Article here. Excerpt:

'The health and education editor of the student newspaper at one of Canada’s most prestigious universities has advised the world that Movember — the month-long pledge by men to grow hair above the upper lip to support men’s health awareness — is “sexist, racist, transphobic, and misinformed.”

In his 1,120-word essay in The McGill Daily, Ralph Haddad calls “the idea of suggesting that men show solidarity with each other by growing moustaches” to raise awareness about prostate cancer and other issues “completely absurd.”
...
The English and cultural studies major argues that Movember “implies an archaic view of gender that implies that only a male/female gender binary exists, and that you aren’t really a man if you don’t necessarily identify with that binary.”

He asks: “How are people who do not identify with that binary and have a prostate supposed to partake in this cause?”

Article here. Excerpt:

'College men should have their sexual partners send them a text message before they get down to business to avoid a false rape charge, according to Roxanne Jones, a former vice president at ESPN.

Jones offered this bit of advice in an op-ed published by CNN Tuesday, in which she focuses on combating "stupid girls" and discloses that she gave her son 300 condoms when he went off to college.

Jones writes:

"Never have sex with a girl unless she's sent you a text that proves the sexual relationship is consensual beforehand. And it's a good idea to even follow up any sexual encounter with a tasteful text message saying how you both enjoyed being with one another -- even if you never plan on hooking up again.

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'A Winter Haven, Fla., mom is accused of shooting and killing her daughter while the girl held her 4-month-old daughter in her arms.

The Orlando Sentinel reports that Adele Bing, 52, told police she shot her daughter in a case of mistaken identity and that authorities should lock her up "for good" according to an arrest report.

Ruby Bing went to her mom's house on Monday night. Adele Bing told authorities her 26-year-old daughter was banging and kicking her door. Bing thought the person at the door was her boyfriend, whom she had just had a fight with. Bing armed herself with a .22 caliber gun, opened the door and shot her daughter in the chest, authorities said.'

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'(Reuters) - A Montana bride accused of killing her new husband by pushing him off a cliff at Glacier National Park had spoken of killing her mother and stepfather in the weeks before her June wedding, federal prosecutors said in legal documents.

U.S. prosecutors say 22-year-old Jordan Graham was unhappy in her new marriage and deliberately shoved her husband of eight days off a rock ledge during an argument while hiking a steep trail on July 7.

She was indicted last month on charges of first- and second-degree murder in the death of Cody Johnson, 25. Her attorneys have said his death was an accident.

Prosecutors, in filings in U.S. District Court in Missoula, said they plan to produce evidence at next month's trial that Graham made statements about killing her mother and stepfather about five weeks before Johnson plunged to his death.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'When it comes to the culture that encourages girl-on-girl bullying, punk-rock legend and feminist activist Kathleen Hanna* doesn't mince words. "It's always about taking the scraps off of the man's table. It's like we're just eating off the floor," said Hanna, former frontwoman of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre and current frontwoman of The Julie Ruin.

In a Nov. 25 interview on HuffPost Live, Hanna explained exactly why sexism is so damaging -- not just to women, but to men as well. She told host Ricky Camilleri:

"Sexism hurts everyone. It hurts men in the fact that a lot of men are put in this position where the only way they know how to bond with each other is through racism or sexism or homophobia. And they don't know how to actually have real friendships. And I think that can be similar with women. The only way that they know how to bond with each other is through this viscousness towards other women and towards other groups of people that are different than themselves."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The December issue of the Atlantic features a grand roundup of studies on "How Women Change Men." The results presented will probably not explode your brain with wonder. Most of the studies basically confirm that our interactions with specific people shape our beliefs about the categories - ethnic, gender, etc. - those people belong to.

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'Female directors are better for their companies and shareholders because they are less likely to engage in overpriced takeovers or empire-building, a study suggests.

Firms with more women on their corporate boards will pay less on average for their acquisitions because they take a more prudent approach to business deals.
...
For every female board member companies also attempted 7.6 per cent fewer takeover bids, they reported in a new paper to be published in the Journal of Corporate Finance.

The results suggest that women demand higher promised returns on their investment when evaluating business deals and are less likely to sanction rash bids, researchers found.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Britain, then: Lawrence of Arabia remakes the desert battlefield.

Britain, now? It’s raining “men deserts.”

“The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) reports that an increasing number of British children are growing up with hardly any male influence,” the Call Me Stormy Weblog notes. “In some areas, the problem has reached such high levels that they have been tabbed ‘men deserts,’ according to the report,” which aired on Britain’s Sky News channel:

[ EMBEDDED VIDEO ]

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'The Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem rejected an appeal Monday by a Netanya woman fined NIS 500 ($140) per day for refusing to circumcise her son, as is required by Jewish law (halacha).

The penalty was initially levied by a rabbinical court in Netanya earlier this year at the request of the woman’s estranged husband who has demanded that the circumcision take place. The two are reportedly undergoing divorce proceedings, and the court stated that it believes her refusal was part of some ploy to save her marriage.

The woman’s lawyer claimed that the rabbinical court had no authority to order the woman to circumcise her son, who is now a year old.

“I’ve been exposed to a lot of material regarding circumcision and I have decided not to circumcise my son,” the woman, who has not been identified, told Channel 2 News Monday evening.

Article here. Excerpt:

'New figures show the number of visible minorities in Canadian prisons has increased by 75 per cent in the past decade, while the number and proportion of inmates who are Caucasian has declined significantly.

As well, Canada’s prison population is now at its highest level ever, even though the crime rate has been decreasing over the past two decades. Ten years ago, the number of inmates in federal prisons was close to 12,000. It’s now more than 15,000.

These are just some of the statistics expected to be examined Tuesday, when the annual report of Correctional Investigator of Canada Howard Sapers is tabled in Parliament. His report is widely expected to be a scathing indictment of federal correctional policy.

“You cannot reasonably claim to have a just society with incarceration rates like these,” Sapers said Sunday in a speech he gave at a church in Toronto.

Article here. Excerpt:

'In what started as a pleasant dream, this poet vanquished words like “duodenum” with ease.

At 30 seconds, however, a six-letter word really gets him going.
...
and I hope that one day
I can grow up to be as great a father
as she was for me
you did not ask me spell deadbeat sir...
but if you want dead beat here it is:
f-a-t-h-e-r, d-a-d, d-a-d-d-y, p-o-p
p-o-p-s, if you want the slang
you asked me to spell father
and father is,
always has been
and always will be spelled
m-o-t-h-e-r'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The characters populating Michael Kimmel’s new book, “Angry White Men,” are familiar types: Rush Limbaugh’s ditto­heads, neo-Nazis, wife beaters, rampaging shooters and the divorced rageaholics of the men’s rights movement. Crowded together under one banner, they make for a scary and unpleasant lot: full of fury and blaming everyone but themselves for their problems. Mostly, they blame women: ex-wives, would-be girlfriends, the phantom black women who stole their jobs. The editor of a men’s rights website proclaims, “The real question here is not whether these women deserve the business end of a right hook, they obviously do, and some of them deserve one hard enough to leave them in an unconscious, innocuous pile on the ground.”

Kimmel, a sociologist at Stony Brook University in New York, is unusually adventurous for an academic. As he did in his last book, “Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men,” here, he ventures into unfamiliar territory and finds himself engaged in the kinds of conversations he is unlikely to have at department meetings. At a gun show in Shippensburg, Pa., Kimmel passes time with a guy he calls “Rick,” who mans the K.K.K. table and says what you would imagine such a person would say about the black man in the White House. At a batterer’s intervention group, Kimmel gets into the action, prodding one man who had hit his wife by asking, “Well, why didn’t you just pick up a knife and stab” her?
...

Article here. Excerpt:

'Nancy Fraser's key point applies now with the gearing up for the US presidential election in 2016. Feminism is mobilized by Hillary Clinton's supporters to sell her presidential bid, but the key point is this: Would a Clinton presidency improve the lot of women in the United States and abroad, and would Clinton be a progressive president?
...
Equality between men and women should lead to the emergence of many women leaders and an increased presence of women in politics. It should therefore lead to an increase in the number of women candidates at all levels of political representation. The fact that a woman is in a position to run for president is thus positive. Does it mean that voting should be restricted to a gender issue? Clinton already has done what George W. Bush and his daddy had done before: amassed money to build a war chest to crush opposition during the primaries. This is also the way Romney eliminated his Republican rivals. In other words, the Money Power sides with a candidate who then outspends and therefore outlasts all others.

In the past, when Clinton talked about a vast "right-wing conspiracy," she and her husband had a lot of enemies on the right who are still around today. Yet the Clintons have made many friends among the 1% and are supported by plutocrats who hardly differ from the fat cats in the Republican camp. In what way could she transform American politics when she already has shown her willingness to play by the rules of plutocracy? Her gender is neither here nor there.

Link here. Excerpt:

'Press Statement
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Washington, DC
November 25, 2013
...
This fight is deeply personal to me. As a prosecutor, I saw firsthand the ravages of violence against women. As a proud father of two daughters, and as a husband to a strong woman who has invested so much of her public passion towards improving the lives of women, I know the difference it makes when women and girls have the opportunity to pursue their full potential and live free of violence. By contrast, gender-based violence not only undermines human rights, but poses significant obstacles to public health, economic and social development, and long lasting peace. It ruptures families. It breeds poverty and instability, and it can prevent women and girls, and their entire communities, from realizing their full potential.

We know we have much work to do. Despite all the collective international outrage, gender-based violence continues with impunity, and on a harrowing scale. Gender-based violence remains an epidemic of global proportions that cuts across every social and economic class, ethnicity, race, religion, and education level. In fact, nearly one-third of women worldwide have experienced some form of physical or sexual violence. That is an unacceptable statistic and must be a wake-up call.

Article here. Excerpt: