Article here. Excerpt:

'This is really about the lost and degraded role of the male in today's western society. Two generations of young men have been instructed through school and culture that they are the "useless" and "dangerous" sex, not needed for much more than sperm donation; that they are predators; that they will have a diminished role in society, as rightly they should, given their sub-human perception and actions. So the boys on the margins, those whose father is not around, or worse, around and a menace, grow isolated, resentful and psychotic.

Young men are being shoved aside and out of many areas of main stream society. They are living up to the expectations that have been drilled into them since they could toddle across a room. Those expectations are mostly negative. Men, it is insisted, must change, must become more like women...or something. But they must not be male in the traditional sense, and in American culture that traditional sense used to mean honor, sacrifice and courage.'

Email reported here. Excerpt:

'We allowed our young boys to play violent murdering video games.  These types of games are the same ones the military uses to train soldiers.  But they are being played by very, very young kids in dark rooms all over the country.  You want to ban something, ban those.  We have overlooked the devastating effects on all children of not having a father in the house.  And we have ignored and not helped boys with their mental illness.  We've hyperventilated endlessly over girls and their eating disorders, image issues, self-esteem, sex, blah, blah, blah, but we have most totally ignored the mental challenges that boys face.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Jill at Feministe reopens the ongoing Good Men Project battles with an excellent post and article about the reason that perpetuating rape myths is so very, very bad and not, contrary to GMP’s defensive posturing (when they aren’t fundraising on how excellent they are at pissing off feminists) about “dialogue”. In sum, when we perpetuate the myth that rapists are just nice guys who are confused about consent, rapists realize they can rape, claim confusion, and escape justice. Which is why the self-defined rapists that GMP gave voice to did, in fact, claim confusion. Imagine!

Article here. Excerpt:

'Fathers plan to launch a petition in a bid to save what they claim is a unique group for dads and their children.

Dads Unlimited is a drop-in activity service held at the Stanley children and families centre, in Teddington, every Saturday morning, for about 15 fathers and their children.

The group were told that the weekly service would stop because Richmond Council will cut funding to the group from March 31 next year.

Father of two Rajesh Ruparelia works late in central London during the week and the group was the only chance he got to spend quality time with his children and do a range of activities.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Barnardo's claims young men are often treated as "invisible" and some policies are actively driving fathers away from their children.

Support services are "mother centred" and leave young fathers feeling "worthless and marginalised", a report from Barnardo's and other groups says.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'"Certain negative effects of a father's death can't be compensated for by the mother or other relatives," said Mary Shenk, assistant professor of anthropology in MU's College of Arts and Science. "The loss of a father can result in lower adult living standards for the bereaved children. Not only is a child emotionally affected, but the lack of a father's earning power can cause children to get married younger or drop out of school in order to work."

Recognizing the importance of fathers to adolescents could lead to improvements in aid programs for youths who have lost their fathers. If Shenk's research were expanded to collect more data, she contends it could be used to help develop an evaluation system that would measure the degree of risk that children face from the loss of their fathers. In poorer regions of the world, a measurement tool could help aid organizations to prioritize children who have the greatest need of assistance.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Yesterday, during a cable news discussion of gun violence and the Newtown school shooting, I dared mention a taboo truism. During a conversation on MSNBC’s “Up With Chris Hayes,” I said that because most of the mass shootings in America come at the hands of white men, there would likely be political opposition to initiatives that propose to use those facts to profile the demographic group to which these killers belong. I suggested that’s the case because as opposed to people of color or, say, Muslims, white men as a subgroup are in such a privileged position in our society that they are the one group that our political system avoids demographically profiling or analytically aggregating in any real way. Indeed, unlike other demographic, white guys as a group are never thought to be an acceptable topic for any kind of critical discussion whatsoever, even when there is ample reason to open up such a discussion.'

---
David Sirota on Wikipedia

Article here. Excerpt:

'One of my great hopes for a Barack Obama administration — and thus one of my personal disappointments — was that he would use his bully pulpit to emphasize the importance of a two-parent family, and especially of fathers, to children's well-being.

Few understand better than the president the value of a present and involved father. Much of his literary work and his examined life pertains to his own absent father. By his example, he has certainly demonstrated his own commitment to parenting — and his family is a source of pride for all Americans. But the true story of fatherlessness in this country can't be repeated often or forcefully enough.

This is not a new story.

Children who grow up without fathers tend to fall into patterns of destructive behavior — from drug use and truancy to early promiscuity, delinquency and, in too many cases, incarceration. Children raised in fatherless homes are also more likely to grow up in poverty, which is no fault of their mothers but is a fact.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Many of us whose work touches on the subject of masculinity and violence have long been frustrated by the failure of mainstream media -- and much of progressive media and the blogosphere as well -- to confront the gender issues at the heart of so many violent rampages like the one on December 14 in Connecticut.

My colleagues and I who do this type of work experience an unsettling dichotomy. In one part of our lives, we routinely have intense, in-depth discussions about men's emotional and relational struggles, and how the bravado about "rugged individualism" in American culture masks the deep yearning for connection that so many men feel, and how the absence or loss of that can quickly turn to pain, despair, and anger. In these discussions, we talk about violence as a gendered phenomenon: how, for example, men who batter their wives or girlfriends typically do so not because they have trigger tempers, but rather as a means to gain or maintain power and control over her, in a (misguided) attempt to get their needs met.

Article here. Excerpt:

'He was born in Chadderton, Greater Manchester, in March 2010. His parents, filled with the joy, hope and optimism of new parenthood, named him Goodluck. When he was only 27 days old, a midwife called Grace Adeyele accepted £100 to hack at his tiny penis with a pair of scissors. The baby screamed so loud his mother had to look away. Adeyele dabbed the ragged wound with olive oil, dressed it with a small bandage and left him to bleed. He died the next day from his wounds. As if the short life and tragic death of Goodluck Caubergs is not shocking enough, consider that his case is not unique. Earlier this year an inquest in London recorded a verdict of accidental death, having heard how Angelo Ofori-Mintah died after being circumcised at home. The rabbi faced no charges.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Joyce Maxine Gregory, 35, of Ohio, was arrested for allegedly castrating a man with her bare hands.

The incident took place in Shelby, Ohio early in the morning at around 5 a.m. during an argument between Gregory and her lover, 59, whose name has not been released. Apparently the man attempted to flee the house he was sharing with Gregory, and was calling 911 while outside when Gregory rushed the man, squeezing his genitals.

Reports indicate that she squeezed the man's genitals so hard that she popped one of the man's testicles out of the scrotum.'

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which is being discussed by House Leader Cantor and VP Biden, could include this proposed definition: “sexual assault means any nonconsensual sexual act proscribed by Federal, tribal or State law, including when the victim lacks the capacity to consent.”

Due to changes in state laws, innocent men have been convicted of sexual assault and imprisoned, even though there was no DNA, no witnesses, and no forensic evidence. Learn more here: http://saveservices.org/innocence

Do we really want VAWA to shift the burden of proof to the defendant? No law should remove the presumption of innocence.

Call House Leader Eric Cantor right now! (202) 225-2815 Tell him to restore the Presumption of Innocence in VAWA!

Thank you for your attention to this matter,

Teri Stoddard, Program Director
Stop Abusive and Violent Environments
www.saveservices.org

Article here. Excerpt:

'Fathers 4 Justice: The First Protest Celebrating Ten Years 1) ”On 17 December 2002, O’Connor* and a small group of supporters staged their first protest by storming the Lord Chancellor’s Office dressed as Father Christmas.”

Source:
1) WikiPedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fathers_4_Justice

2) A Short History of Fathers 4 Justice by Nick Langford, page 14
http://www.fathers-4-justice.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/A-Short-History-of-Fathers4Justice1.pdf '

Article here. (The FT has a login challenge unless you click over to it from Google. So the thing to do here is copy some text from the quote below, search for it on Google and click the link that leads to the story.) Excerpt:

'While women hold relatively few senior positions in South Korean business and politics, Ms Park has sought to use her gender – as well as her political experience – as a key selling point.

Her campaign banners and television advertisements feature the slogan: “A prepared female president”, and she has referred to her sex increasingly frequently as the election has drawn closer.

Ms Park, daughter of the military dictator Park Chung-hee, would follow previous Asian female heads of government such as Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan and Indira Gandhi of India, who were also children of former leaders.'

“Faced with the possibility of another global economic crisis next year, we should now establish a feminine, motherly leader who may sacrifice all for the sake of the people,” Ms Park, 60, said last month.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Yet until very recently the fact that mass murder is an essentially all-male phenomenon got almost no attention. Ironically, we are so accustomed to the idea that violence is gendered male that we don’t even notice that it is — unless we force ourselves to focus on something that seems so natural that it’s normally invisible to us.

As feminists have pointed out, if we define “human nature” as “what men do” we will treat male violence as merely violence, as opposed to a very gender-specific behavior. If, when considering violence in our society, we were to turn being a man into a marked category, we would not ask questions like “why is America so violent?” but rather questions like “why are men so violent?”'