Article here. Excerpt:

'It was undoubtedly a year of heightened paranoia about rape on college campuses, with everyone from Lena Dunham to President Obama demanding immediate action to curtail a purported epidemic of sexual violence. But due to a string of embarrassments, 2014 ended on surprisingly sour note for illiberal activists conspiring to shunt aside due process in their zeal to eradicate an exaggerated and politicized problem.

Still, while the voices of reason—of fairness for accusers and the accused—scored some ideological victories this year, 2015 will likely present even more daunting challenges. Dark clouds loom on the horizon, according to several legal experts who are advocates for campus due process or involved in rape disputes. In particular, a wave of wrongheaded affirmative consent policies—which force students to adopt bizarre and limiting sexual consent customs—could sweep the nation.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Harvard University has agreed to make changes to its sexual assault policies and review some cases after an investigation found its law school had handled victim complaints poorly, the U.S. Department of Education said on Tuesday.

The agreement with the Ivy League school is part of the Obama administration's push to curb sexual violence in U.S. colleges and coax schools to get tougher in handling cases.

The Education Department's Office of Civil Rights found that Harvard Law School had failed to appropriately respond to two student complaints of sexual assault.

"In one instance, the Law School took over a year to make its final determination and the complainant was not allowed to participate in this extended appeal process, which ultimately resulted in the reversal of the initial decision to dismiss the accused student and dismissal of the complainant's complaint," the department said in its announcement.

Story here. Excerpt:

'In the video, we see a woman’s rape allegations against her male co-worker fall apart as he sits helpless in jail. Though one case is not representative of all cases, it does raise the question of how many rape allegations are false.

A thesis by Edward Greer published in the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review examines the issue of false rape allegations and reports some of the findings. At issue is the oft-repeated claim that only 2 percent of rape allegations are false.

"As far as can be ascertained, no study has ever been published which sets forth an evidentiary basis for the “two percent false rape complaint” thesis.

Story here. Excerpt:

'A man who stormed into a bonfire party with a handgun, believing his girlfriend had been raped by the men there, came out of the whole mess the worst for wear.

Janos Papp, 57, ended up being viciously beaten by the men at the party - who had not raped his girlfriend, it turned out. She had made the story up after her ATV broke down and she was angry the men at the party were too incompetent to help her.
...
When they reached the Lac La Plonge dam, they found a group of people in their 20s drinking and celebrating a birthday. After a short visit, they left, but Papp's girlfriend had to stay behind because of a problem with her ATV. Two men from the bonfire party tried to help her.

Article here. The author operates two topically-related sites: http://www.parentalalienation.ca/ and http://www.parentalalienationeducation.com/. Excerpt:

'There are multiple explanations for parental rejection in separated and divorcing families. In this dynamic, children and the parents they reject often struggle over a declining relationship and dissipating contact.

Frequently the child's parental rejection is mirrored in their pertinacious, visitation refusal behaviour and in extreme cases of parental rejection children have been known to terminate all contact on a permanent basis (Turkat).
Management of Visitation Interference, Ira Daniel Turkat, Ph.D., The Judges Journal, Number 36 p.17-47 Spring, 1997

In a Canadian legal study exploring parental rejection between 1987- 2009, a correlation was found between gender bias and visitation resistance. (Coleman)
Trends Analysis, Gene C. Colman, 2009 CSPAS conference, Metro Toronto Convention Center.

This study examined 74 cases and found fathers to be biased as rejected parents by a statistic of 62%. Another similar, clinical study during 1985-2001 (which included 99 cases), found no bias at all. The gender ratio was closer to 50 - 50. (Gardner).

Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS): Sixteen Years Later, Richard A. Gardner, M.D. Published in The Academy Forum , 2001, 45(1): 10-12 A Publication of The American Academy of Psychoanalysis.

Article here.

Rest In Peace, Mr. Levy. Three cheers for him: HUZZAH! HUZZAH! HUZZAH!

Excerpt:

'National Parents Organization is saddened to announce the passing of David Levy [link added], a few weeks ago, shortly after his 78th birthday. David was a long-time advocate for children’s rights.

“David Levy was a champion for our cause who made tremendous personal sacrifices of his energy, time and financial resources to advocate for our nation’s children,” said Ned Holstein, MD, MS, National Parents Organization Founder and Chair of the Board. “A dedicated father and husband, he was also a respected leader in our community, and we were deeply saddened to learn of his passing.”

Not long after completing his law degree, David Levy made a name for himself by writing freelance articles in The Washington Post, but it was more than 20 years later that he would make a remarkable impact on our community as an advocate for the children’s rights and parenting rights movements.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Left-wing social engineers are never satisfied. Give them an inch and they will take a mile. So it is with fanatical “Only Yes Means Yes” activists. Earlier this year, they succeeded in convincing California’s legislature to pass a law requiring an “agreement” showing “affirmative consent” for sex on college campuses — and not just for sex, but also for a potentially broader, undefined category of sexual “activity” among college students. (Their ultimate goal is to require “verbal consent” to every sexual “act” or escalation of intimacy, even though it’s hard to imagine anyone in the real world who would actually want their lover to ask “may I touch your breast” or “may I massage your clitoris” before doing it, especially if their lover already knows from experience that such touching would be welcome.).

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.'