Article here. Excerpt:

Article here. Excerpt:

'Watching a recent episode of the female detective drama Scott And Bailey [link added], I suddenly felt deeply uncomfortable.

The heroines of the ITV show — two gutsy, senior, women police officers —were discussing how to solve a crime, while their bumbling male counterparts sat around, gawping helplessly.

Whenever the men managed to get a word in edgeways, it was to suggest a course of action that was utterly stupid and they were put in their place by their female superiors.

No doubt this demonstration of ‘girl power’ is intended to make the show appeal to me as a woman, but instead, it made me feel rather queasy. There was something dishonourable about the portrayal of men as completely useless for the purposes of entertainment.
...
It seems belittling men barely registers any more, yet making fun of women — especially joking about violence towards women — is something we’d never stand for.

Story here. Excerpt:

'A woman who hit her partner with a hammer and pole, and slashed him with a broken glass bottle has been jailed for eight years.

Gemma Hollings, 37, was jailed for two counts of grievous bodily harm, and two of assault, in 'one of the worst cases of domestic violence' police had ever seen.

Paul Kirkpatrick, 30, had his neck slashed with a bottle, suffered a cut above his eye, and had a bone in his face broken after a vicious attack in May.

Police found the victim lying in the street after he ran away from the home he shared with his partner in Darwen, Lancashire.

He told officers that she had caused the wounds after an argument over her hair straighteners.

Speaking after the hearing at Preston Crown Court, DC Jenny Berry, said: 'The victim suffered very traumatic injuries. They could have potentially been fatal.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'There were 'missed opportunities' to save a 10-year-old from an infection possibly caused by a circumcision carried out in Africa, an inquest heard today.

Stanley Chola, 10, from Whitley, Berkshire underwent the procedure in Zimbabwe during the summer holidays.

Nearly two months later on October 13, 2013 he went into septic shock and died in hospital.

At the time it was thought the infection might have been caused by an injury to his knee, either from being hit with a hockey stick by another pupil or while playing football.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Claims were made by a woman in December against Oberst [link added], accusing the artist of raping her in 2003, when she was 16 years of age. The woman admitted she lied about the story in July and issued a public apology to the singer-songwriter over the incident.

Speaking to The Music's Hannah Story recently ahead of his upcoming Australian tour, Oberst said he's just happy to be able to move on from the incident.

"It was a very surreal and painful experience, but I’m happy that the truth got out. I’m happy to move on with my life and focus on music," he said.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'In her newly published collection of personal essays, Not That Kind of Girl, Lena Dunham [link added] describes experimenting sexually with her younger sister Grace [link added], whom she says she attempted to persuade to kiss her using “anything a sexual predator might do.” In one particularly unsettling passage, Dunham experimented with her six-year younger sister’s vagina. “This was within the spectrum of things I did,” she writes.

Story here.  How terribly sad, and unfair, too.  To anyone pondering suicide: It's a permanent "solution" to a temporary problem.  Even men falsely accused of a crime like rape eventually recover their reputations, and as that happens, the false accuser's reputation diminishes.  While she may not see time in jail, her punishment may well be worse when she's known to be not just a liar, but one too risky even to befriend.  After all, if she'll tell a lie like that, and it is clearly exposed as such, who except fools and other liars will have anything to do with her? "If" by Rudyard Kipling is as true today as ever -- moreso if you're a man falsely accused of anything.  And which of us hasn't been, even if not accused of a crime?  Men are accused of all manner of awful things, collectively and as individuals, all the time it seems.  I think Kipling was very much aware of that fact and penned "If" as a source of strength for his fellow men to draw on.  Huzzah to him for it!  Excerpt:

'Luke King, of Lincoln Road, Whitehaven, died on May 23 after he had been receiving treatment for depression and drugs, an inquest heard.
...
Ms King told the inquest her brother had become a changed character after he was falsely accused of rape four years ago. He was initially detained, without charge, and released after two days.

The coroner, Dr Nicholas Shaw, heard that Mr King, who worked as a postman, then began binge drinking “to block things out’’, but would also keep fit by playing rugby.

In February this year, Mr King, who was taking plant food and cocaine, sought help from his GP and Unity, a drug and alcohol recovery service.
...
Mr King, who played for Kells, had been “okay’’ in his final week and his death had been “sudden”.

Story here. Excerpt:

'Peter Ludlow, a professor of philosophy at Northwestern University who has been at the center of a long-running controversy over an undergraduate student’s allegation that he sexually assaulted her and that Northwestern mishandled her complaint, is suing the student for defamation, the Chicago Tribune reported. In his lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in a state court in Illinois, Mr. Ludlow contends that the student knowingly made false statements to the news media and to Northwestern professors after he rebuffed her sexual advances.

Article here. Excerpt:

'I’ve written frequently about the unfair, guilt-presuming processes that colleges and universities from Harvard to Occidental use when deciding sexual assault cases. But a second trend has occurred largely outside the public eye. As they have “reformed” their sexual assault procedures, colleges and universities also have increasingly instituted training programs for members of these disciplinary panels—a practice not used for panelists that hear other forms of campus discipline. Because virtually no training material has been made public, it’s impossible to determine how many schools specifically train sexual assault panels. But the demand is a consistent one among anti-due process advocates.

Article here. Excerpt:

'America’s sexual revolution handed women control over their sexual destiny while hanging on to liberal notions of justice and due process. But now affirmative consent or “yes-means-yes” law proponents think that these notions are inconvenient obstacles in their quest to deliver total safety to women. Rape, they claim, is such a big problem that they have to trade in their “ends don’t justify the means” philosophy with “by any means necessary” battle cry.
...
What's truly ugly, I note in The Week, is accepting totalitarian notions of justice to address a problem that is nowhere near as rampant as the proponents of "yes means yes" laws claim and that women are perfectly capable of handling on their own.

Indeed, if the rape culture was rampant, not only would it show up in reliable statistics, but women’s behavior too. For example, I note:

Yesterday, MANN posted an item that included an article entitled "Evidence-based Domestic Violence Awareness Training" in Vol. 3, Issue 3 (2014) of New Male Studies: An International Journal published by the Australian Institute of Male Health and Studies (http://aimhs.com.au/).

The attributed author, Amy Wilkins, Ph.D., of U Colorado-Boulder, has informed me she is *not* the author of this article. Whether this misattribution was intended or not with or without malice and by whom is not known at the moment. However at this point, I recommend that any publication, distribution, or citation of the work as hers stop immediately; failure can result in legal consequences. Further, I recommend anyone who has posted, published, or forwarded the article in whole or part convey the substance of this news to the receivers who should probably do likewise to whomever else they have passed it along to, and so on ad infinitum.

Story here. Wonder what the back-story is? The report noticeably omits the gender(s) of the students supplied with alcohol. Forgive me if I speculate that they were all boys and perhaps she either was or hoped to become "better acquainted" with one or more of the boys (presumably) present. Because really, why else would she risk doing something that was so clearly inappropriate, illegal, and risky to her reputation? Stupidity? Doubt it. More like a shortage of self-control and the belief that she'd get away with what she planned on doing (or already had done) with her "young friends". Excerpt:

'A study hall monitor in Livingston County is accused of providing alcohol to minors.

Twenty-five-year-old Amber Burdick is charged with unlawfully dealing with a child, endangering the welfare of a child and tampering with a witness.

Livingston County sheriff's deputies say Burdick, who works at York Central School as a study hall monitor, supplied alcohol to several minors -- including students at the school. Investigators say Burdick also provided them with a place to drink.

Article here. Excerpt:

'When Congress passed the Title IX section of the Education Amendments of 1972, it aimed simply to offer women more opportunities to participate in on-campus athletics. Over the years, however, Title IX has become the legal foundation for the Education Department to insinuate itself into sexual assault cases.

The key passage of Title IX reads, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” In 1977, a Yale law student named Catherine McKinnon [link added], tired of suffering on-campus sexual harassment that went unaddressed by the school, interpreted Title IX to argue that sexual harassment (and by extension, sexual assault) constituted a sex-based limitation of educational opportunity. McKinnon and several other students filed in the lawsuit Alexander v. Yale in federal, which, although dismissed on the basis of the plaintiffs having no standing, goaded Yale into establishing a grievance process for sexual harassment cases.
...

Article here. Bisexuality is very much in vogue these days, at least in much of the US and Europe -- if you're female. Young women can make out publicly in clubs and bars or on the street, hold hands, hug and kiss, date boys, girls, or both, all without fear of having the living $hit kicked out of them by either men or women. Men, on the other hand, dare not hold hands in public without fear of getting beaten senseless by a bunch of homophobic bigots (of either or both sexes) except in just a few places (at least here in the US). As for visibility in the media as characters on contemporary TV shows, gay/bi women substantially outnumber gay/bi men, much less have much visibility generally even within LGBT-oriented organizations. So it's good to see a book like this come out (as it were). Excerpt:

'The Bisexual Resource Center has released a new collection of stories highlighting  the voices of 63 cisgender and transgender bisexual, pansexual, polysexual, and sexually fluid men from countries all around the world. Recognize: The Voices of Bisexual Men includes short fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, personal narratives, critical essays, and visual art features meant to recognize the diversity of the bisexual male population.

Article here. Excerpt:

'National Parents Organization is pleased to announce the creation of the National Parents Organization Law Firm Network, a national coalition of law firms that serves as a go-to resource for parents searching for legal counsel committed to shared parenting.

I strongly encourage attorneys to join National Parents Organization’s Law Firm Network. It is a unique opportunity for family law attorneys to collectively express their belief in the benefits of shared parenting and parental equality, while also connecting directly with members and parents to affect change in the lives of children. Contact me to sign up your law firm to to refer your family law attorney.