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.

Article here. Excerpt:

'For years family lawyers have known it to be true: men get a raw deal when they divorce in this country. And by this country, I mean England and Wales rather than the UK as a whole. Scotland has a very different approach to money in divorce and women rarely get the joint lives order (aka ‘meal ticket for life’) that we still see here.

And the prejudice against men is not confined to finance. More important, perhaps, is the way in which there is still no level playing field when it comes to deciding whether children should have their primary homes with their mothers or fathers.

Announcement here. Excerpt:

'Plenty of poetry and song have been dedicated to a woman's heart, but a little science is needed, too, because her heart is also at the center of the number one cause of death for women.

According to the American Heart and Stroke Association, heart disease, disease, stroke, and other cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the No. 1 cause of death in American women, claiming over 400,000 lives each year, or nearly one death each minute.

In 2009, one in 30 female deaths was from breast cancer, but one in three was from cardiovascular disease.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Only a small fraction of Army women say they'd like to move into one of the newly opening combat jobs, but those few who do say they want a job that takes them right into the heart of battle, according to preliminary results from a survey of the service's nearly 170,000 women.

That survey and others across the Army, publicly disclosed for the first time to The Associated Press, also revealed that soldiers of both genders are nervous about women entering combat jobs but say they are determined to do it fairly. Men are worried about losing their jobs to women; women are worried they will be seen as getting jobs because of their gender and not their qualifications. Both are emphatic that the Army must not lower standards to accommodate women.

Article here. Excerpt:

'They claim that rape statistics are overinflated, that female-on-male sexual assaults are ignored or sneered at, and—above all—that false rape reports are a far larger problem than we acknowledge. And they’re taking action. In Canada this past summer, a men’s rights group plastered the city of Edmonton with posters aimed at young women. “Just because you regret a one-night stand doesn’t mean it wasn’t consensual,” the posters read. This fall, members of a MRM website took online vigilante justice against an Ohio University student they believed was falsely crying rape. (It turned out she was the wrong woman altogether.) The Occidental incident has sparked other, similar actions—this month, MRM websites called for a mass spamming of Dartmouth’s anonymous online sexual assault reporting form.

Article and video here. (NSFW: The recorded discussion among the women is explicit.) Excerpt:

'Pro-circumcision groups got a boost with the results of a survey made by AdamAndEve.com on female preference in terms of having the foreskin of their male partners cut or not.

The study found 54 per cent of American women favoured a circumcised penis, 33 per cent don't have any preference, 3 per cent opted for an uncircumcised dick and 10 per cent did not reply.

The survey has 1,000 adult female American respondents from age 18 and above.

Explaining the results of the study, Dr Kat Van Kirk, resident sexpert of AdamAndEve.com - vendor of adult products - said, quoted by Digital Times, "Circumcision is largely a cultural choice. With circumcision prevalent in the U.S. (as well as the Muslim world, Africa and Israel), many American women have never been exposed to an uncircumcised penis."'

Story here.

'The Arizona Senate has approved a bill outlawing female genital mutilation that's known as female circumcision.

The Senate unanimously approved the bill on Monday. The bill bars genital mutilation on girls under 18 and would make a first-time violation and conviction punishable by five to 14 years in prison and a minimum $25,000 fine.

Bill sponsor Republican Sen. Judy Burges of Sun City West says female genital mutilation is a problem that's beginning to appear in the United States.

The bill will now go the House of Representatives.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Jason Biggs and wife Jenny Mollen may have enjoyed sharing joyous photos from their son's circumcision ceremony, but it seemed to anger fans.

"Today was not a good day to be Sid's penis," Mollen captioned a photo on Instagram of her kissing her newborn's head as dad stands by smiling. "#babybiggs #circumcision"

The first-time parents were immediately criticized for their lighthearted approach to the situation.

"He has to live with a mutilated penis because his parents are ignorant," one critic with the handle "Ianbrayamia" wrote in response to their photo.

Another, named "Floppymagma," wrote, "Wasn't a good day for poor Sid either! Poor baby. It's amazing that a country so advanced in so many ways is still so backdated."'

---
Wikipedia on Biggs and Mollen, here and here.

Article here. Excerpt:

Article here. Excerpt:

'The future of America's national pastime is apparently in serious jeopardy at Air Force.

Budget cuts are expected to come down as early as March 4, and The Gazette has confirmed that sports may be eliminated. With baseball high on that list, a group of former players are doing all they can to proactively prevent it.
...
"We are experiencing unprecedented budget challenges over the next several years and have to make some very difficult decisions."

Title IX will be a factor when determining cuts. Since the academy's gender breakdown is roughly 80 percent male, male athletes must be offered about 75 to 85 percent of the intercollegiate athletic opportunities. So if baseball is cut, a corresponding women's team would likely have to go as well.

This may end up saving some men's sports, which flips the original impact of the law as many schools around the nation had to cut men's sports like wrestling and baseball to even out opportunities between genders.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The most insidious attacks are not happening to men though, they are being executed on boys. Little boys are energetic, rambunctious, enthusiastic and easily the root word for “boisterous.” Little boys and little girls, despite all of the populist arguments to the contrary, are not the same. A typical toddler girl, if separated from her mommy by a baby gate, will eventually sit down and cry if her mommy does not pay her attention. A typical toddler boy however, while he too might cry, will also attempt to break down the gate or scale it. The relative advantage of either approach is worth debating, but it is the difference which needs to be addressed.

Article here. [Ed.: Submitter's comments placed in first comment for story.] Excerpt:

'Jordan Ott was the third of his mother’s six children, born over the course of four marriages.

By age 8, he’d had two step-dads; his brothers and sisters had more or fewer based on birth order. Each child also had different numbers of siblings, depending on whether their own dads fathered other children. Ott has one full sister, four half-siblings and at one point had three step-siblings “that I know of,” he said. His own father has mostly lived far away.

His story is not uncommon today. More than half of babies of mothers under 30 are born to unmarried parents. The divorce rate among those who do marry exceeds 40 percent, according to the 2012 State of Our Unions report.

These statistics play out most often in the form of absent fathers—or the arrival and departure of serial father figures involved in romantic relationships with a child’s mother. (Moms still usually retain custody in a breakup or divorce.) Twenty-four million American children—one in three—are growing up in homes without their biological fathers, the 2011 Census says. Children in father-absent homes, it notes, are almost four times more likely to be poor.
...
Most children weather family turmoil and wind up OK, said Cherlin, who coined the term “family churn” to describe what happens to families as couples split, often moving dad out of the home and a new man in. A study in the Journal of Marriage and Family said children in such homes experience an average of more than 5.25 partnership transitions. That’s tough for kids who are used to having their own fathers within reach.