If this had been a video of women shaking their labias to make a sale, there would be outrage. Boycott Kmart. Story here. Excerpt:

'From the retailer that brought " Big Gas" and " Ship Your Pants" to the advertising lexicon comes what will surely not be the last controversial ad of the holiday season, a new Kmart ad showing hunks in boxers strutting their stuff to "Jingle Bells."
The ad, which made its debut this week, begins innocently enough, showing six men dressed in tuxedo jackets playing "Jingle Bells" with hand bells behind a table.

The six hunks then ditch the hand bells, come out from behind the table and continue to play "Jingle Bells," this time with their hips.
...
"The commercial I saw last night with the men in tuxes ringing their … was disgusting and in poor taste. I couldn't believe this was allowed on air!! I won't be shopping at K Mart this Christmas," Jerry Carr wrote.

Link here. Excerpt:

From a USAID.gov mailing-list email:

'Today, November 19, 2013, we gather as a global health community to commemorate International Men’s Day and to discuss this year’s theme, “Keeping Men and Boys Safe.” On the road to an AIDS-free generation, we are keeping men and boys safe by addressing gender norms, recognizing the disproportionate impact that HIV has on men who have sex with men (MSM) and other key populations, and supporting voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) as an important strategy in preventing HIV. Check out today’s IMPACT blog, Men for Others: Keeping Men Safe as They Battle Against HIV, penned by Robert Ferris, Technical Leadership & Research Division Chief in USAID’s Office of HIV/AIDS.

Stay informed and participate in the conversation!

• Join us today at 11 a.m. for a Twitter expert hour on VMMC with Emmanuel Njeuhmeli, Senior Biomedical Advisor in USAID’s Office of HIV/AIDS and co-chair of the PEPFAR Male Circumcision Technical Working Group. Tweet your #VMMC questions @USAIDGH using #GHhour.

Article here. Finally, maybe an issue most MRAs and at least some feminists can agree on. Excerpt:

'But both FGC and MGC, where the erogenous foreskin is removed, can cause serious physical, mental and sexual harm. In 2011, 11 boys under the age of one were treated in Birmingham for life threatening hemorrhage, shock or sepsis relating to circumcision. In the US it’s estimated that 100 boys die as a result of circumcisions every year. MGC is also far more common globally: 13m boys to 2m girls annually.
...
But this isn’t a harm competition. It’s about how FGC, often referred to as female genital mutilation because it’s widely seen as a violation of women’s rights and a form of oppression and sexual control, is easily accepted when that girl is a boy.

FGC has been banned in the UK since 1985 (despite no convictions ) and since 2003, it has been illegal to carry out the procedure on British nationals abroad.

But, as bioethicist Dena Davis put it: “When one begins to question the normative status of the male newborn alteration in the West, and when one thinks of female alteration as including even a hygienically administered "nick,” one begins to see that these two practices, dramatically separated in the public imagination, actually have significant areas of overlap."

Although FGC is practised because of religious beliefs and seen as an important part of cultural identity (imparting a sense of pride, a coming of age or a feeling of community membership), aversion to it overrides concerns about protecting these religious or cultural freedoms – a view also held by some community leaders.

But when it comes to Male Genital Cutting (MGC) it’s neither explicitly illegal nor compulsorily regulated. Instead it’s perceived as a relatively innocuous procedure, a “routine neonatal circumcision”, or brit milah for Jews and khitan for Muslims.
...

Article here. A fairly well balanced article on International Men's Day. Excerpt:

'So do we really need an international day for men? In a world where us chaps are still running politics, business, religion, media and sport, it seems only fair that the ladies have had their own international day for over a century, but for the men to muscle in with a day of their own day, well, it’s not very gentlemanly, is it?

And yet all is not well in the state of “Man Land”.

We know that men in the UK are still dying four years sooner than women, on average; that 12 men each day take their own lives; that 90% of rough sleepers are men; that 95% of the prison population is male; that seven out of ten murder victims are male; that girls are outperforming boys at every stage of education; that women are a third more likely to go to university than men; that young men account for 70% of long-term youth unemployment; that male graduates are 50% more likely to be unemployed; that men in their twenties are earning less than their female peers; that 96% of people who die at work are male and that men accounted for 84% of suicides linked to the recession.

If women and girls were experiencing any one of those problems at the rate that men and boys are, it would be grounds for an international day in its own right - so why are we so indifferent to the various problems that are more likely to impact the male half of the population?
...
This year the day has inspired people around the country to hold events which include a special meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Fatherhood in Westminster; a public debate about men and violence in Preston and the Guardian journalist Ally Fogg raising money for male victims of sexual abuse by staying silent for the day - a move that has delighted both his fans and critics in equal measure.

Video here.

'American society has become anti-male. Men are sensing the backlash and are consciously and unconsciously going "on strike." They are dropping out of college, leaving the workforce and avoiding marriage and fatherhood at alarming rates. The trend is so pronounced that a number of books have been written about this "man-child" phenomenon, concluding that men have taken a vacation from responsibility simply because they can. But why should men participate in a system that seems to be increasingly stacked against them?'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Gender inequality exists, so it’s understandable that women are joining forces to empower one another. But when does it go from being supportive to morphing into a "women-only" coterie that isolates female workers from their male counterparts? We want equality, ladies, not a sorority.

Women have made huge strides over the decades. “In the United States and a number of other countries, women now actually surpass men in educational achievement,” according to a post on Harvard's blog, and recent studies show that women are also giving men a run for their money in the business world. Kudos to females who didn’t take “no” for an answer and who fought for an education -- because it worked! How about all those mothers who are defying the odds and successfully returning to the workforce post-baby, juggling a family and a career?

Thankfully, women aren’t just sitting around complaining about injustices; they’re turning it into fuel for their fire to achieve their goals. However, females seem to be setting themselves back in their efforts by promoting segregation instead of equality between genders. Just look at all of the sites, organizations, and blogs in existence today that are for women and women only.
...
Women-only offerings can be beneficial as stepping-stones for women to ease back into the working world and possibly establish a support system, but as far as a long-term solution, we hesitate to say it’s a viable (or wise) option for women seeking gender equality once and for all.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Ladies, gather round. We have a problem.

The problem is men. They are in crisis. Dreadful things are afoot for them, and they need our help.

Despite 6,000 years of patriarchy, despite the fact a mere 6.2 per cent of countries have a woman in charge, despite being boss of all major world religions, most businesses and all our current wars, men are not happy.
...
Anyway, men have started a campaign for some long-overdue recognition. It’s called International Men’s Day and it happens every November 19.

Now, I know there may be some among the sisterhood who’d complain they’ve already got the other 364 days a year. And they’d have a point.
...
We should support anything which might, one day, lead men who father children and shirk responsibility to shoulder half the moral and financial burden of their own behaviour.

We should throw ourselves behind a day that might prompt men into speaking out about rape, and perhaps taking a day off from it.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The men's rights movement, which has gained new visibility in recent years thanks to the Internet, is often viewed as a lunatic fringe of women haters. Unfortunately, quite a few websites in the so-called "manosphere" do their best, or worst, to earn this reputation. But feminists (of both sexes) who rightly criticize misogynistic men's rights activists tend to either dismiss men's issues altogether or argue that the best remedy for male-specific problems is feminism itself -- since it challenges all sexism.

In theory, that may be true; quite a few feminists, including Betty Friedan in "The Feminine Mystique" 50 years ago, have argued that men should be freed from gender-role pressures. In practice, however, the women's movement has been mostly unsympathetic or hostile to claims of anti-male sexism (except on a few issues such as parental leave, where benefits for men directly benefit women).

Thus, women's groups, including the National Organization for Women, have opposed expanding the rights of divorced fathers, despite evidence that in this area, men tend to get the short end of the stick. When efforts to combat domestic violence have led to more arrests of female perpetrators, the typical feminist response has been to claim that battered women are getting arrested for defending themselves and to demand action to reduce arrests of women. Reports on gender bias in schools sponsored by groups such as the American Association of University Women have downplayed alarming trends of boys lagging behind in most areas of academic achievement.
...
No less important, while feminists denounce misogyny on the Internet, few have challenged anti-male hate speech from feminist blogs -- sometimes defended as a response to oppression.

Article here. Excerpt:

'My first thought when I heard that there was an International Men’s Day was to sigh and roll my eyes. It was only a matter of time. The reaction when people from an oppressed group set up an event or day to celebrate the achievements that have been made despite this, and to inspire people to continue to tackle inequality then this is the result.
...
The theme for this year’s International Men’s Day is ‘Keeping Men and Boys Safe’ focusing on five key challenges:

Article here. Excerpt:

'Do men face discrimination? I don't mean gay men or black men or poor, uneducated men or even short men. Or, come to think of it, the many judged "typical boys" every day, but just men? All men.
...
In the past year a website has been set up explaining what an international men's day should do in the UK. The campaign's objectives include promoting male role models, celebrating the contribution that men make, highlighting discrimination against men and the inequalities that men and boys face and thus improving gender relations and gender equality.

Article here. Excerpt:

'No parent would deny there are differences between their sons and daughters, so educator Michael Reist wonders why Ontario insists on an educational model that has traditionally treated them as if they learned the same way.

The bestselling author was visiting Windsor Monday to conduct a seminar for the Greater Essex County District School Board on just how significant those learning differences can be and how to stop male students falling further behind in academics.

Do schools better suit girls?

“It’s a huge generalization, but I think it is true,” Reist said. “To treat everyone the same is to treat them unfairly sometimes.”

The Munk Debate report on the gleefully asked "Are men obsolete?" question, debated by four women exclusively, is here. The result was, of course, foregone. These kinds of male-bashing events have been held for years on college campuses. Never be the least surprised at the "conclusion".

Doris Lessing has died. From a 2001 article:

'The novelist Doris Lessing yesterday claimed that men were the new silent victims in the sex war, "continually demeaned and insulted" by women without a whimper of protest.

Lessing, who became a feminist icon with the books The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook, said a "lazy and insidious" culture had taken hold within feminism that revelled in flailing men.

Young boys were being weighed down with guilt about the crimes of their sex, she told the Edinburgh book festival, while energy which could be used to get proper child care was being dissipated in the pointless humiliation of men.

"I find myself increasingly shocked at the unthinking and automatic rubbishing of men which is now so part of our culture that it is hardly even noticed," the 81-year-old Persian-born writer said yesterday.'

Article here. Excerpt

'A company widely criticised for seeming to have an all female workforce - with the exception of an all male senior management team - has defended its hiring practices.

Cellular Solutions, who describe themselves as the "leading communications provider to south-east England", were at the centre of a gender row this week.

Some 31 employees illustrated on the 'Meet The Staff' page of their website were all young, seemingly attractive women - whereas their four strong senior management team were all men.'

---

Relatedly: UK threatens firms with gender quotas as women’s appointments fall