Article here. Excerpt:

'Girls are better than boys -- in literacy, at least. And the gender gap keeps getting wider.

Males have been doing worse compared to their female classmates when taking the Grade 10 Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT) during the last five years -- from 6.6% below the girls in 2009 to 9% last year, according to this year's Fraser Institute Secondary School Report Card.

"That's a fair increase -- almost 50% increase from where it was before," said the Fraser Institute's Peter Cowley.

Meanwhile, the Grade 9 math gender gap favoured boys at 45% of schools across the province. The sexes performed evenly at 32.4% of schools.
...
Education research analyst Terri Thompson said girls seem to be doing better in all academic areas except math. The reading gap between boys and girls has been a long-standing issue for the past few decades.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The fact is that “rape culture” is a form of popular mania like so many others before it. It does not exist. Or if it does, nobody has yet brought forward evidence of it. What we have seen is ideology attached to a great deal of personal narrative regarding unwanted or regretted sex. Some of those narratives have been compelling, but unsupported by evidence. Some have been compelling and found to be false allegations. Many of the narratives are based in recollection hazed over by alcoholic smog. And most of them would not stand up for two minutes in a criminal court of law.

Many observers have become more, not less skeptical with the mounting hysteria. One such observer has done something useful to validate our skepticism. Chad Hermann, a writer and management communication professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, has published an article in communityvoices.post-gazette.com assessing both the claims and the actual statistical evidence for rape culture, in which he illuminates some glaring contradictions.

Hermann set the typical projected figure of 20-25% of women as victims of forced sex against the reported sexual assault offenses over three years at Pittsburgh’s three largest residential universities: the University of Pittsburgh (UP), Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and Duquesne University (DU). In 2009: At UP, with 14,800 female students, four sexual assaults were reported. At CMU, with about 3,900 female students, six sexual assaults were reported (a three-year high). At DU, with 5,700 females, three were reported.

Link here. Excerpt:

'Special considerations have to be made to address modesty concerns so that the Muslim girls can swim and not reveal too much of themselves.

During the hourlong swim practice, all other swimmers are cleared out of the pool. The men’s locker room is locked. Female life guards are brought in. The pool, which is on the building’s third floor, has no windows so they don’t have to worry about prying eyes from outside.

St. Paul Police Chief Tom Smith had discussions with Britts to let the Y know that, through the department’s connections with the Somali-American community, they had learned that such a group was needed.
...
“We have to have privacy,” said Ubah Ali, Dhamuke’s mother.

For years, Ali said she has been trying to find a place where her daughter could swim, but nothing seemed to work. Not knowing how to swim is a safety risk, especially in the state of 10,000 lakes, Ali said.

Story here.

'A West Virginia teenager has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for her role in her friend's death.

Seventeen-year-old Rachel Shoaf apologized before being sentenced Wednesday in Monongalia County Circuit Court. She pleaded guilty last May to second-degree murder in the July 2012 death of 16-year-old Skylar Neese.

Media outlets report that Judge Russell Clawges ordered Shoaf to serve her sentence in a state prison. She'll remain in a juvenile facility until her 18th birthday.

Co-defendant Shelia Eddy* was sentenced Jan. 24 to life in prison with the possibility of parole for first-degree murder.

Neese was lured from her home, stabbed to death and her body left in the woods. Prosecutors never divulged a motive. Shoaf told police the girls no longer wanted to be friends with Neese.'

Story here. Hey, welcome to the club. Male convicts not only get mandatory life sentences/death sentences for less (sometimes, a lot less, depending on the country) but people regularly state that they hope such men "rot to death," are raped/murdered while in jail, etc. So a mandatory life sentence handed out without further comment for a sadistic serial-murdering sociopath qualifies, IMO, as better treatment than is typical. Men so sentenced for similar (or lesser) acts are often also denounced by the judge at sentencing with all manner of more-polite ways to render the phrase "mass-murdering subhuman scumbag". And well-deserved. Just also well-deserved for female ones, too. Excerpt:

'Joanne Dennehy has become the first woman ordered to die behind bars by a judge, who told the murderer of three men she was "a cruel, calculating, selfish and manipulative serial killer".

Article here. Excerpt:

'How to prevent crime? 'Rein in the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing global warming in the first place.'

Controversial new research predicts that over the coming century, rising temperatures will result in more violent crime...'Police have long operated with the understanding that 'the summer is more dangerous than the winter,' explains Roman. 'To the extent that climate change causes people to be out and interacting more, there will be more crime.'

Like we mentioned last week, things are getting a little crazy when it comes to rape prevention.

From female students being afraid the statue of a man in underwear might come to life and sexually assault them, to a college administrator suggesting we hang every student who is accused of rape, just because he's been accused. Okay, I may have exaggerated about the hanging.

We want to stop rape hysteria because we don't think it's helping one bit. In fact, it's making it more difficult to promote evidence-based solutions. One way to end the hysteria is with facts. So here you go:

FACT: Each year, similar percentages of men and women (Men: 5.3%; Women: 5.6%) experience sexual violence other than rape.

That shows me that sexual assault is not a "gender crime."

FACT: The number of rapes of females has fallen dramatically in the United States, from 402,000 in 1995 to 143,300 in 2010.

Story here. A woman gets into an argument with her daughter and slaps her. The police show up and immediately confront the woman's husband, and somehow it leads to him dead on the ground. Imagine if the sexes had been totally reversed: Man gets into argument with son and slaps him. Police show up and confront the man's wife, and she is dead on the ground a few minutes later. That'd be weird, but this? How weird does it feel? If your intellectual reaction is that it's outrageous but emotionally it's... well, meh... then that's the degree to which you've been conditioned to accept male disposability and anti-male injustice. And tell me, we still live in a "patriarchy"? Excerpt:

'It was supposed to be a fun family outing to the movies, but Nair Rodriguez's 19-year-old daughter got under her skin. They fought, she said, and she slapped her daughter.

Article here. Excerpt:

'"Intimate partner violence is the leading cause of death for African-American women aged 15-45." – Attorney General Eric Holder, Oct. 19, 2009

A.G. Holder’s statement turned out to be wrong. So wrong, in fact that the Washington Post’s Fact-Checker said the claim qualified for his notorious Four-Pinocchio rating: http://wapo.st/19Gxb1x

Holder’s faux pas illustrates how even high government officials can be fooled by zealous advocates who dole out incredulous factoids.
These factoids are numerous, pervasive, and made by design:

Numerous

Have you noticed all the jaw-dropping abuse claims are out there?

Article here. Excerpt:

Article here. Excerpt:

'Growing gender enrolment [sic] gaps at universities and poor male test scores in reading and writing have a lot of commentators saying boys are being left behind in schools and workplaces increasingly shaped for women to succeed.

These concerns are nothing new according to University of Windsor education professor Christopher Greig. His recently published book, Ontario Boys: Masculinity and the Idea of Boyhood in Postwar Ontario, 1945—1960, argues that concerns about boyhood identity have been big issues in the past.
...
“Any time you have significant economic and societal changes you see gender roles can become threatened and you see that now also,” Greig said. “Today men continue to see women take on roles (men) used to dominate and succeed in fields they were not around in before, especially at universities.”
...
Greig says he hopes his book will help readers look at the bigger picture of how gender roles play a role in performance by boys at school and elsewhere.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Two weeks ago I wrote an article about the brilliant new film “The Mask You Live In,” a documentary about the pressures boys face growing up.

After my article was published, a reader wrote in with some thought-provoking points. Here is an excerpt from their email: “How about we allow boys to be boys and not emasculate them? By nature, they are rough and tumble, loud, and sometimes will push boundaries. Unfortunately, they receive labels like behavior disorder, ADD, ADHD and so on because most teachers are women and feel intimidated by their actions.”

Story here. Excerpt:

'Today, from the East Room of the White House, President Obama will launch a new effort aimed at empowering boys and young men of color, a segment of our society which too often faces disproportionate challenges and obstacles to success. These obstacles are found in our schools, our communities, our criminal justice system, our families, and even in the minds of our young people themselves. The president is committed to build a broad coalition of backers to help break down barriers, clear pathways to opportunity, and reverse troubling trends which show too many of our boys and young men of color slipping through the cracks in our society.

Link here. Excerpt:

'A 13-year-old girl has filmed two women racially and physically abusing a male passenger on a Gold Coast bus.

The mobile phone vision, filmed by a girl only known as Rebecca, shows the women hurling abuse at the man before assaulting a fellow passenger.

The teenager filming can be heard frantically pleading with someone on the bus to stop the women as the man tries to retaliate.

Ms Little also defended the bus driver for not stepping in to break up the feud.

"The girls also attacked the driver. Then they were standing right next to him while they were arguing with the Aboriginal man, Paul, so the driver couldn't get out of his seat," she said.

Ms Little said the video fails to show the moment the man continued to "hit" the two women even as they were getting off the bus.

"That was when the other passenger jumped up and just pushed them off," she said.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Supreme Court of Utah ruled Tuesday that a district court judge should not have dismissed a biological father's challenge to the Utah Adoption Act.

Christopher Carlton, of Pennsylvania, filed the suit in his quest to find his daughter, now 3 years old, after the baby's mother told Carlton the child was a boy and had died shortly after birth, according to court documents.

The mother, Shalonda Brown, later revealed she had put the baby up for adoption, and Carlton tracked the case to the Adoption Center of Choice in Orem.

In early 2011, Carlton began challenging the constitutionality of the Utah Adoption Act, which prevents him from contesting the adoption because he hadn't acceptably established parental rights.