Article here. Excerpt:

'Alcohol is the No. 1 date-rape drug. That’s not victim-blaming, or anti-women (let the record show a large portion of male victims have been drinking at the time of their sexual assaults too). It’s simply a fact. The vast majority of campus rapes happen when the rapist, the victim or both are drunk.

And so alcohol education is essential for students of every gender.

Even when willing partners are sober, communication about sex can be fuzzy. We don’t sit down and make a Venn diagram of what we want and don’t want. Once heavy drinking enters the picture, all nuance disappears. Smashed people converse without any give and take and precious little listening, shouting toward each other as if on separate mountaintops in a heavy fog.
...
Binge drinking, whether we’re male, female, straight, gay or one of many shades of gray, dulls our senses and slows reaction times, making it harder to identify our comfort zones until we’re frightfully outside of them.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Jamie Leigh Jones, a young employee for defense contractor KBR in Iraq, captured our national attention when, in 2007, she claimed to have been gang raped by her colleagues and then locked into a shipping container by KBR officials intent on keeping her from going public. Jones' accusations touched on already hovering concerns about powerful defense contractors and the general atmosphere of brutality that stemmed from the war. It felt symbolic of everything that had been going wrong in Iraq. Sen. Al Franken used the case to force the Defense Department to refuse contracts with corporations that mandate arbitration for sexual assault claims instead of allowing employees to sue.
...

Story here. Excerpt:

'A Texas woman was busted plotting to kill the father of her 7-year-old son after she brought the child to meet an undercover cop posing as a hitman and put a down payment on the hit.

Nicolette Beard, 33, was cuffed after she met the undercover officer in a College Station parking lot on Wednesday and gave him $800 of the $4,000 she promised to pay to have her child’s father, Anthony Drymalla, 30, killed, police told the Houston Chronicle.

The two met after a friend of Beard’s alerted cops to the scheme, police said.

Beard brought her son to the meetup, but let a friend bring the boy into a store as she discussed the murder-for-hire plot with the supposed contract killer.
...
She told the officer that she wanted it to look like an accident and prefered if Drymalla’s wife were injured or killed in the rubout. But she needed him dead within a couple of days, police said.

Story here. Excerpt:

'A Covelo woman remains in custody after being arrested for domestic violence three times in 17 days. The latest arrest occurred on Oct. 14 when she was arrested after her boyfriend told deputies she hit him in the head with a beer bottle.
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When deputies questioned the cohabitant, they noted he had a 3 inch lump on the back of his head. The victim told deputies McFadin hit him with a beer bottle. He told deputies they were not arguing at the time and he had no idea what had angered her enough to hit him in the head. He said McFadin also hit him with a garden hose and threw a rock at a female witness. The victim refused further medical attention.

McFadin was booked on domestic assault on Oct. 3 and Sept. 27.

In the Sept. 27 incident she was suspected of striking her boyfriend in the back with a board. At the time of this incident the victim told deputies he and McFadin were arguing when she hit him with the board.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Jackson Katz believes that there is a national crisis in masculinity because young men believe a man should be tough, strong, independent and respected. The US Government is paying him to educate Marines.
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Surely Katz has studied some history. This makes his claim that the modern media is responsible for these very old ideas about manliness even more dissonant. Blaming the modern media for male violence is like holding Martha Stewart accountable for the habits of all women who enjoy cooking and decorating.
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When Katz decided to blame the modern media for these “narrow”definitions of manhood that box men in…ancient Roman, Greek, Norse, Celtic, Japanese, Chinese, Mongolian, Aztec and Native American mythologies that portrayed men in the same way must have slipped his mind.

It would make more sense for Katz to blame the ancient media.

Article here. Excerpt:

'In 1999 Jackson Katz headlined a documentary that powerfully revealed the mask of masculinity, a pretense of stoicism and readiness for violence that many men feel compelled to put on, at least part of the time. The film, Tough Guise: Violence, Manhood, and American Culture, became a staple in classes on gender across the country.

Last week marked the release of Tough Guise 2 and SocImages was given the honor of debuting an exclusive clip from the new film. In the segment below, Katz explains that men aren’t naturally violent but, instead, often learn how to be so. Focusing on socialization, however, threatens to make invisible the socialization agents. In other words, Katz argues, men don’t just learn to be more violent than they otherwise would be—they are actively taught.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Sexism in the workplace is rife, according to a new study commissioned by employment law firm Slater & Gordon. Sixty per cent of women, the report suggests, have had a male colleague behave ‘inappropriately’ towards them. Now, putting aside the obvious point that an employment law firm may have a vested interest in unearthing potential new cases, the report hardly stands up to scrutiny. Do the 1,036 women who participated in the survey represent a cross-section of society or is the data based on self-selection? Are there any editorial processes or judicial procedures in place to decide what does and does not constitute sexism, or is it merely a case of ‘it is if she says it is’? And then there’s the issue of context. In the report, incidents of harassment includes everything from having a colleague putting their hands up a woman’s skirt, to touching their legs or thighs and placing their hand in the small of a woman’s back. Surely there is a difference between your boss randomly groping your breasts and that over-familiar male colleague slapping your thigh after they have told a dirty joke?
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Article here. Excerpt:

'To be or not to be? Circumcised that is. Unfortunately for men, when this question arises, we are too young to have any input.

Circumcision is a surgical procedure that removes the foreskin covering the head of the penis. It’s a practice that has been around for thousands of years dating back to 2400 BC Egypt. In our day, many parents have their sons circumcised within their first few months of life due to culture, religion or personal preferences.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A group of 100 protesters – including many topless women – recently marched the streets of Athens, Ohio chanting, "Blame the system, not the victim" and "Two, four, six, eight, stop the violence, stop the rape." Organized by an Ohio University student organization called "f*ckrapeculture," the protest was designed to bring attention to what the founders believe is a toxic culture of sexism and sexual violence infecting their campus.

F*ckrapeculture cofounder Claire Chadwick explained to the campus newspaper, "The name of our organization and the statements that we've made are loud. But it's because we need to be heard." But saying something loudly does not make it true or just.

... However, as universities reexamine their sexual assault policies, administrators should be wary of the demands of these "rape culture" activists. Not only is their movement built on a foundation of dubious statistics and a distorted view of masculinity, but it has already led to policies that have proved devastating to those who have been falsely accused.
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Unfortunately, Warner is not alone in his grievances. Across the country, students accused of sexual assault are regularly tried before inadequate and unjust campus judiciaries. At most schools, cases of sexual misconduct are decided by a committee of as few as three students, faculty members or administrators. At Swarthmore College, volunteers are now being solicited via email to serve on the Sexual Assault and Harassment Hearing Panel. Such a panel is far more likely to yield gender violence activists than impartial fact finders. In a court of law, we rely on procedural safeguards to ensure unbiased jury selection and due process. But on the college campus, these safeguards have vanished.
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Article here. Excerpt:

'KITCHENER, Ont. - An Ontario woman accused of poisoning two young kids in her care has now been charged in the alleged poisonings of six babies and toddlers, including a newborn, as well as an adult.

Police said Friday the new charges come as a result of their investigation into the woman, who ran a home daycare in Kitchener, Ont., from 2009 to 2011.

With the new charges, she is now accused in the alleged poisonings of eight children and a 32-year-old adult, all residents of Kitchener, or Guelph, Ont.

Police allege a suspect gave them an over-the-counter eye care product containing Tetrahydrozoline that if ingested can cause abnormal drowsiness, low blood pressure, respiratory problems and decreased heart rates, especially in young children.
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Detectives discovered that another child who had been under the woman's care in July 2010 had similar symptoms, and recovered after a few days in hospital, according to police.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Oxford University will penalise basketball teams playing in an inter-college league unless they have at least one woman in.

The college basketball league introduced the gender quota in a bid to get more young women playing the sport.

But team captains say they struggle to recruit female students and that the new rules - which award one point for a win with an all-male team but three points for a win by a mixed team - are unfair.
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League coordinator Zoe Fannon, who imposed the quota, said the move was necessary to because many women at the university “didn’t know how to go about” taking up basketball.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'If the goal is to reduce or eliminate rape, getting men to stop raping would seem the logical solution. But this would involve an honest conversation about our devotion to a warped and toxic vision of masculinity, sex and power that would completely uproot the current social order. It’s easier to just tell women to stop drinking.

Our unwillingness to confront men lets this behavior, born of a sense of entitlement and misplaced ideas of what constitutes power, go unchecked. If we stopped blaming binge drinking (or short skirts, or too-high heels, etc.) we could concentrate on having men not just understand that “no means no,” and that all forms of sexual contact require consent, but also learn to reject that force, domination and coercion are natural markers of masculinity and manhood. Until we reckon with those concepts, women will continue being expected to prevent their own rapes.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Authorities at the University of Northern Iowa said an alleged sexual assault reported at the ROTH dorm in September never happened.

Officers with UNI’s police department began their investigation after a female student told them she had been attacked by two men in her room around 2:30 a.m. Sept. 15.
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According to court records, in September Richmann told officers that two men followed her into her room, robbed her and sexually assaulted her. UNI put out a campus-wide alert with a description of the suspects.

Investigators were able to identify the men suspected in the incident, and they told officers there had been consensual sexual activity, court records state. Richmann later gave a statement admitting the sex was consensual, records state.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'AN EASTER Ross woman who cheated on her boyfriend then cried rape after having sex with a man she met in a pub was jailed for 14 months at Tain Sheriff Court.

Sentencing Charlene Seel, Sheriff Jamie Gilchrist said she used the man for sex then stigmatised him when she falsely accused him of raping her.

Seel (22), of Kirkside, Alness had earlier pleaded guilty to falsely claiming to have been raped by the man on November 26 or 27, in 2011 at an address in Invergordon.

But in court Sheriff Gilchrist said the social work reports caused him concern because although Seel had pleaded guilty, what was contained in the reports amounted to a plea of not guilty and she had shown no remorse.

Seel’s solicitor Alison Foggo said the Sheriff must ignore the terms of the report.'

Article here. Excerpt:

"While wolf whistling and pay inequality might rankle, it seems that not all sexist behaviour is seen as a bad thing, according to a new study.

'Benevolent sexism', where women are treated as helpless entities in need of protection, is seen in a positive light by many - particularly those women with a strong sense of entitlement.