Article here. Excerpt:

'It's been a bad week for me and my husband, Austin Mitchell, the Labour MP for Grimsby. He’s been bullied and abused by his colleagues in his own party for daring to discuss the future of all-women shortlists.

‘Sexist and misogynistic,’ said Lucy Powell, Shadow Children’s Minister. ‘It’s the old, cloth-eared, macho politics,’ growled Labour aristocrat Dame Tessa Jowell. And Hull East Labour MP Karl Turner joined the ladies, describing his neighbour and colleague as ‘self-serving, chauvinistic, antiquated’.

Austin has been battered all over the media since his article in last week’s Mail on Sunday where he gave his views on selecting many Labour candidates for next year’s Election from all-women shortlists (AWS). Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry MP weighed in with ‘suspect his wife Linda is not amused either, is she?’.

You’re right, Emily. I’m not.

Story here. Excerpt:

'Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., one of the co-sponsors of a Senate bill targeting campus sexual assault, tweeted out an article Tuesday that defended her bill, writing that she agreed with the author that the cost of campus sexual assaults outweighs any cost included in implementing the bill.
...
What Zhang misses is the fact that since CASA only focuses on accusers, the probability that colleges and universities will see more lawsuits from accused students will outweigh the cost of the bill and possibly even the penalty for noncompliance. Already there are more than 30 young men across the country suing their universities for what they claim was a denial of due process, and if CASA passes, putting more pressure on universities to convict, that number could increase dramatically.

Zhang also tries to shame the U.S. by comparing the debunked “1-in-5 women will be sexually assaulted during their time in college” statistic to the global problem of violence against women. Except that 20 percent of college women have not been victims of sexual violence, so Zhang, and other CASA supporters, are trying to make the U.S. look as hostile toward women as countries like Saudi Arabia, where women aren’t even allowed to drive, or Pakistan, where "honor killings" are prevalent.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Johnson noted several irregularities in an essay for Minding the Campus, a Manhattan Institute project.

The informal process was used in seven assault cases this past semester, and zero in the previous report, Johnson said. He called it a “Scarlet Letter” approach in which an accused student’s inability to present evidence makes it “almost impossible” to avoid “being branded a rapist,” but the penalties are more limited, Johnson said.

One of the two accused students found “not culpable” – meaning Yale judged it “more likely than not he was the subject of a false allegation” – was still punished, Johnson noted.

The one-way no-contact order means that “if the two happen to enroll in the same course, the accused student would need to drop the class; or if the two happened to be assigned to the same dorm, the accused student would have to move,” Johnson said.

“In the several years” of the Yale reports, “there never has been any indication that Yale has punished even one student for filing a false claim of sexual assault,” Johnson said.

Story here. Excerpt:

'Mireille Miller-Young, a professor of feminist studies at the University of California Santa Barbara, has been sentenced for attacking pro-life students and stealing a large sign they made for a peaceful protest on campus.

After Miller-Young and three students grabbed the sign, two pro-lifers, Joan and Thrin Short, turned on their cellphone camera and followed the group while calling the police to report the sign stolen.
...
Miller-Young was convicted of battery, grand theft and vandalism in July, and was sentenced on Saturday to 10 hours of anger management, 108 hours of community service, three years probation and fined nearly $500, according to Christian News Wire.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Men punished for sexual misconduct in the wave of cases sweeping college campuses are fighting back against what they call unfair student disciplinary systems and publicity that threatens to shatter their reputations.

This is a step being taken in India in an attempt to give justice to falsely-accused men.

'Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar today said in the Assembly that a committee comprising women legislators Alina Saldanha (state environment minister) and Jeniffer Monserratte (Congress MLA) and women police officers would be formed to study the issue of bogus cases filed by women against men.

The issue was raised by former Chief Minister Digambar Kamat, who pointed out a case where a boy was falsely accused of molestation by a girl.

"The boy was not even allowed to make a phone call to his family. He had just dashed the girl by accident in a bus. The girl called up police and when he got down at Panaji bus stand, he was arrested," Kamat said.

Parrikar said that in a few cases women were found to have used the existing laws in this way. "Ninety per cent of the cases (of sexual assault against men) are genuine, but in some cases, the man may have been trapped," he said.'

Article here. It so pains me to quote myself as follows (LOL, yeah, right, you guys believe *that*...):

'For a woman, having children without including their father in the equation post-conception has several routes. Artificial insemination is one, but the less expensive routes can still be pursued: have sex with a man/men "casually" and tell them they needn't use condoms because she's using birth control and STDs aren't a concern based on her last visit to the doctor. A less astute man may believe her and become a father without ever knowing it. For financing, she can file for "public assistance", or pursue a child support order, assuming she is ready to tell the father that he is one.

Article here. Excerpt:

'I am currently dealing with several of these great husbands. They are, across the board, respectful, quality, caring, devoted, cherishing, authentic, and supportive guys whose wives have left them for a different kind of man. These once-beloved men make a living, love their kids, help with chores, support aging parents, and support their mate's desires and interests. They believe they've done everything right. They are devastated, confused, disoriented, and heartsick. In a tragic way, they startlingly resemble the disheartened women of the past who were left behind by men who "just wanted something new."

You may think that these women are ruthless and inconsiderate. Those I know are far from that. More often, they still love their husbands as much as they ever did, but in a different way. They tell me how wonderful their men are and how much they respect them. They just don't want to be married to them anymore. Perhaps it would be even more honest to say that they don't want to be yoked to anyone any more. At least in the traditional ways they once embraced as ideal. They feel compassion for their prior mates, but liberated in their new-found right to create a different way of feeling in relationships. In short, they want to live their lives with the privileges men once had.
...

Article here. Excerpt:

'When you first read or hear the words "parental gatekeeping", what do you think about? You may have an image of a parent standing in front of a locked gate, arms crossed with a child on the other side and the other parent trying to get through.

Hold that image.

Parental gatekeeping is not an everyday word intact or separated families use but it has a very real impact and import on child custody cases.

Gatekeeping is simply the act of facilitating or restricting the relationship with a parent and a child. I have found the "facilitative" aspect of it (and the concept of facilitative gatekeeping) a bit of an oxymoron. After all, to facilitate generally means reasonable communication, open access gates and no real need to be a "keeper."

Article here. Excerpt:

'Did alimony kill Robin Williams?

At least in part it sure did. Paying out over $30 million to ex-wives who were allowed to attach themselves to Williams’ bank account like comatose patients on feeding tubes would be enough to make Gandhi angry and depressed.

While states are finally, gradually catching up to the modern age in terms of alimony (now they call it “maintenance” — as in “high maintenance”) the practice of men paying women because they once were married is not just primitive but, yes, sexist.

Yeah, go ahead, call me anti-feminist, call me whatever you want, but the truth is alimony (which is different from child support and fair distribution of assets acquired during the marriage) doesn’t mean the non-working spouse is entitled to live as high as the Kardashians. It’s that concept that is fundamentally anti-feminist.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Article originally appeared in the Newark Star-Ledger - September 6, 2002.
...
In highly publicized raids, federal agents have hauled in 69 "deadbeat dads" from 29 states over the past few weeks, and are still hunting for 33 more. The Bush administration boasts that it is sending a message to deadbeats. However, the high-living deadbeat dad who stiffs his kids is largely a mythical creature.

Arizona State University researcher Sanford Braver, who over an eight year period conducted the largest federally funded study of divorced dads ever done, found that unemployment was the largest factor behind nonpayment of child support, and noted that his findings were "consistent with virtually all past studies on the topic."

According to a US Government Accounting Office survey of custodial mothers who were not receiving the support they were owed, two-thirds of the mothers themselves admitted that their children’s fathers do not pay their child support because they are financially unable to do so.

Most "deadbeat dads" are actually "dead broke," either because they have low-wage jobs, are unemployed, or are deep in arrears on unrealistic and crushing child support obligations. According to Bruce Walker, the Oklahoma District Attorney who ran the state’s child-support enforcement program for three years and jailed hundreds of fathers for nonpayment, these men are "seldom the mythical monsters described by politicians."

"Many times I prosecuted impoverished men," he notes. "I prosecuted one deadbeat dad who had been hospitalized for malnutrition and another who lived in the bed of a pickup truck."

I had a MANN reader inquire via email how MANN felt about current events in Ferguson, Missouri here in the US. He asked about the shooting of unarmed men v. that of unarmed women by police and how police killing unarmed men was much more likely than police killing unarmed women. MANN, being a web site and one with no official editorial positions, cannot collectively render a traditional op-ed on the topic. But yours truly can. :) So with a few supporting additional comments added to the reply I sent the reader a couple days ago, here's my response:

Thanks for asking your question.  Details may vary for different reasons around the world, but it's true police of both sexes are a lot more likely to fire on unarmed men than unarmed women.

It's a function of the perceived value of men's lives and the degree the shooter thinks he/she will be held accountable.  The second factor is what is likely to tip the scale more one way vs. another when taking social factors into account.  For example, unarmed men of lower socioeconomic status are more likely to be shot under the same circumstances as men of higher such status (assuming the shooter is drawing this conclusion based on the victim's appearance, clothing, or other info or assumptions), since such men are less likely to have relatives capable of hiring lawyers who can press the issue with the authorities.

Press release here. Excerpt:

'Tuesday the New York Times’ Room for Debate section featured editorials designed to address the question, “Doing Enough to Prevent Rape on Campus?”: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/08/12/doing-enough-to-prevent-rape-on-campus

If we define “debate” as an intellectually honest attempt to represent all the major perspectives on the issue, the NYT Room for Debate fell short.

Of the six columnists, five represented the points of view of the Professional Victim Advocates who want to embellish on the current approach of campus disciplinary committees passing judgment on messy ‘he-said, she-said’ allegations of sexual assault.

The insurer Sheilas' Wheels in the UK wants women-only roads, called "PinkZones". Apparently male drivers in the UK are creating an unsafe environment for female drivers. I question their statistics as to who is creating the unsafe environment in the UK overall. It says nothing of the extra number of miles (or kilometers) that men drive, who causes the accidents, or how men may be more likely to be convicted of an offense in a biased court system.

Article here. Excerpt:

"Cameron set to announce extension to scheme to help them study unveiled scale of the problem.

Half a million problem families currently costing taxpayers £30billion a year 120,000 families each on average responsible for one police call out a month Prime Minister David Cameron to announce assistance scheme extension

Half a million problem families are costing taxpayers more than £30billion a year, according to a major study which reveals for the first time the true extent of the rise of Britain’s underclass.

Hundreds of thousands of households are causing a serious drain on public resources with ‘off the barometer’ dysfunctional behaviour, according to a Government initiative set up in the wake of the 2011 riots.
...
‘The reality is that in the past the family just hasn’t been central to the way government thinks,’ he will say in a speech.