Article here. Excerpt:

'As momentum continues to build against male circumcision, intactivists from around the USA have flooded Congress and 10 state legislatures with proposed legislation to ban genital cutting of boys. If enacted, the Male Genital Mutilation (MGM) Bill would amend existing female genital mutilation laws by making them gender neutral.

Asa Rubin, director of MGMbill.org's Massachusetts state office in Brookline, feels that all boys need to be protected from what is increasingly being referred to as genital mutilation. "It is simply immoral to surgically remove any healthy, natural, normally functioning tissue from a human being without their consent," said Rubin. "The fact that the law only forbids such barbarism for females is discriminatory and downright unconstitutional. Genital integrity is a human right that should apply equally to both sexes."

Story here. Excerpt:

'A man from Peterborough accused of helping serial killer Joanna Dennehy had warned she may murder one of her victims, a court has heard.

Dennehy, 31, has admitted stabbing three men in the heart and dumping their bodies in ditches in Cambridgeshire.

Two men, Gary Stretch and Leslie Layton, are accused of helping her dispose of the bodies and cover up the killings.

Giving evidence at Cambridge Crown Court, Carla White, who lived in the same house as Stretch, said Dennehy had seemed "rude and arrogant".

She said people had been intimidated by the killer - also known as Star because of her facial tattoos - and described how she had once grabbed her around the throat for no reason.

Ms White recalled a conversation with Stretch in the days leading up to Good Friday, when Dennehy's final victim, Kevin Lee, was killed.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Ontario Securities Commission has proposed a new rule that would require companies to report annually on their policies to add more women to their boards and executive ranks.

The new rules unveiled Thursday will also require companies to report on their term limits for directors, which would bring Canada in line with many other countries that have also required companies to disclose whether they have term limits for their boards. Proponents argue term limits help ensure there is more board turnover so new directors -- including women -- can be added to the mix.

Companies are also being asked to report on whether they have voluntarily adopted targets for women on their boards or in executive roles.

Article here. Excerpt:

'There is a "ludicrous" obsession with ensuring there is equal representation of men and woman in parliament and other areas of public life, a former Conservative cabinet minister has said.

Lord Hurd, who served as home secretary and foreign secretary under Margaret Thatcher and Sir John Major, also said if voters did not like having a "good looking chap from a public school" as prime minister they would stop choosing them.
...
During a discussion on the lack of high profile female political leaders, Lord Hurd said Thatcher had always been "impatient" with the focus on her as the first women prime minister.

"She was the prime minister because she was the best person available regardless of gender, that was her firm belief," Lord Hurd said.

He added: "I think, therefore, the danger of feminism, the danger of constantly putting near the top of agenda that there ought to be more women and more women in this and that sphere of our life, is that you balance over and you become slightly ludicrous."

Article here. Excerpt:

'"The Mask You Live In," a new documentary that will be released this year, explores the many difficulties boys are having in American society today. One scholar, though, is concerned that its critique of masculinity will go too far.

"We've constructed an idea of masculinity in the United States that doesn't give young boys a way to feel secure in their masculinity, so we make them go prove it all the time," Dr. Michael Kimmel, a sociologist and educator, says in the trailer, which has nearly 1.5 million views at press time.

The film is made by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who made "Miss Representation," which looked at how the media represents, or misrepresents, women. In a July interview with The Huffington Post, Newsom explains that it was during the making of that film, while she was pregnant with her son, that she began thinking about the difficulties that boys face.

"At the time I was pregnant with my son, Hunter, and increasingly sensitive to the extremes of masculinity that would be imposed on my own son," she said.
...
Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident scholar for the American Enterprise Institute and author of The War Against Boys (2001), watched the trailer and voiced some concerns that "The Mask You Live In" (intentionally sounds like "masculine") may be missing the real problem.

"I admire Newsom for using her considerable talent to advocate for boys," Sommers wrote Monday for TIME. "But I worry that she is less concerned with helping boys than with re-engineering their masculinity, according to specifications from some out-of-date gender-studies textbook. The trailer is suffused with males-are-toxic ideology, but shows little appreciation for how boys' nature can be distinctively good."

Article here. Excerpt:

'IN her nearly 400-page feminist screed about the plight of women in America, “A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back from the Brink,” Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress have fired the first volley in the pivotal campaign of 2014 that will determine whether the President’s leftist agenda will proceed forward unimpeded or whether the Constitution and common sense will prevail. It is no small matter that the document also propels Hillary Clinton’s goals forward and seeks to revive a moribund feminist movement’s struggle for relevance. Served with a dollop of celebrity and a high-powered roll-out — including President Obama promoting the report with Shriver at the White House — the skill of the marketing effort greatly exceeds the heft of the report. It is long on glamour and glitz and short on substance and scholarly depth.
...
... The publication seems designed to mobilize the single-women voters essential for the Left’s future. It is, bottom-line, a political document, an ideologically slanted report that sees the world purely through a feminist lens. The degree of its bias can be measured by the fact that it glosses over two of the most serious issues of the day –– the rise of female-headed households that predictably are dependent upon taxpayer largess (the report calls this “the adverse economic impact of motherhood”) and their father-absent children who predictably are at risk of a wide range of undesirable outcomes that threaten the nation’s schools and streets. It is a marvel the way the report dances around the fact that single motherhood is so often a pathway to poverty and that the poverty rate of children living in mother-only families is five times that of children in married-couple families. Promoting feminist myths is a lot easier than addressing real problems.

Letter here.

'Re: “A birth-control suggestion,” by Carol Kelly, Friday Letters.

Carol Kelly’s letter attacking columnist Nicholas Kristof is as off the rails as any recent letter to the DMN.

Use of terms such as “typical man” and “irresponsible, unloving man-father” and suggesting “snip-snip of the male reproductive organs” can only be described as extreme misandry (male hatred).

While I rarely agree with Mr. Kristof, he does have a proven track record of bringing issues such as human trafficking and social injustice to light. His suggestion was that birth control be more readily available to avoid unwanted Third World births, which often lead to human trafficking. Hardly radical.'

---
Ref.: "A birth-control suggestion"

Article here. Excerpt:

'In the world of hedge funds, a relative few have a woman at the helm. And yet, these funds may be the standouts from the bunch, a new report argues.

In the years since the financial crisis, hedge funds managed by women performed better than a broader index that reflects the performance of the industry, according to a report released on Wednesday by the professional services firm Rothstein Kass. The report seeks to show that this “alpha” – superior returns, in Wall Street speak – is no mere fluke.

“There is meaningful alpha to be gained from investing in women-owned and -managed funds,” Meredith Jones, a director at Rothstein Kass who wrote the report, said in an interview. “There appear to be both behavioral and biological factors that impact women’s ability to manage money and make them consistent.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Hillary Clinton, who just wrapped up a four-year stint as secretary of state after eight years as a U.S. senator, reportedly will write in a new book that "the clock is turning back" for women in America.

It's a striking, if unsurprising, statement from the presumptive Democratic nominee for president who, by the way, is a woman. Things seem to be going well for Clinton, despite her gender.

Clinton's proclamation is nothing unusual, though. If you get your news from liberal women seeking elective office, you might never know the extent of academic and professional gains women have made in the past 40 years.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The news: December 2013 was the month the economy decided to say hello, ladies.

Oh, and fellas? Apparently the economy wouldn't hire you if you were the last man ... in the economy. According to new data from the the Bureau of Labor Statistics, every single one of the paltry 74,000 jobs created in December went to women.
...
Women gained a net 75,000 jobs in December, while men lost 1,000 net jobs. And even though women haven't been the sole beneficiaries of job growth in a single month since December 2007, they claimed 56% of all new jobs over the past 12 months.

Men also fared far worse during the recession, thanks in large part to their concentration in male-heavy industries like construction, manufacturing, and chopping down trees using only your teeth. Meanwhile, women are concentrated in recession-safe industries like health care and government.

Girl power? Ladies, you're not really gonna like this part. The report isn't necessarily great news for women, either. Most of the jobs created weren't good ones.

Just 15,000 of the positions that went to women were in the professional and business services sectors, which tend to be higher-paying positions. But 39,000 were in retail, and 18,000 were in leisure and hospitality. If you've ever worked in either industry, you probably didn't enjoy the low pay, long hours, and dealing with customers, and it's not likely the women filling many of those positions will either.

Link here. Excerpt:

'Teen boys who think they're too skinny are at increased risk for depression, and they're more likely to be bullied and use steroids, two new studies suggest.
...
Teen boys who believed they were overweight but were actually a healthy weight were also more likely to be depressed than those who believed they were of average weight. However, they were not as likely to be depressed as those who believed they were very underweight, the study found.

In the second study, researchers analyzed data from a 2009 survey of more than 8,000 boys in grades nine through 12 across the United States. The study found that those who believed themselves to be underweight were more likely to have depression than those who were average weight or overweight.

Article here. Excerpt:

'he Japanese now have one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, and at the same time, one of the highest longevity rates. As a result, the population is dropping rapidly, and becoming increasingly weighted toward older people. After peaking seven years ago, at 128 million, Japan's population has been falling — and is on a path to decline by about a million people a year. By 2060, the government estimates, there will be just 87 million people in Japan; nearly half of them will be over 65. Without a dramatic change in either the birthrate or its restrictive immigration policies, Japan simply won't have enough workers to support its retirees, and will enter a demographic death spiral. Yet the babies aren't coming.
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There are both cultural and economic barriers. In Japanese tradition, marriage was more about duty than romantic love. Arranged marriages were the norm well into the 1970s, and even into the 1990s most marriages were facilitated by "go-betweens," often the grooms' bosses. Left to their own devices, Japanese men aren't sure how to find wives — and many are shying away from the hunt, because they simply can't afford it. Wages have stagnated since the 1990s, while housing prices have shot up. A young Japanese man has good reason to believe that his standard of living would drop immensely if he had to house and support a wife and children — especially considering that his wife likely wouldn't be working.
...

Article here. Excerpt:

'Nigerian authorities today began arresting gay men after legislation was quietly approved criminalising homosexuality and imposing prison terms up to 14 years for breaking the new law.

Several gay couples were taken into custody in the country’s majority-Muslim north, and rights groups feared that others would be targeted across the West African country.

Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria’s president, signed the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act into law on January 7, but there was no public report of the new law until journalists obtained a copy of the act on Monday.

It prohibits homosexuals from even meeting in groups of two or more, bans marriage or civil unions between people of the same sex, and criminalises gay clubs and events.

Reuben Abati, the presidential spokesman, said Nigerians were happy with the new law. It makes Nigeria the 38th African nation to enact legislation persecuting gay people.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'...Small children -- let alone infants -- have no capacity to consent to the surgical removal of sound body parts. Secondly, there is no compelling medical need to cut off healthy genital tissue. The cutting of male or female genitals is a socially constructed practice often linked to group identity or religious doctrine.
...
Many Americans think of male circumcision as an issue of hygiene. Yet, this is not the case. The vast majority of men throughout human history have kept their intact penises clean without any extraordinary effort. Many Americans think that the foreskin, which is removed in a circumcision surgery, is useless skin. This is also untrue. It seems that with the acceptance of the routine cutting of infant penises, we also have cut the function of the foreskin from our consciousness. In an intact adult male, the foreskin is the most sensitive and erogenous 12-15 square inches of his body and it contains 10,000-20,000 fine touch nerve endings. It is not useless skin.
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One can learn a great deal about cultural bias when comparing the traditions of male and female genital cutting.

Petition here. Really, if this had been a case of a female-to-male transgendered person being attacked by three boys, or if the attackers in this case were boys and not girls, does anyone imagine for a moment the DA would not be on them like white on rice? I sure don't. At the very least, defending oneself from street-thugs regardless of said thugs' gender is no offense -- unless of course said thugs are female and you have a penis, regardless of how you are dressed. Is to too much though to ask the question: "Why the hell are the attackers *not* being prosecuted?" Or is that just too radical an idea? Excerpt:

'My sister, Jewlyes Gutierrez, is a 16 year old teenager, who identifies as a transgender female. Her gender identity has caused her to be a victim of taunting, harassment, and bullying by her peers. On November 13, 2013, Jewlyes defended herself against three girls who were tormenting and then physically attacked her. This was captured on video and you can see Jewlyes trying to run away. The students involved were suspended but to our disbelief, District Attorney Daniel Cabral then filed charges against Jewlyes for battery - she's the only one charged.

Jewlyes should not be charged criminally. Rather, this altercation should be the responsibility of the school district, who should take proper action and implement the necessary resources to prevent incidents like these from happening again.

One of the girls who attacked Jewlyes had repeated bullied her - even spitting gum in her face. Jewlyes sought help from the assistant principal in fear of her physical safety but the issue was not properly addressed, no necessary action was taken by the administration. The bullying continued.
...