On Monday, President Obama kicked off National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Unfortunately, his proclamation leaves much to be desired.(1) Even though men and women abuse each other at similar rates(2), the focus is on women.

How many men have to get beaten with sledgehammers(3), have their penises cut off(4), get poisoned(5), or get run over with cars(6) by their female partners before the White House takes notice?

We say, "Enough is enough!"

Contact Pres. Obama via Danielle Borrin: Danielle_Borrin-at-ovp.eop.gov. Demand that he tell the truth, the entire truth about domestic violence.

Oh behalf of every male victim suffering in silence or struggling to have his voice heard, thank you.

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

Article here. Priorities: Implementing Title IX in the STEM fields in colleges vs. ensuring our veterans are getting adequate healthcare. What's winning out? Excerpt:

'The Department of Veterans Affairs said it is on track to process 1 million disability claims this year.

With the war in Iraq over and the one in Afghanistan winding down, the VA is sorting through a backlog of more than 860,000 disability claims from American veterans. More than a quarter of those vets -- 228,000 -- have been waiting for a year or more.

Rioux has been trying to get his disability claim fully processed since January 2011, shortly after he returned from Afghanistan.

The litany of delays includes lost paperwork, long wait times for appointments and erroneous lab results. At one point, a doctor prescribed him medication for a bladder infection he didn't have; he'd never given as much as a urine sample.

Story here. Excerpt:

'“The Partridge Family” star Danny Bonaduce is recovering after a crazed fan bit him during a meet-and-greet in Washington on Friday.

The actor was hosting an event at a local casino when a woman approached him and asked to give him a kiss.

He tells local publication The News Tribune of Tacoma, “She said, ‘I loved you on ‘he Partridge Family.’ Can I kiss you?’”

But when Bonaduce agreed, she sunk her teeth into his cheek for several seconds until security officials were able to pry her off him.
...
The woman was taken into custody and the following morning cops stopped by the 53 year old’s hotel room to photograph his wound for their official police report.

Bonaduce does not plan on pressing charges, however, his wife Amy reveals her husband is on antibiotics to stave off a possible infection.'

Petition here. Note you do not need to be Jewish to sign this petition. Excerpt:

'Within Judaism, the Brit Milah, a ritual circumcision performed on the eighth day of life, is considered a central rite.

Reform Judaism, progressive in many other ways, has yet to re-evaluate this practice, in spite of clearly compelling evidence of its medical and ethical shortcomings.

We therefore petition the leadership of the Union for Reform Judaism and the Central Conference of American Rabbis, as principals of the reform Judaism movement within the United States of America, to recognize these shortcomings, and to sanction alternative religious ceremonies that are spiritually relevant but also medically and ethically responsible.'

Article here. (free registration required) Excerpt:

Article here. Speaks for itself. Excerpt:

'U.S. President Barack Obama issued a new executive order last week to fight human trafficking, touting his administration's handling of the issue.

"When a little boy is kidnapped, turned into a child soldier, forced to kill or be killed -- that's slavery," Obama said in a speech at the Clinton Global Initiative. "It is barbaric, and it is evil, and it has no place in a civilized world. Now, as a nation, we've long rejected such cruelty."

But for the third year in a row, Obama has waived almost all U.S. sanctions that would punish certain countries that use child soldiers, upsetting many in the human rights community.

Article here. Excerpt:

'According to the board, performances varied by race, ethnicity, gender, school location and other factors, such as parents’ educational attainment. But the most notable achievement gap was between males and females in both eighth and 12th grades.

On average, female students in the eighth grade scored 160; their male counterparts scored 140.

On average, female students in the 12th grade scored 157; males scored 143.

Education analyst Susan Pimentel, one of the team presenting the test scores on Friday’s NAEP conference call, said that while this test cannot determine cause and effect, there are some clues as to why the gap exists. Students were surveyed to find out some additional information about them as they took the test. Among those surveyed, said Pimentel, 53% of girls agreed or strongly agreed that “Writing is one of my favorite activities”, but only 35% of the boys felt that way. Since writing improves with practice, she said this is “an important variable to observe.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'A Family Court judge has awarded full custody of a young child to her adopted mother, instead of her biological mom, in what is believed to be the first such New York state case involving a same sex couple.

Manhattan real estate attorney Allison Scollar defeated the little girl’s biological mom, Emmy-winning TV producer Brook Altman in a bitter court battle, the Post has learned.
...
Manhattan Judge Gloria Sosa-Lintner said, “Although . . . Altman is the biological parent, this does not give her an automatic priority over the adoptive parent. This is analogous to a father getting custody of his own child, where only the best interests of the child are paramount.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'It is ironic, I suppose, that the Jewish and Muslim community who cannot make common cause on any meaningful issue should come together on this comedy show. To make an anti-circumcision law based on the child’s inability to choose is insanity: a child by definition cannot choose anything—whether breastfeeding or tonsillectomy. But so long as a child has parents who within common-sense parameters act in his best interests as they see them to be, we do not need judges or governments to make decisions in loco parentis. Because this is what the battle over the centimetres of foreskin is about—not Muslims and Jews versus anti-Semites but the age-old battle between individual liberty and statism—in this case the individual family unit and the state. I’ve watched statism conceal itself in many a Trojan horse: multiculturalism, feminism, human rights and so on. This time children’s rights is the thin end of the wedge. And somewhere in Germany’s dank caves, the anti-Semites may howl but they are not the predator.

Article here. Excerpt:

'NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (WAVY) - Taxpayer dollars were wasted. Precious police time was abused. It was all because a Newport News teen lied about being raped.

"It's very frustrating because we have actual legitimate cases that come through our unit," said Detective Amber Rogers of the Newport News Special Victims Unit.

On Monday, Sept. 24 Rogers had no reason to believe a 15-year-old told her anything but the truth.

"She alleged that an unknown male, unknown race, abducted her from the bus stop, drug her to the woods behind the bus stop, and then sexually assaulted her," Rogers said.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'IRVINE – An Irvine man who spent a night in jail after being accused of domestic violence by a woman who was later charged with numerous counts of burglary, kidnapping and false arrest is suing the city of Irvine for $150,000.

The plaintiff, businessman Deukman Lee, alleges that Irvine police officer Joseph Jun did not follow proper law-enforcement protocol and failed to take reasonable, available steps to check the credibility of the accuser. The city denies the allegations.

The woman, Sunmee Kim, gave Jun a false name and didn't show identification at the scene of the Dec. 13 incident on Stanford Avenue, according to both the lawsuit and Irvine police. When asked for identification, she said the plaintiff had taken and hidden her purse.

Kim, 39, told Jun that she and the plaintiff were engaged to be married, that she had lived in his home for a month, that she was pregnant and that he had hit her 10 times with a wooden practice sword, the lawsuit says.

Article here. Excerpt:

'FRANKLIN — The last time Marianne Murphy, Mim Jarema, and Joan Bannon were at a Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association meeting seeking to protect girls from boys who played field hockey, they left disappointed. A 10-1 vote in June 2011 went against the field hockey coaches from Walpole, Reading, and Hopkinton.

But if you thought the issue was over, think again.

Article here. Excerpt:

'IT IS no secret that support for Mitt Romney and Barack Obama breaks down differently among men and women. But while this “gender gap” is typically discussed in terms of Mr Romney’s stance on so-called "women’s issues", such as abortion rights and contraception coverage, the evidence indicates that it actually reflects partisan differences over the government's social-welfare programmes. Moreover, the source of the gender gap has less to do with women and more to do with men moving away from the Democratic Party.

If the gender gap is defined as the difference between men and women’s support for a candidate, most polls currently show it to be about ten percentage points for Mr Romney, who does better with men. (John McCain, by comparison, faced a gap of about five points in 2008.) Women have been consistently more likely than men to give the president higher marks, and there is evidence that more women than men have swung into Mr Obama’s column in the last month, helping to fuel a recent bump in the president's poll numbers.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The White House has announced a new set of policies that would step up enforcement of Title IX, explicitly applying the rule to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. Title IX has always applied to all federally funded education programs, but the Department of Education’s new enforcement efforts will “develop consistent and consolidated technical assistance” on Title IX in STEM.

Just as enforcement of Title IX has meant gender quotas on school sports teams, increased enforcement in STEM education will likely lead to artificial enrollment caps aimed at keeping men out of math and science classes. “Title IX isn’t just about sports,” President Obama wrote in Newsweek earlier this year. It’s also about “addressing inequality in math and science education” and “a much broader range of fields, including engineering and technology. I’ve said that women will shape the destiny of this country, and I mean it.”

Link here. Excerpt:

'Despite the significant progress made in reducing violence against women, there is still a long way to go. Young women still face the highest rates of dating violence and sexual assault. In the last year, one in 10 teens have reported being physically hurt on purpose by a boyfriend or girlfriend. One in five young women have been sexually assaulted while they’re in college.

In response to these alarming statistics, Vice President Biden is focusing his longstanding commitment to reducing violence against women specifically on teens and young women ages 16-24. By targeting the importance of changing attitudes that lead to violence and educating the public on the realities of abuse, the Vice President is leading the way in an effort to stop violence against women before it begins.'