Article here. Excerpt:

'A Bill passed in the Irish government this weekend has historically changed the way women will be represented in the Dáil*.

The Electoral Amendment (Political Funding) Bill 2011 rules that state funding of political parties will be halved unless 30% of parliamentary candidates at the next election are female.

The Bill was triggered by only 15.1% of Irish parliamentarians being women – a figure that is only slightly less than the 22% of women sitting in the House of Commons.'

---
*Dáil Éireann

Article here. Excerpt:

'(CNN) -- In a shocking article on TheAwl.com, author and mother Amy Sohn writes that moms in her affluent Brooklyn neighborhood are going through something called "the 40-year-old reversion." The tedium of raising children, she says, is driving moms in her circle out at night to party to the extreme as if they were 25 again.
...
It's a grim portrait of parenthood and marriage. And cringe-worthy tales of a drunk mom falling down the stairs while leaving a party and a mom who went to third base in the back of a minivan with a man who wasn't her husband could make a person who's thinking about getting pregnant hit the pause button. Sohn's salacious revelations have some people suggesting she made it all up: Her new novel comes out in August, after all. (When I contacted Sohn directly and asked if everything she wrote was true, she referred me to her publicist, who said the author wasn't doing interviews until the book releases.)'

Link here. Excerpt:

'A couple held two young boarders in their central NSW home, bashing and starving them and forcing them to do chores, a jury has been told.

The man and woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, have pleaded not guilty to unlawfully detaining the two young men with intent to obtain advantage and occasioning actual bodily harm.

In his opening address at the Downing Centre District Court in Sydney on Thursday, crown prosecutor John Bowers told the jury the two men - who also cannot be named - were boarders in the home of the couple in central western NSW on two separate occasions between mid-2007 and August 2010.

He said the woman, aged 48, and her male de facto partner, 43, detained and psychologically controlled the men through a "regime of physical and mental abuse over an extended period".'

Vice President Joe Biden has disappointed abuse victims once again. On Tuesday, Biden issued a statement on domestic violence: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/07/31/158921/an-issue-beyond-debate-congress.html. With yet another opportunity to tell the truth about DV, he again only addressed one aspect: women abused by men.

Biden failed to mention intimate partner violence in the LGBT community, and he ignored women's violence towards men. According to Martin Fiebert, PhD of California State University, 286 research studies conducted over the last 30 years show "women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners." http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm

Scanning the news, it's easy to see that women commit DV. On Monday, Terry Dear, OH, was shot in the back by his wife in front of their two small children. Derrick Graham, VA, was hit and drug along a highway by his wife driving an SUV last week.

Article here. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON, Aug 1, 2012 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) -- A leading victim-advocacy group is charging Vice President Joe Biden with spreading one-sided and false information regarding domestic violence. Stop Abusive and Violent Environments says Biden's statement issued Tuesday (1) condones the cycle of violence by ignoring the widespread problem of female abusers and male victims.

Female-initiated aggression is the leading risk-factor for women becoming injured by an intimate partner, reveals a research summary by Sandra Stith, PhD (2). And according to Martin Fiebert, PhD of California State University, 286 research studies conducted over the last 30 years show "women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners" (3).'

Link here. Excerpt:

'“President Obama is moving our country forward by giving women control over their health care,” Secretary Sebelius said. “This law puts women and their doctors, not insurance companies or the government, in charge of health care decisions.”

The eight new prevention-related services are:

Updated: Original posting left out the IA Facebook URL, which is http://www.facebook.com/intactamerica

In just a few short years, we’ve watched the intactivist movement grow from a handful of dedicated people into a vast, thriving network of thousands of activists all over the world—thanks to social media. Between Facebook and Twitter, more and more people are seeing our message every day, and grassroots organizations like the NOCIRC centers and The Whole Network are working on the ground across the country, helping people take action.

At last week’s International AIDS Conference in Washington, DC, Intact America met with hundreds of medical professionals and global health activists, getting the word out that circumcision does not prevent AIDS. That’s what activism is all about—communication, education, and effecting change.

By getting involved in the intactivist movement, you really are changing the way America views circumcision. We have made the world hear us... so let’s get even louder! Let’s use Facebook to do what it does best: get more people talking, more people aware, more people educated, more people joining the ranks of intactivism.

So according to this article and video, not only do men commit mass murder 10 times as often as women, when women do it, it's for love (as opposed to men doing it for money, revenge, or power). Excerpt:

'In the midst of all the horrendous stories in the news recently, HLN’s Dr. Drew welcomed clinical psychiatrist Dr. Dale Archer who explained some of the basic differences between male and female killers.

Dr. Archer says men are 10 times more likely to murder than women, noting their motives are vastly different.

“Men typically kill for money, revenge and power,” he said. “With women, it is about love -- either someone they have loved, someone they currently love... their kids. So it's much more emotional when it comes to women.”'

Article here. Ah yes, "equality". The blogosphere sees feminists gleefully celebrating the fact that not a single Olympic event now is mandated as male-only (though not all events have enough female entrants to hold a women's version of the event-- but that is a different matter) and that on top of that, through the magic of Title IX, now more female US athletes were sent to London this year than male ones. Ahh, it's equality, right? Well, if you define it the way feminists do, I suppose it's something like that, though they will complain (and rightly so), that there are certain countries that do not allow female athletes to compete in their name. Still, they are filled with glee at all the "progress" made by so much of the world on this issue. And it is good that women athletes are now a big part of these Games, since it is true that for many years, they were not allowed to compete. So we agree that not allowing people to compete in sports or certain contests because of their gender is wrong, right?

Article here. Excerpt:

'After a months-long stalemate over a bill to protect women from crimes of domestic violence, Speaker John A. Boehner on Monday named eight House negotiators to serve on a nonexistent conference committee, one that would be charged with bridging the divide between House Republicans and the Senate.

In April, the Senate voted to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, and it urged the House to move on the legislation.

The House subsequently passed its own measure, which omitted provisions of the Senate bill that would allow Indian tribal courts to try certain non-Indians in some cases of domestic violence on reservations, expand the number of temporary visas for illegal immigrants who were victims of domestic violence and extend the protections of that act to gay men and lesbians.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'A wolf pack of drunken young women “acting stupid” on a downtown No. 6 train in Manhattan stabbed a 63-year-old man early today — for having had the nerve to ask them to pipe down, police said.

The man was on his way to work at about 6:15 a.m. when he was attacked as the train entered the East 23rd Street station, a law-enforcement source told The Post.

“The eight females were acting stupid. He just told them, ‘Relax. Calm down,’ ” another source said.

Instead, one stabbed him in the left shoulder. He was treated at Bellevue Hospital.

The women were arrested as they exited the 23rd Street subway station near Gramer¬cy Park. Seven of them, ages 17 to 20, were charged with gang assault, disorderly conduct, riot¬ing, criminal possession of a weapon, menacing, and felony assault. A 15-year-old girl was not charged. Cops added that they recovered a knife.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'At a White House conference earlier this summer observing the 40th anniversary of Title IX -- the 1972 law prohibiting gender discrimination in federally supported educational programs and activities -- the talk was not so much about college athletics as about the STEM disciplines: science, technology, engineering and math.

Women, according to the prevailing wisdom at the conference, are "underrepresented" in these fields. More needs to be done to boost their participation. Carnegie Mellon University President Jared Leigh Cohon called the current situation "a national crisis."

But a profession should be a matter of personal choice, not something the government dictates. Title IX may have helped open doors for some women. What they do when they get inside should be up to them.
...

Article here. Excerpt:

'Polling among people over the age of 75 who live alone found that men are more likely than women to live lives dominated by isolation and loneliness.

Yet they are also less likely to seek help even if they are suffering from depression, the study on behalf of the Women's Royal Voluntary Service (WRVS) found.

David McCullough, the charity's chief executive warned that many older men were suffering needlessly because of a “stiff upper lip” approach to their problems.

The study found that 36 per cent of men described themselves as lonely or very lonely - many of them going for days on end without speaking to anyone. Among women the rate was 31 per cent.

Based on recent Office for National Statistics figures showing the number of older people living alone, it suggests that just over 190,000 men over 75 live in serious isolation in Britain.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON -- For the growing number of soldiers and Marines whose genitals are damaged or destroyed by blasts from improvised explosive devices while in combat, the Pentagon has decided it will not provide some critical reproductive health benefits.

To put it bluntly, if you are sent to war and an IED blast blows off your testicles, the U.S. government will not pay for your wife to have in vitro fertilization or artificial insemination using donated sperm.

The new policy, quietly adopted without announcement by the Defense Department, responds to the growing demands of the more than 1,800 veterans with genital wounds that the government that sent them to war now help them return to normal life, including raising a family.

Link here. Excerpt:

'In December 2011, UNAIDS, WHO, PEPFAR, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank and the Ministries of Health from 14 priority countries (Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Uganda, the United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe) committed to a five-year action framework to accelerate scale up of VMMC, and in turn reduce new HIV infections and free-up resources for other crucial interventions. The framework’s immediate “catch-up” phase is designed to quickly achieve coverage of adolescents and adult men who are most likely sexually active. The second phase—“sustainability”—will expand the framework’s reach to finally integrate VMMC into infant health programs.'