Link here. Excerpt:

'THE Kingdom of Swaziland will host an international conference to end violence against children, in partnership with UNICEF and Together for Girls Partnership.

This was announced by Deputy Prime Minister Senator Paul Dlamini during a press conference at his offices yesterday. The event is set to start tomorrow until Friday.

The conference has been supported by the US Government (PEPFAR) under the theme: “From Research to Action: advancing prevention and response to violence against children.”

The DPM stated that the conference would bring together participants from Asia, Caribbean and African countries.

This conference comes at a time when the African continent as well as the whole world is calling for the return of over 200 Nigerians girls, who were kidnapped by a group of rebels called Boko Haram over a month ago.'

Link here. Excerpt:

'When a man attacks a woman in public people defend her but when the tables are turned, people simply laugh.

That’s the disturbing finding of a public experiment conducted in a London park filmed for an advertisement about domestic violence against men.

The video, created by DareLondon for the Mankind Initiative, shows how shocked and angry onlookers quickly intervene when the male actor fakes a violent assault on his ‘girlfriend’ – also an actor.

But when they change roles the public’s reaction – caught on three hidden cameras – is entirely different.

Onlookers can be seen laughing as the woman physically abuses and belittles her partner in full view of dozens of people.
...
Australian Bureau of Statistics figures from December show 33.3 percent of people abused by their current partner are men.

Article here. Excerpt:

'One day, I was wondering out loud to Christopher whether we should circumcise our baby if we had a boy. My instinct was that it just didn't feel right, while Christopher was more curious about whether not circumcising would mean our kid would feel different. We both decided to give it some thought and maybe let the universe speak its piece. One day, Christopher was out running errands, and in a shop he came across a group of cute girls. Risking looking like a total perv, he asked if any of them had had sex with a guy who was uncut. "Yeah," one said. "And how was it?" "Best sex of my life." Score one for no circumcision.

Then we were at a pediatrician meet-and-greet, and the doctor spoke about how unhealthy he felt circumcision was - that it made the penis shorter, that it was more painful, and that it was basically deemed unnecessary in the medical community. Hmm.

After that, I was hanging out with a friend and her son at the pool, and I noticed he wasn't circumcised. "Is that an undone penis?" I asked. "Yeah," she said. So I asked, "Has it ever been an issue that his penis was different than his dad's?" "His penis wouldn't match his dad's anyway!" she said. "His dad's is so much bigger and has hair all over it. And by the time they do look more alike, they're not going to be side-by-side comparing." Good point.

Article here:

'It's a controversial decision to make for your child, and a lot of parents feel strongly about it—one way or another. No, it's not vaccines, it's circumcision—and The Stir rounds up 10 celebrities who are against it. A sampling:

Story here. Excerpt:

'A Drew University [link added] student has filed a lawsuit against the school and two of his classmates, claiming his "entire academic career has been ruined" due to false rape allegations and the institution's apparent bias against men in sexual assault investigations.

A male student who is a junior at the Madison school has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against two classmates for falsely accusing him of sexual assault and against the university for Title IX violations and for not following its own policies during the investigation.
...
According to the lawsuit, the plaintiff and one of the defendants had consensual sex in his dorm room on the morning of Sept. 24, 2013. The plaintiff and the female student knew each other since their freshman year, according to the complaint.

The female student and her former boyfriend then notified Drew University's Public Safety department the night of the incident that the sexual encounter between the plaintiff and the woman was non-consensual, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit claims the female student told her ex-boyfriend the encounter with the plaintiff was non-consensual out of fear he would not get back together with her.
...
A Drew resident assistant informed the plaintiff on Sept. 25, 2013 he was banned pending the resolution of the complaint from all campus buildings except for the cafeteria and the buildings where he had classes, according to the lawsuit. The plaintiff was also ordered to have no contact with the female student or her former boyfriend.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Penn State President Eric Barron sees a problem with the balancing act universities face when it comes to handling reports of sexual assault.
...
At some institutions, honor courts — university panels that could include individuals who lack training — are asked to make punitive rulings, Barron said. He noted that sometimes those decisions have severe consequences.

“They (students) can be suspended because of a group of people not necessarily trained to evaluate these things is going to say, ‘I believe him over her, or I believe her over him,’ ” he said. “And that’s sufficient to cause a suspension or removal from the university.”

Barron predicted that universities will begin advising students who are involved in the process to hire an attorney.

Petition started by F&F New York here. Excerpt:

'Domestic violence is a problem throughout the world. A bill known as the International Violence Against Women Act (I-VAWA) has been introduced in Congress to combat domestic violence in other countries. But the bill is deeply flawed because it assumes that all abuse is male-on-female and ignores both men abused by women and LGBT victims. If the bill were to pass, large classes of victims would be silenced and denied access to services.

The Partner Abuse State of Knowledge Project (PASK) has looked at domestic violence in 85 countries around the world and that found men and women were equally likely to be abuse perpetrators in most cases (1). PASK also found that LGBT couples were at increased risk of domestic violence (2).

Article here. (Originally submitted by MANN reader 'Mastodon', but a technical problem during an update required the original post to be deleted.) Excerpt:

'Amid a backdrop of intense activism, a male Columbia student is retaliating in federal court against an internal disciplinary conviction of sexual assault.

The student, who is only identified as John Doe in the suit filed Monday, alleges that Columbia administrators sought to make an example out of his case, that his rights under Title IX were violated and that administrators succumbed to external pressures from student activists in determining his guilt. He was allegedly suspended for up to a year and a half as a result.

According to a copy of the complaint, the plaintiff and a female student identified as Jane Doe belonged to the same group of friends and met the night of the alleged incident in a study lounge. They allegedly spent hours chatting and studying, after which the subject of hooking up was brought up.'

Article here. Excerpt:

A C Grayling [link added] has criticised a boycott of the Oxford Union after the president was reinstalled despite being investigated by police over rape allegations, saying he is “innocent until proven guilty”.

The Professor of Philosophy said the president, who was arrested by police earlier this month on suspicion of rape and attempted rape of two undergraduates, should not be subject to “the kangaroo court of opinion”.

He criticised the boycott by Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble, David Mepham, UK Director of Human Rights Watch and Julie Meyer, the American entrepreneur and judge on the BBC’s Dragon’s Den.

Article here.

'He looked up at the clouds and saw a handgun.

A Colorado second grader was disciplined after he drew a picture of a handgun during an assignment where students look up to the clouds and draw what they see.

Kody Smith, 8, went outside May 14, looked up to the sky and saw a big fluffy handgun, KKTV.com reported. When he showed the drawing to his teacher at Talbott Elementary in Widefield, which is southeast of Colorado Springs, he was reprimanded.

The school reportedly filed a behavior report that said Smith’s behavior was disruptive to the school. The school district told the station that the report will not remain on Smith’s record and its response was “in line with routine procedures focused on school safety. But the boy’s parents say he was wrongfully punished.

"He was doing exactly what he was told to do for the assignment,' Angel Rivers, the boy's mom, told the station.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Apologizing profusely, Julie Schenecker wept Thursday night as she told a judge she believes the two children she shot to death "are in no pain and they are alive and enjoying everything and anything heaven has to offer, Jesus protecting them and keeping them safe until we get there."

Schenecker had just been convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in the Jan. 27, 2011, slayings of her children, Calyx, 16, and Beau, 13. Jurors took less than three hours to reach their verdict, rejecting defense arguments that Schenecker was insane at the time she shot her children.

Following Schenecker's emotional statement, Circuit Judge Emmet Lamar Battles, saying the case was "almost too much for most to comprehend," sentenced her to the mandatory sentence of two life terms without parole.

Schenecker's former husband, Parker Schenecker, told reporters afterward that the verdict "gives my family a sense of relief."

As we mentioned last week, the International Violence Against Women Act (S. 2307) has reared its ugly head. I-VAWA would support five types of violence-reduction programs:

1. Programs to "change social norms"
2. Educational opportunities for women and girls
3. Expanded access to economic opportunities by "increasing distribution, credit, property, and inheritance rights for women and girls."
4. Development and enforcement of civil and criminal legal and judicial sanctions, protections, trainings, and capacity.
5. Enhancement of health sector capacity

We have to ask, what about men and boys?

Studies from 85 countries show men and women are equally likely to engage in partner aggression. And, according to the World Health Organization, men are twice as likely as women to die of violence-related causes.

Please ask your lawmakers to reject I-VAWA because it disregards most victims of violence.

Press release here. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON / May 21, 2014 – Based on growing complaints by victims and accused students, Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE) is calling on Congress to fix the current system of campus disciplinary committees. A 2011 federal policy mandated that these panels adjudicate claims of campus sexual assault. Over 350 editorials to date have sharply criticized the boards both for shortchanging victims and violating the rights of the accused: www.accusingu.org

SAVE is proposing enactment of a new law entitled “SOS: Safety of Our Students.” The law would require that all allegations of campus criminal sexual assault be referred to local criminal justice authorities for investigation and adjudication. The full text of the bill can be seen here: http://www.saveservices.org/camp/campus-rape-courts

Article here. Excerpt:

'The air around us has recently been so thick with accusations of racism and sexism that it’s sometimes been a struggle to get a gulp of unpolluted air.

One day, Richard Scudamore and David Dein of the FA are diving into serious, career-threatening hot water for exchanging and forwarding lewd, unsavoury emails. The previous moment, an obscure presenter on BBC local radio was getting sacked for haplessly playing an 80 year-old record that mentioned the N-word. Then Nigel Farage is roasted alive for unguardedly admitting that he’d be more nervous if a group of Romanian men moved into the house next door than if a German family took up residence.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The other day a male friend met me for dinner looking pale about the gills and generally discombobulated. It transpired that, during his Tube journey, he'd been what can only be described as 'set upon' by a group of inebriated women who were on a hen night. As they shrieked an ear-splitting version of Beyonce's 'Who Run the World (Girls!)', two of them proceeded to sit on his lap, pinning him to his seat, while a third performed an involuntary (on his part) lap-dance. Luckily, they disembarked a few stops later (still screeching and flinging their arms around random male passers-by) otherwise my friend would have been trapped in his seat all the way to zone six. He couldn't make himself heard over the impromptu karaoke and didn't feel he could push them off for fear of appearing aggressive. So, he simply laughed along uncomfortably, praying the entire humiliating episode would, at some stage, come to a conclusion.