Article here. Excerpt:

'The socially conservative Family Research Council asked supporters to help it oppose the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act because, the group says, the “real abuse” is how much it will waste taxpayer dollars.

In an email alert on Monday, the FRC decried the VAWA (“which, ironically, is supported by the same administration that wants to put women in front-line combat!”) as an “abuse of taxpayer dollars” that “does more to promote a radical agenda than it does to help women.”

Article here. Excerpt:

'Additionally, proponents of VAWA need to quit demonizing men as a whole. In fact, research shows that husbands — and marriage in general — offer the most protective safe haven for women and their children, compared to any other relationship. The Department of Justice estimates that “women are 62 times more likely to be assaulted by live-in boyfriends than they are by their husbands.” If liberal feminists behind VAWA really cared about the well-being of women, then they would be America’s biggest proponents of marriage between a man and woman.

There is a common consensus that VAWA isn’t effective. A recent national survey conducted by SAVE (Stop Abusive and Violent Environments), a non-profit victim-advocacy organization, shows 69.5 percent of respondents agree it’s time to reform VAWA in order to reduce waste and fraud within the system.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Alex Evans is a seven-year-old second grader at Mary Blair Elementary School in Colorado. Recently, he was suspended for throwing an imaginary grenade while pretending to “rescue the world” from “pretend evil forces.”

Little Alex, it turns out, violated his school’s “absolutes” against fighting and weapons, “real or imaginary.”

So-called “zero tolerance” policies of the sort on display at Mary Blair have long been in place in public schools throughout the country. Alex’s mother said that she thought that they were “unrealistic” for kids her son’s age. She is right as far as she goes. The problem is that she doesn’t go nearly far enough.

Such policies are indeed unrealistic, yet they are unrealistic for people of all ages. Moreover, they aren’t just unrealistic. They are at once idiotic and outrageous: Rather than enable children to become responsible adults, zero tolerance policies threaten to retard this developmental process.

Article here. Excerpt:

'"Teen Mom 2" returns Feb. 18 ... with a cauldron full of hot mess.

The preview for the fourth season opens with a shocking scene of domestic violence. What's most surprising is that the attacker is Kailyn Lowry, the "responsible" "Teen Mom" star, beating on her new boyfriend (now husband) Javi.

But Javi isn't Kailyn's only casualty. After complaining that her ex, Jo, "put his hands on" her, she punches her baby daddy in the face.

But wait, there's more! Jenelle, who like original "Teen Mom" Amber Portwood has been arrested for violent confrontations, is seen tossing a suitcase at who appears to be new BF Gary Head's face and shoving him. She in turn complains, "I have bruises all over my body."'

Link here. Excerpt:

'The 28-year-old woman, who is being held by police, is accused of using a black marker to deface the masterpiece at a recently opened satellite branch of the Louvre in Lens, northern France.

Her motives were unclear but her scrawling of "AE911" had some wondering if she was suffering from delusions involving the 9/11 attacks.
...
The woman would have faced up to seven years in prison and a 100,000 euro ($130,000) fine if found criminally responsible and convicted of defacing a cultural object.
...
In December a Polish man was jailed for two years in Britain for defacing a mural by US artist Mark Rothko at London's Tate Modern gallery.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The flawed feminist notion that women can have it all when it comes to an illustrious fulltime career and raising children can also be applied to the bedroom. Which is it, do you want to be respected between the sheets, or handcuffed to the bed post and whipped?
...
Agreed. However, are we justified in mourning the illusive female orgasm and the larger concern of female sexual neglect, if we as women instead express the opposite sentiment demonstrated by the “Fifty Shades of Grey” phenomenon that has swept the nation?
...
Importantly, as women, we must ask ourselves who exactly is effectuating such standards of male sexual focus? More specifically, are we perhaps perpetuating the harmful standards, such as male dominance and female submission, that we rail against?

Article here. Excerpt:

'KJ Dell’Antonia, lead writer for the New York Times’ Motherlode, wants to know why moms are so much more likely than dads to know all the nitty-gritty details of their children’s lives.

And Bruce Feiler, another Times scribe, has the answer: It’s because mean mommies won’t relinquish control to their poor husbands! “The most significant predictor of dad involvement is the mom’s willingness to give up control and allow the father to do things a slightly different way,” Feiler writes.
...
Are we really going to blame so-called mean moms for the gender gap at home? To say nothing of a culture that presents sharing housework as emasculating (and, apparently, a boner-killer!) and asks CEOs and presidential hopefulsif it’s “responsible” to take on demanding, full-time work so soon after having a child? And really, Bruce Feiler? You’re comfortable giving men a pass on parenting because “When a mother criticizes her partner’s child-care efforts, it causes him to lose confidence and withdraw?” That’s the best you’ve got?'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Neither the Democratic nor the Republican versions of the Violence Against Women Act survived the last Congress. Now Democrats, headed by Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, vow immediate action on a new VAWA that does little to alter current flawed policies on domestic violence. The long hiatus in VAWA authorization represents a golden opportunity to get right what we’ve gotten wrong for so long.
 
VAWA’s detriments are too numerous to deal with here, but surely if we’re going to spend almost half a billion dollars to combat domestic violence, don’t we want a law that actually decreases its incidence?

The sad fact is that, almost 20 years after its first passage, VAWA proponents can point to no evidence of its success at doing so. True, late last year former NOW president Kim Gandy claimed that a recent report by the Department of Justice “showed conclusively” that VAWA has reduced rates of domestic violence. In fact, it’s done no such thing.'

Letter here.

'We need to protect all victims of intimate-partner violence, regardless of gender [“A second chance to protect abused women,” Opinion, Feb. 4].

The most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report on intimate-partner violence found that each year more men (5.36 million) than women (4.74 million) are victims of intimate-partner physical violence (Tables 4.1, 4.2 of full report) and psychological violence (20.5 vs. 16.5 million). Yet here in King County, there are no services for male victims. When I called I was referred to a program for male batterers.

Too often, men are told the programs only serve women, are accused of being the batterer or are laughed at. In one survey by Denise Hines & Emily Douglas, men who phoned the police were arrested more often than the women against whom they sought protection.

Story here. Excerpt:

'(Reuters) - A Florida judge has approved the adoption of a 22-month-old baby girl that will list three people as parents on her birth certificate -- a married lesbian couple and a gay man.

The decision ends a two-year paternity fight between the couple and a friend of the women who donated his sperm to father the child but later sought a larger role in the girl's life.

The ruling means the child's birth certificate will include a biological father and both women as parents in an unusual arrangement approved recently by a Miami-Dade Circuit Court judge.

The women, Maria Italiano, 43, and Cher Filippazzo, 38, had made several unsuccessful attempts to become parents using fertility clinics.
...
Under the judge's decision, the two women will have sole parental rights, although Gerina will be allowed to visit the child. He will not be expected to provide child support.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Two male rape survivors who appear in "The Invisible War," an Oscar-nominated documentary about military sexual assaults, are criticizing the movie's brief focus on male victims as an ironic snub — and, in a fiery diatribe, one of the film's characters says the director "should be ashamed and embarrassed."

It's good to see that this stuff happens to high profile men too, and that it gets at least some attention. Quote:

'ABC News presenter Jeremy Fernandez has described the moment he was kicked off a Sydney bus after enduring verbal racial taunts earlier this morning.

After boarding a State Transit bus to drop his daughter off at preschool, Fernandez was the victim of racist abuse from a woman in her mid-30s with two young children of her own.

He said he endured 15 minutes of racial abuse - where the woman claimed she would drag Mr Fernandez off the bus if he didn't get off. But then it was the bus driver who eventually kicked Mr Fernandez off, claiming it was his fault for the altercation.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Tawana Brawley might finally have become a victim.

Not of former Dutchess County prosecutor Steve Pagones — whom she falsely accused of rape and who is now looking to collect on a defamation judgment he won against her. But of Al Sharpton and lawyers Alton Maddox and C. Vernon Mason, who used her for their own purposes and then left her hanging.

Brawley was a teen who told a lie, reportedly because she feared her abusive stepfather. But Sharpton, Maddox and Mason were adults. They ran with her story and made wild charges against Pagones and others, inflaming racial tensions for personal gain. Pagones, who lost his career and marriage over it, sued all four — and won.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'A bill to give equal custody rights to unwed fathers may be built on good intentions, but the potential for negative unintended consequences is unacceptably high. There are better ways to pursue the goal.

Prime sponsor Sen. Rick Murphy describes the bill, SB 1202, as an effort to address inequity.

“Absentee mothers can come back into the picture after years of absence, disrupt their children from a stable home with their father, and still have all the legal rights and be presumed by law to be the best custodian of the child,” Republican Murphy said by e-mail.

Ironically, that is a mirror image of the scenario envisioned by opponents of this bill. They say it will enable fathers to disrupt the lives of children, including those for whom they previously expressed no interest.

What’s more, advocates for victims of domestic violence say giving a man custody rights based solely on paternity could provide an abusive man with powerful legal leverage after a woman has fled a violent situation.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'True, one of the opponents of the bill, Democratic Sen. Karen Keiser, has been saying that girls are at risk of abuse if forced to tell parents about issues related to their sexuality. "There have been documented cases where young women have been abused, thrown out of the house and in rare cases actually killed," she reiterates to SW. But she says she's never put the blame specifically on dads.

"This is crazy," she says after hearing Backholm's rhetoric. "Young women have also been thrown out of the house by their mothers. It's not a gender issue."

Backholm's way of framing the argument might, however, be a clever way of tapping into the dads' rights movement, which has a host of grievances that spark ardent and bitter feelings, including the way fathers are treated in family court.'