Article here. Excerpt:

'As the Obama Administration steps up the federal effort against an alleged epidemic of campus rape, some states are contemplating measures of their own. A recent Newsweek story on a bill pending in the California State Assembly, discussed by K.C. Johnson on Minding the Campus, raises a number of troubling issues: among them, potential spillover from the campus crusade into the criminal justice system and actual spillover from the radical feminist blogosphere into the mainstream media.

he legislation, AB 1433, introduced on January 6 by Southern California Assemblyman Mike Gatto, requires colleges and universities to promptly bring to local law enforcement all campus reports of violent crimes (homicide, rape, robbery or aggravated assault) and hate crimes--unless the complainant requests anonymity. Federal law--the 1990 Clery Act, named after Jeanne Clery, a 19-year-old Lehigh University (Pennsylvania) student who was raped and murdered in her dorm in 1986--already requires colleges to record all crimes reported to campus authorities in a public log and in an annual security report, and to disclose them to the U.S. Department of Education.
...
The problematic nature of the bill is compounded by the fact that, due to input from campus activists whom Newsweek describes as "sexual assault survivors," accusers will be allowed to decide whether their charges should be reported to the police or not. (The alleged survivors told Gatto, and Newsweek, that they would not have gone to the campus authorities if they knew they would have to deal with actual law enforcement as well.) Not only does this leave the universities' "shadow justice system" entirely intact, it also underscores the extent to which feminist activism is pushing to make sexual assault or rape a subjectively defined offense.

Article here. Excerpt:

'More than half of male newborns in America are circumcised before they leave the hospital. As with any medical procedure, if it results in injury, the medical professional involved could face discipline by licensing authorities in Pennsylvania and other states.

No comparable state oversight, however, governs the same procedure when it's conducted by a religious practitioner with no medical license. And that, says a Pittsburgh lawyer suing over a catastrophic injury suffered by a newborn in April 2013, needs to change.

The lawsuit, pending in the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas, is seeking damages from Rabbi Mordechai Rosenberg for alleged negligence and inflicting of emotional distress on the boys' parents, who witnessed what the lawsuit called a "gruesome and torturous event." Rabbi Rosenberg has since 1990 worked as a mohel, the traditional term for one who performs circumcisions as part the traditional Jewish rite of passage.

Story here. Excerpt:

'Chilling images of deformed penises on a website slamming botched traditional circumcisions in South Africa have raised the ire of cultural commentators who called on Monday for the site to be shut down.

Dutch doctor Dingeman Rijken set up the webpage www.ulwaluko.co.za after scores of boys and young men died last year when the initiation ceremony into manhood went wrong. But critics say it betrays their culture and should have been handled differently.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Medical associations in Sweden and Denmark have strongly recommended a ban on the non-medical circumcision of boys, reports the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The Sweden Medical Association, which counts 85% of the country's physicians as members, recommended setting twelve as the minimum age for the procedure and requiring a boy's consent in a resolution which was unanimously passed by the ethics council, reported the Svenska Dagbladet.

The Danish College of General Practitioners, a group with 3,000 members, made a statement that ritual circumcision of boys was tantamount to abuse and mutilation, according to Danish newspaper BT. They polled their readers and found that 87% were in favor of a ban on non-medical circumcision.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Slaughter believes that the best way to reduce the disparity between men and women is to encourage the greatest number of women to reach the highest positions of influence. She believes that to make this a reality more men must stay at home. “It is far, far easier to be at the top of a major organisation if you have a primary or full-time caregiver at home,” she wrote.

Slaughter wanted to conduct a poll at Davos to find out how many participants had a life partner who is either at home full time or works outside the house but is the primary caregiver. “If the numbers are, say, 80 per cent or higher,” she wrote, “then future Forum gender equality polls should assume that women will only achieve parity with breadwinning men when men achieve parity with care-giving women.”

Article here. Excerpt:

'Be wary of the claim that one in five students has been sexually assaulted or raped at some point in their college careers. In an era of declining violent crime rates, the statistic is remarkably resilient.

The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics reports a sharp drop in total rapes and sexual assaults nationwide — down 38.7 percent between 2008 and 2009, which are the most recent years for which data are readily available. Yet the White House stubbornly repeats the one-in-five claim, a number that has circulated since at least 2000.

As my Manhattan Institute colleague Heather Mac Donald noted in 2011 — the last time the White House touted the campus rape issue — there were 36.8 rapes per 100,000 residents of Detroit, a city with one of the worst violent crime rates in America. That’s a rate of 0.037 percent.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Kolkata: A forum of NGOs working for men's rights has demanded that the party forming government after the Lok Sabha polls create a separate ministry and a national commission for the protection of men's rights in the wake of "misuse" of dowry laws and registration of "false" sexual harassment cases.

The National Coalition for Men (NCM), a coalition of about 50 organisations fighting for men's rights, has released a 10-point charter of demands to be considered by political parties for the Lok Sabha election.

NCM said they wanted to highlight the increasing rate of "innocent married and unmarried men" falling prey to "gender biased" laws.

Besides a ministry and a commission for men, the NCM's charter, named 'Men-I-Festo', included converting 'gender biased laws' to gender neutral ones, forming a task force to probe suicide by married men and a helpline number for men in distress, NCM president Amit Gupta told a news agency.'

Video and transcript here. Excerpt:

'SEN. RAND PAUL: Well, you know, I think we have a lot of debates in Washington that get dumbed down and are used for political purposes. This whole sort of war on women thing, I'm scratching my head because if there was a war on women, I think they won. You know, the women in my family are incredibly successful.

I have a niece at Cornell vet school, and 85% of the young people there are women. In law school, 60% are women; in med school, 55%. My younger sister's an ob-gyn with six kids and doing great. You know, I don't see so much that women are downtrodden; I see women rising up and doing great things. And, in fact, I worry about our young men sometimes because I think the women really are out-competing the men in our world.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'A student whose false rape claims resulted in one of the Thames Valley Police force’s most expensive investigations has been told by top judges she deserved to be sent to prison.

The former Reading University student, who cannot be identified, cried rape after some friends found her looking dishevelled when returning from a night out.

Although the 21-year-old, originally from Birmingham, did not point the finger directly at anyone, the thorough police investigation which followed her claim led to a man being arrested and held overnight until he proved he was elsewhere at the time of the alleged rape.
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Last Thursday she challenged her jail term, with her lawyers arguing it should be suspended in light of her troubled history and evidence which had recently surfaced.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Every time I hear someone say that feminism is about validating every choice a woman makes I have to fight back vomit.

Do people really think that a stay at home mom is really on equal footing with a woman who works and takes care of herself? There’s no way those two things are the same. It’s hard for me to believe it’s not just verbally placating these people so they don’t get in trouble with the mommy bloggers.

Article here. To be clear: This article is *not* an op-ed by The Jerusalem Post; it just appears in it. Excerpt:

'I am a Jewish filmmaker and I have been invited by the Council of Europe to its Parliamentary Assembly next week. By screening my television documentary It’s a Boy! for European parliamentarians I aim to help shore up their commitment to protection of children’s right to physical integrity – a key step toward ending ritual circumcision of boys. Yet there is a struggle underway.
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Parents like me know from our remorse that it was wrong to make such an irreversible, painful and dangerous decision for our children. We owed our children protection, and we owe it to our communities not to be silenced when we have erred as parents.

Link here. Excerpt:

'THE Department of Human Services is trying to force a 14-year-old boy who was pinned down by his mother while he was forcibly circumcised by an international witchdoctor to return to live with her.

The teen remained conscious throughout the procedure.

The boy has told authorities he was one of 13 young boys across Melbourne to experience similar backyard procedures by the visiting witchdoctor on Boxing Day, in line with his mother's South Pacific culture.
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The move is being opposed by the boy's father, who made a complaint to police after learning about the procedure.
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Victorian Opposition spokeswoman for children Jenny Mikakos called on the State Government to explain if this had happened before and if it could happen again.

"How can the department allow this invasive procedure to occur when one parent and the child himself are vehemently against it?" Ms Mikakos said.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Twelve biological fathers whose children were placed for adoption in Utah without their knowledge or consent have filed a federal lawsuit against the state, alleging Utah laws permit "legalized fraud and kidnapping."

The fathers, represented by West Jordan attorney Wes Hutchins, allege that despite knowing about the "gross adoption infirmities" of Utah’s laws, two former attorneys general "did nothing for more than a decade to correct the fraud and deception" that led to their children being placed with adoptive families in Utah.

What happened to their sons and daughters was essentially "kidnapping and highly unethical and disruptive placement into adoptive homes without the knowledge or consent of their biological fathers," the lawsuit states.

Utah’s laws have created a "confusing labyrinth of virtually incomprehensible legal mandates and nearly impossible deadlines" that amount to unconstitutional violations of the rights of unwed fathers, it states.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'President Obama’s latest attempt to shine brightly before America’s college students may be losing some of its luster.

A victim-advocacy group is crying foul over the administration’s latest crisis in need of intervention, claiming the White House’s new campaign to combat sexual assault on campus is touting trumped up statistics for “ideological” reasons.

But an organization called Stop Abusive and Violent Environments, or SAVE, is warning the statistics – notably that one in every five women experiences rape or attempted rape in their lifetime, often on college campuses – are artificially inflated and actually do more harm than good.

“SAVE calls on the Obama Administration to fulfill its promise of policymaking based on science, not ideological persuasion,” the organization asserts. “No woman should have to fear rape, [but] inflating the numbers only invites ridicule and doubt.”

SAVE notes Jarrett’s numbers are based on Center for Disease Control, or CDC, studies that have been widely criticized.

The CDC, for example, claimed that in 1.3 million American women were raped in 2010, with an additional 12.6 million women and men victimized by sexual violence, but the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports only 188,380 rapes and sexual assaults for the same year.

Why the discrepancy?

There appears to be a significant problem in defining what does and doesn’t constitute “sexual assault.”
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Even by multiplying the number of victims by 10 (in order to factor in the common notion that 90 percent of such assaults go unreported) and accounting for a single woman to spend five years at the university, Hermann calculated only somewhere between 1 in 130 and 1 in 925 Pitt students would experience sexual assault.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Obama Administration, through Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and U S. Attorney general Eric Holder, have issued new guidelines designed to end or at least restrict "zero tolerance" disciplinary policies in schools.
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About every month some story surfaces in "The Week" or "Reason" magazines, detailing how some young child is tossed out of school for a minor offense. A kindergartener kisses a girl on the hand and gets disciplined for sex abuse. A plastic two-inch ultra-small toy gun in the paws of a stuffed bear gets the owning student punished. And so on.

Why have schools gone this way? Well, parents and administrators overreact and codes are drawn up that allow no wiggle room. It's like mandatory sentencing in courts. It mostly works, but not always. It used to be, a generation ago, that the teacher's word was law. Now, one of the staples, in many school districts, is the appeal of discipline to the school board. The board had better be "lawyered up" and better have a written policy covering the transgression.

But the Obama administration policy is designed to stop what they call the "school-to-prison" pipeline. The immediate target was to show concern about the high numbers of African-American students who get expelled. In Chicago, for example, African-American students make up 80 percent of all expulsions. That seems both incredible and unfair.
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Moreover, race is not the real key here. Gender is the key.

That's gender as in fathers and gender as in sons. Watch "Raising Cain."

In schools today, boys constitute two-thirds of "special education." A boy is five times as likely to be diagnosed as "hyperactive." A boy is 30 percent more likely to flunk out of school.