Story here. Excerpt:

'The decision by the party’s UK national executive committee (NEC) means Labour MSP Richard Baker, who is reported to have expressed an interest in Aberdeen North, will be free to seek selection in the constituency as a potential MP.

Scotland on Sunday revealed this week that North East MSP Baker, a director of anti-independence campaign Better Together, was considering leaving Holyrood for Westminster.

A meeting of Labour’s NEC in London today said that Aberdeen North, where sitting MP Frank Doran is retiring at the 2015 General Election, would be open to male and female candidates.
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However, Labour is expected to select its candidate to fight the election in the constituency before the summer.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Facebook COO told USA Today: "I never imagined in a billion years (the book) would spark this amount of conversation ... The energy around college campuses is exciting -- it gives us hope for the future." Sandberg will visit many of the 200 schools in 17 countries with on-campus "Lean In" discussion circles to promote the second edition of the book, which features six additional chapters, including advice for "how millennial men can lean in." Welcome, fellas.

Sandberg's original book sparked a national conversation about whether workplace feminism is a luxury of the upper-middle class -- and we're thrilled she is now addressing the message to a demographic that can get a headstart engaging in a dialogue on these issues.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'An initiative by the Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU) pushing for women-only hours at one of the two on-campus athletic facilities has some students worked up about working out.

In a Facebook post last month, the RSU laid out its case for women-only workout slots. They wrote that many women feel uncomfortable exercising in the co-ed space for reasons ranging from Muslim women who will not remove their head scarves in front of men to women who the RSU argued have to endure “societal standards of beauty.”

The campaign prompted anger online. “I’ve never even stepped foot in the Ryerson gym, but this still pisses me off. What’s next, women only library hours?” wrote one commentator on Facebook.

“We all pay the same amount... so we should all have the same opportunities to use it and all be given the same amount of available time,” wrote another on the social news website Reddit.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Guys, we need to stop being ashamed of being men. Virtually every behavior that is natural to a man is now being criticized and we are made to feel ashamed about being our gender. Perhaps if we spent more time uplifting men instead of trying to annihilate masculinity, we’d have better men.

I recently posted this comment on a social network site. Not a huge fan of Men’s Health Magazine, but this ain’t bad advice: “You can’t be a topnotch man unless you’re deeply grateful. For what? Glad you asked. For the gift of your gender. For those muscles in your back. For those neurons in your brain. For your mirth. Your lust. Your courage. For your possibilities. A man in full appreciates the twist of fate that made him so strong, so cunning, so stalwart, so alert, so sexually skilled, so fully equipped, so good to go. Live the appreciation, by using it all.”

Story here.

'The White House says Maria Shriver on Tuesday will present President Barack Obama with a copy of her report on the economic status of women.

The report, "A Woman's Nation Pushes Back from the Brink," tells the story of the financial insecurity of America's families through the eyes of women. It finds that one-third of women are living near the brink of poverty despite making up half the U.S. workforce and two-thirds of the primary or co-breadwinners in their families.

Obama has been pressing Republicans to agree to extend unemployment insurance as he prepares to highlight income inequality in his State of the Union address on Jan. 28.

Shriver is a niece of President John F. Kennedy. She also is the wife of former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Men from varied backgrounds and ages volunteer one hour a month to do something that at first took them out of their comfort zone – entertaining a roomful of youngsters at Elrod Elementary School by reading books aloud. Part of a program called “Real Men Read,” the eight men are among 300 who read to kids in the second, fifth and seventh grades in selected schools in Houston Independent School District.

Article here. Excerpt:

The University of South Australia has distanced itself from a proposal for a series of male studies courses, some of which were to be taught by hardline anti-feminist advocates.

The university has approved one of four proposed graduate courses, a certificate in male health and health promotion, which will begin online next month.

But an original proposal by one of the university's academics outlined three further certificates, including a course called ''males and sexism'', which named lecturers who have been published on radical men's rights websites.
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But National Union of Students president Deanna Taylor said it was concerning that the academic who founded the course, Associate Professor Gary Misan, was linked to the controversial Americans.

''It's a slippery slope once you open the door to people with these views and give them a platform … it's not long before proposals like the ones that were rejected actually get approved,'' she said.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'My best friend died at twenty years old. He, like so many males, was set to explode; a bomb of manhood with a wick as short as impulse. He was taught only one game: breaking boundaries. In the end he broke his own. Game over.

Masculinity is killing us all. In men’s endless drive to prove themselves as real men, they must break boundaries as a matter of course. “Don’t do that” is simply an invitation. Each inhibition crossed is a further affirmation of manhood. There’s a reason why a certain major firearm company’s main marketing ploy revolves around convincing men that, without these guns, their “manhood cards” will be revoked. Like bombs, men don’t simply hurt themselves when they explode, but also whoever happens to be nearby. That’s the point.

Power is addictive. The more men taste it, the more they grasp for it and the more they cling to it. But masculinity kills them just as surely. Beneath the toxic exterior of ego, men need what all humans do: communion. There is no communion in violation. After all that can be violated is, what remains?

Yet, some men are different. Some men want back the empathy that was long ago stolen from them by the cult of masculinity.
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My best friend died from manhood, as so many others do. Some die from abiding by it, but more die from it being used like a weapon against them (and too often, this is no metaphor). My friend ran his course of a fast and dangerous life, hurting others, but killing himself. There are many more like him out there, hurting and hurting just to try to feel alive. Those who could, rarely tell them to stop. Those who could, rarely show them another way.
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Article here. Excerpt:

'Are school shooters and mass murderers born out of an aggressive emphasis on masculinity in our society? The trailer for filmmaker and feminist activist Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s new documentary, “The Mask You Live In,” would have us think so.

The recently released trailer has attracted 1 million views on YouTube. It argues that American boys are captive to a rigid and harmful social code of masculinity. From the earliest age, they are told to “Be a Man!” “Don’t Cry!” “Stop with the emotion!” and “Man up!” This “guy code” suppresses their humanity, excites their drive for dominance, and renders many of them dangerous. The trailer features adolescent men describing their isolation, despair, and thoughts of suicide, artfully interspersed with terrifying images of school shooters and mass murderers.

Article here. Excerpt:

'THE University of South Australia says its new course on male health has nothing to do with so-called extreme anti-feminist views, and contradicts claims in The Advertiser newspaper that two US-based men's rights advocates are involved in the course.

A spokeswoman for the university said a suite of male studies courses potentially involving both US advocates had been proposed by university staff in 2012, but had been rejected by the university in September that year following an academic review.

“Any future courses would need to go through the same formal approval process, in accordance with university policy, that involves consideration of academic merit and quality, and community benefit and viability,” the spokeswoman said in a statement to the HES.
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The $1800 online certificate course in 'male health and male health promotion' is aimed at health and allied health professionals.

Story here. Another sad story about how women have it bad and we need to do more to empower and help women. Men, not so much. Excerpt:

'Although in recent decades women have made historic advances in nearly all areas of American public life, a staggering number of women across the country are still teetering on the verge of poverty and economic disaster, a new report released Sunday shows.
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And yet despite the discouraging signs of economic gender inequality, "The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Pushes Back from the Brink" features a wide range of potential remedies — from prospective policy initiatives to community programs. The authors of the report say that turning away from historical injustices and embracing a more equitable future will boost the U.S. economy.

One such recommendation that Shriver highlighted on Meet the Press on Sunday was for women to think of themselves “as providers, not being provided for.

Story here. Another story on lowered college standards for finding male students guilty of sexual harassment. Excerpt:

'What allowed Adler to extract herself from this absurd charge of sexual harassment was her status as a faculty member with the shields of tenure and academic freedom to protect her. Ponder for a moment, though, that, without those formidable defenses, she might have ended up like many college students today who find themselves thrown under the bus by their University's Offices of Sexual Harassment with no due process and no chance for redress.

Take for example Joshua Strange at Auburn University who in 2011 was accused by a girlfriend of forcing himself upon her. However, the alleged incident had occurred after they had been dating for several months and she didn't make a formal accusation until after their acrimonious breakup months later. Strange was fully cleared through the legal system -- the accuser never even showed up in court. Even so, Auburn kicked him out of the university and will arrest him for setting foot on campus again.

How did that happen? Like CU, Auburn conducts "trials" of sexual harassment in secret without rules, procedures, nor accountability. However, in an audio recording of the Strange trial obtained by the Wall Street Journal, the lack of fair treatment and due process was frighteningly apparent. Standards of proof were arbitrarily changed and then summarily ignored. Strange's lawyers were forbidden to speak, much less question the accuser. No qualified legal experts were involved -- the committee was chaired by a librarian and included students, a staffer from the College of Liberal Arts and a fisheries professor. Strange got crushed.

Link here. Excerpt:

'Posted by Daniel Sheehy, Office of the Senior Coordinator for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, USAID on Monday, December 9th 2013
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Why does masculinity devolve into madness in the face of violence? Why is it that we time and time again see a marked increase in the horrific misdeeds committed by men toward women when conflict arises? Throughout history, including up to this very day, a consequence of large-scale violence and war is a significant increase in the rate of gender-based violence that women experience in the form of rape and specific targeting by combatants. During widespread conflict, the breakdown of society and normalization of violence that extends from war into broader society is a commonly used explanation for rampant gender-based violence. Hypermasculinity, a term used to describe an increase in aggressive and misogynistic masculine traits, is also used in explaining why gender-based violence is practically treated as a given component of war. Even after a conflict has been politically resolved, the impact that widespread violence and societal conflict has on the people that experience it and live through it is profound, traumatizing, and proves difficult to overcome.
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Story here. Excerpt:

'Clifford Hall says he's more than happy to pay child support for his 11-year-old son.
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But Hall says when the amount of child support was modified no one told him.
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When Hall and his ex were in Judge Lisa Millard's court last November he owed nothing.

"Opposing counsel testified twice that he's all paid up," says Elam.

But the attorney representing the child's mother wanted Hall to pay her three grand in attorney fees and Judge Millard agreed.

Court documents also reveal Hall wasn't following the court's scheduled times to pick his son up for visitation.

Another modification Hall says he knew nothing about.
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"This entire situation is shocking to me," says community activist Quanell X. "I've never seen one like this."

Quanell X wants the state's judicial board to investigate.
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Judge Millard tells Fox 26 after she found Hall in contempt he walked out of the courtroom which she says is a big no no.

Article here. Excerpt:

'THIS week Maria Shriver brings together a star-studded cast of celebrities, from Hillary Rodham Clinton to Beyoncé, to call attention to the economic plight of American women and demand that women’s needs be put “at the center of policy making.

But is this really the time to focus on women? For nearly four decades, feminists have decried “the feminization of poverty.” However, since the 1980s there has been a defeminization of poverty, as a growing proportion of men have fallen on hard times. In recent years men have experienced especially significant losses in income and job security.

Although women are still more likely to be poor than men, on average women’s income and labor-force participation have been rising since the 1970s. By contrast, between 1970 and 2010 the median earnings of men fell by 19 percent, and those of men with just a high school diploma by a stunning 41 percent. And while women have regained all the jobs they lost during the recession, men have regained just 75 percent.

Since about 1980 the percentage of men and women in middle-skill jobs has declined. But for women, nearly all of that decline was because of increased representation in higher-skill jobs. Women’s employment in low-skill jobs increased by just 1 percent. By contrast, for men, half the decline in middle-skill jobs was a result of increases in low-skill jobs.

The most urgent issue facing working Americans today is not the glass ceiling. It is the sinking floor. So wouldn’t it make more sense to focus on gender-neutral economic policies?
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