John Bercow: women behave better than men in Parliament

Article here. Excerpt:

'John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, has said that women behave better than men in Parliament and revealed that he tries to avoid allowing an unbroken sequence of male politicians to speak in the Commons.

“On the whole women are better behaved in Parliament and on the whole less inclined to be shouty and raucous. There is less of the bar room or Oxford Union Society culture amongst the women but that doesn’t mean they should lose out,” said Mr Bercow.

Speaking today at the International Parliamentary Conference on Gender and Politics held in Westminster at Portcullis House, the MPs’ office building, the Speaker also revealed a little bit about how he chooses who speaks next in Parliament: “Giving one of my secrets away - I wouldn’t normally want to call half a dozen men in a row to speak if I can also see that there are several women standing – so that’s an attitudinal thing on my part. It’s not a quota, but it’s a question of thinking it through.”'

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Where are all the millennial feminists?

Article here. Excerpt:

'Others appreciate feminism but simply don't identify with elements of the movement.

"Extremists are what turn me off from immediately labeling myself as a feminist," said Amelia Vereb, 25, a media relations manager. "What they preach and what I'm actually experiencing, or noticing ... don't always align." She explained that she hasn't actually experienced discrimination in the workplace, though feminists would insist she has. "Considering how terrifying the job market was when I graduated, I feel like I've been able to achieve the type of success that I had hoped for at this point in my life."

In some cases, millennial women said it's silly for men and women to be equal in the workplace when they're biologically dissimilar.

"Why should an employer hire a woman and then pay her for work she isn't doing? A baby isn't a medical emergency," said Rosenblatt, who believes both maternity and paternity leave are unnecessary financial burdens on employers.

Drost put things more bluntly when discussing feminist tactics.

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Australia: Loophole in SA Health elective surgery guidelines allows for "cultural/religious" circumcisions in South Australian public hospitals

Link here. Excerpt (emphasis added):

'APPENDIX 4 - GUIDELINES ON EXCLUDED ELECTIVE SURGERY PROCEDURES

SA Health has endorsed a list of Elective Surgery procedures that will not be performed at South Australian Public Hospitals. This also includes private patients in public hospitals.

A4.1 Excluded Procedures

As of 5 November 2007, the following list of surgical procedures will not be performed in public hospitals in South Australia unless assessed and justified on true clinical grounds or there is no access to a private hospital within one hour from a patient’s usual place of residence.

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A rare breed - the male kindergarten teacher

Article here. Excerpt:

'On a small piece of woodland next to the Technido daycare centre in Karlsruhe, a group of boys noisily build a bush camp out of logs. Amid whoops of glee, they start running around, wildly shooting at each other with sticks.

“Karl, Lennie, the rules are keep the sticks down at belly height,” says teacher Todd Phillips calmly as he walks up to the boys. “No sticks near anyone’s eyes.”

“It's important to have a man here when the warring camps construct their battleground,” Phillips said afterwards, tongue in cheek.

The 47-year-old has been working at the daycare centre looking after children aged between four and six for more than four years.

Phillips, who hails from Florida but has been living in Germany for 15 years, had been working as a graphic designer at an advertising agency. As he became increasingly dissatisfied with his job, he started looking for alternatives and decided that he wanted to work with children.

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'Where the Boys Are'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Why are boys — even those who cultivate college dreams — so prone to underachievement? Explanations abound, but boy advocates say we’ve created a classroom culture that ignores critical boy-girl learning differences and mainly rewards the things girls do well. Bored and disengaged, boys tune out or act out. Too many drop out.

By the time the SAT rolls around, these boys have vacated the school building. They aren’t sharpening No. 2 pencils; they’re mulling the unemployment line.

Feminist groups surely will seize on the latest reading and math scores as proof that girl power is enfeebled, even after years of concerted efforts to work toward gender parity in education.

But this argument doesn’t withstand scrutiny. Of course, we must continue our efforts to help girls achieve. The mother of a son and a daughter, I want a level academic playing field for both boys and girls.

But I’d say right now, the girls are all right. Boys, however, need our targeted attention if they ever are to realize their full potential.

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Ashley Judd for Senate?

Article here. Excerpt:

'On Barack Obama: “I think that he has an incredible devotion to our Constitution.”

On culture:

I believe that the social construction of gender - the cultural beliefs and practices that divide the sexes and institutionalize and normalize the unequal treatment of girls and women, privilege the interests of boys and men, and, most nefariously, incessantly sexualize girls and women - is the root cause of poverty and suffering around the world.

And she’s a fanatical supporter of abortion. Remember when she viciously mocked Rick Santorum?'

In case you need it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Judd

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New PSA lets women Veterans know they've come to "The Right Place"

Link here. Excerpt:

'A new PSA from Women's Health lets women Veterans know they've come to the right place when they choose VA health care.

Watch the video and learn more about VA's ongoing culture change campaign. Read a recent article that expands on the message. See more headlines about women Veterans and Women Veterans Health Care.

Did you know that women are the fastest growing group within the Veteran population? Learn more about the changing face of women Veterans and what VA is doing to meet their health care needs.

This web site provides information on health care services available to women Veterans, including comprehensive primary care as well as specialty care such as reproductive services, rehabilitation, mental health, and treatment for military sexual trauma.

You can also find answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about women Veterans health care.

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"The Heart Grows Smarter"

A NYT OP-Ed piece, so of course if you try to get to it by clicking this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/opinion/brooks-the-heart-grows-smarter.html, you'll be asked to sign in. The way around this is to copy the actual link text:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/opinion/brooks-the-heart-grows-smarter.html

and paste it into the Google search box at Google.com. Then the page link will come up as the first hit and click on that link. Now, you can see the page. Excerpt:

'If you go back and read a bunch of biographies of people born 100 to 150 years ago, you notice a few things that were more common then than now.
...
It wasn’t only parents who were emotionally diffident; it was the people who studied them. In 1938, a group of researchers began an intensive study of 268 students at Harvard University. The plan was to track them through their entire lives, measuring, testing and interviewing them every few years to see how lives develop.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the researchers didn’t pay much attention to the men’s relationships. Instead, following the intellectual fashions of the day, they paid a lot of attention to the men’s physiognomy. Did they have a “masculine” body type? Did they show signs of vigorous genetic endowments?

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No longer taboo, but divorce still damages children: Suffering goes on into adulthood and even old age

Article here. Excerpt:

'Family breakdown is as devastating for today’s children as it was when divorce was a source of social disgrace, a state-backed report warned yesterday.

Even though divorce is no longer considered ‘shameful’ – as it was until the 1970s – the children of broken families continue to suffer destructive effects throughout their lives, the report said.

The paper, produced by a team of senior academics, found that the damage caused to a child by divorce continues to blight his or her life as far as old age.

It said parental separation in childhood was ‘consistently associated with psychological distress in adulthood during people’s early 30s’.

The report added: ‘This seems to be true even across different generations, which suggests that as divorce and separation have become more common, their impact on mental health has not reduced.’'

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F&F: Take Action: Help Pro Se Litigants

Article here. Excerpt:

'Ohio judges confront a growing problem. Increasingly, parents involved in family law disputes are coming to the court without representation. They either cannot afford or choose not to employ attorneys to represent them. Because they are unfamiliar with the rules and procedures of courts, these parents’ attempts to represent themselves often create additional burdens for, and delays in, the courts.

To address this problem, the 2006 Ohio Supreme Court Task Force on Pro Se (self-represented) and Indigent Litigants recommended that the Court develop easily completed forms for a variety of legal issues, including many in family law. The Supreme Court has now drafted a set of proposed forms and has published them for public review and comment.'

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Some Dads Want This Walmart Ad Banned Because It Gives Moms Too Much Credit

Article here. Excerpt:

'The ad shows a "typical" British mom masterminding a family Christmas dinner, exhausting herself in the effort. It's cheesy, heartwarming stuff. The tagline: "Behind every great Christmas there's mum and behind mum there's Asda."

Fathers4Justice, however, objects to the portrayal of the dad in the commercial. His character is portrayed as ineffective and clueless -- a typical "dumb dad" stereotype that has become increasingly common in advertising.

The context here is that when it comes to groceries, women tend to make most of the purchasing decisions; thus grocery ads tend to see things from their point of view. And Fathers4Justice is a media-stunt loving group that believes the law discriminates against men who have split up with the mothers of the their children.'

---
Ed. note: Asda is owned by Walmart.

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Divorced Dads' Rights: Father Fights For Say In Son's DNR Order, Access to Medical Records

Article here. Excerpt:

'While single-parent homes are more common than ever, less than 18 percent of custodial parents are fathers. Jack Frost, President of Father and Families in New York, discussed some of the frustrations of being an active, involved father without full custody on a segment for HuffPost Live.

One of his greatest concerns was not having access to his child's medical records in the early stages of his divorce. His wife made medical decisions concerning his son, including filing a do-not-resuscitate order without his consent.

But when Frost found that he legally had a say in his child's DNR order, he was still met with opposition.

"I told the doctor, I said I wanted the DNR gone. You didn't include me when you filed this. You were supposed to include me and you didn't," Frost said. "She just ignored me."'

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"Can Men Be Shamed Into Marriage?"

Article here. Excerpt:

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Australia: The perils of the Prime Minister's feminist fantasies

Article here. Excerpt:

'The PM's political strategy is clear. An eight-page spread in Marie Claire taps Gillard into a younger demographic -- the 445,000 monthly readers of the magazine are mostly women aged 25 to 39. In fact, much younger women are also being encouraged to join the Gillard gender wars. Well-meaning schoolteachers have started showing Gillard's tirade to their female high school students as evidence that misogyny still happens. Disappointingly, when the YouTube video was played at one school, there was no classroom discussion of the underlying hypocrisy of Gillard's continuing support for Peter Slipper, whose distasteful texts about female genitalia should have required his removal from the Speaker's chair by any fair-minded and consistent feminist. Nor was there any real analysis of the man Gillard accused of being a misogynist.'

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Female "caregiver" sexually assaults bedridden 106-YO woman, threatens retribution of she tells anyone

Article here. WARNING: Both graphic and disgusting! Read no further if you don't have a barf-bucket handy. I wonder what excuse will be made for this "caregiver" based on her "her-ness". Excerpt:

'A female caregiver was arrested today and charged with sexually assaulting a 106-year-old woman in her care, according to cops.

Taquita Lashay Watson, 29, had been providing in-home care to the bedridden victim, according to the Pensacola Police Department. Investigators determined that Watson last month had "used a sexual instrument" on the elderly woman.
...
[Ed.: I am deliberately breaking the 'Read more' section here since the more disgusting stuff follows. This is so the reader can decide for him- or herself if they really want to go on reading.]

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