity.

The student activist who led the vandalism attack said he does not have any regrets.

The fraternity house is still vacant following the attacks.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'The topless “Femen” activist who desecrated the Parisian church of the Madeleine days before Christmas last year was given a one-month suspended prison sentence for “sexual exhibitionism” on Wednesday by a penal tribunal in Paris.

Eloise Bouton, 31, made the headlines on December 20, 2013, when she burst into the choir of the church half-naked, shouting “Christmas is canceled,” bearing the same inscription on her back and the words “344e salope” (344th b****) on her chest.

These words refer to a famous manifesto published in 1971 by 343 women, mostly intellectuals, actresses and political activists, in the left-wing magazine Nouvel Observateur, in which they claimed to have had an illegal abortion and demanded the legalization of abortion. This was to take place four years later, in December 1974.

Story here. Excerpt:

'The Belgian Prime Minister has been showered with chips and mayonnaise by three former Femen protesters angry at government austerity and the “criminalization of the poor”.

39 year-old Charles Michele, the youngest Belgian Prime Minister ever, was about to start addressing an audience at a business conference in the city of Namur when the three female protesters struck.

Michele took a pasting from soggy fries and mayo, one of Belgium’s national dishes, by Feminist group LilthS, the renamed Belgian branch of Femen, who said they were protesting against budget cuts and the “criminalization of the poor.”

“The Belgian people can’t be left with Chips and Sauce austerity. That is why we threw a symbol of the Belgium they are dismantling in their face,” said a statement on the group’s Facebook page.

But Michele managed to keep a wry smile on his face throughout the stunt and later resumed his speech, although without his jacket.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The total discrediting of Rolling Stone’s story on rape at the University of Virginia has shined a light on one of the least palatable features of American life: the so-called epidemic of rape on campus.

Authorities from Barack Obama on down have cited the phony statistic that one in five college women is raped. Phony because it’s based on a 2007 survey conducted in two midwestern schools not of a random sample, but of a small number of self-selected respondents and includes unwanted touching and kissing as “sexual assault.”

A Department of Justice survey released this month presents a different picture. Between 1995 and 2013, it reports, an average of 0.61 percent of female students were raped or sexually assaulted every year — 2.4 percent over four years, not 20 percent. Moreover, the DOJ reports, that rate has been declining significantly in recent years, in line with a national decline in violent rape.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has dropped an increasingly disputed sexual assault statistic from her website. ChangeDetection.com shows how Gillibrand’s sexual assault resources web page [http://1.usa.gov/1m2xWoB] no longer includes [http://bit.ly/1C3Fi6M] a sentence citing the National Institute of Health Campus Sexual Assault Study, which concluded that one in five college women will be subject to rape or attempted rape. Gillibrand and others all the way up to President Barack Obama have cited that statistic in their push for colleges to better prevent sexual violence. But critics and media outlets [http://wapo.st/1AvC1JA] have noted the study’s flaws: It included only two large four-year universities and had a low rate of response, with more nuanced findings than lawmakers suggest. (H/T @mstratford)

From a whitehouse.gov mailing list email:

'Katherine Johnson. Maria Klawe. Barbara McClintock. If none of those names sound familiar to you, it's time to change that.

Because the groundbreaking, and largely unsung, work and discoveries of these women -- and many more like them -- helped shape modern science. And inspiring more young women to pursue careers in science and technology starts with simply sharing these stories.

We've put together an interactive audio hub that allows you to do that easily: Listen to women from across the Administration tell the stories of their heroes. When you learn something new (and you will), pass this on.

Once you do, you can add an untold history of your own, and then make a commitment to honor the legacy of these remarkable women in the best possible way: by encouraging a young woman to pursue a career in science.

Incredible, inspiring stories like these ones can only fade into obscurity if we don't tell them. And the only way we'll see more like them is if we get the word out now.

Article here. Excerpt:

'“History is a series of agreed-upon myths,” Napoleon Bonaparte observed cynically. Now some critics are saying that, today, current events are also a series of agreed-upon myths.
...
This is essentially the position of Townhall’s Erick Erickson in a piece entitled “The Man Hating Media.” He points out that Jackie’s unsubstantiated accusations made the fraternity subject to mob violence, faculty-member protests, verbal abuse, and a call by the UVA president for a police investigation; moreover, those who doubted the somewhat untenable “facts” of the case were, Erickson writes, “attacked … accused of supporting rapists, denying the holocaust, and being ‘rape truthers.’” He continues:

Article here. Excerpt:

'What I can say is that, whatever happens with the UVA scandal, this whole ordeal has once again exposed just how disingenuous and irrational many people — and by ‘people’ I mean feminists — are when discussing rape. Indeed, you expect feminists to be irrational about this topic because, for them, rape is not so much an actuality as it is an ideology. It might be appropriate to stop calling it Feminism altogether and start calling it Rapism.

Modern feminism is completely dependent on, and defined by, the idea that there is an epidemic of sexual violence against women. Not only an epidemic, but a culture that condones and encourages rape. A Rape Culture, they call it. A Rape Culture so virulent that it produces not simply rapists but people who are ‘pro-rape’ and engage in rape apologism.