Article here. Excerpt:

'Some people suggest that boys have very different brains from girls and have inherently weaker verbal skills. They should be given "informational texts" to read instead of the classics or any material containing emotion, which they aren't good at either. Leonard Sax, president of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education, suggests that literature teachers should not ask boys about characters' emotions but should focus only on what the characters actually do.

But science is proving that none of this is true. The alleged great differences between the brains of boys and girls are a myth. Lise Eliot, associate professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the Chicago Medical School, did an exhaustive review of the scientific literature on human brains from childhood to adolescence. She reports in her book Pink Brain, Blue Brain that there is "surprisingly little evidence of sex differences in children's brains."

WASHINGTON, July 17, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A strong majority of registered voters participating in a national survey support reforming the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). These persons support measures currently being debated in Congress that are designed to curb the waste, discrimination, and false allegations which are occurring under the current VAWA law.

Commissioned by Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE), a victim advocacy organization, the survey shows strong support for reform among key voting blocs including women, young people, and domestic violence victims themselves.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A Richmond woman has been arrested on a warrant charging her with a felony sex crime after an investigation determined she was impregnated by a 15-year-old Richmond boy, court documents said.

Jessica M. Thompson, 23, of 256 S.W. Third St. in Richmond was charged with sexual misconduct with a minor (a Class B felony). A warrant was issued Monday, and Thompson had an initial hearing Friday morning in Wayne County Circuit Court. A trial date was set for 9 a.m. Oct. 9.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The masculinity police push women away from financial equality by engaging in systematic scorn for all that is perceived to be feminine and all this is supported by feminists. Women's efforts to level the economic playing field are discounted and dismissed. To maintain the perceived superiority of masculinity over femininity, the masculinity police work tirelessly to keep the substantial wage gap in place.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Children have to be old enough to give their consent to a religious circumcision, says leading pediatrician Maximilian Stehr. But the law does not need to be changed.
...
'Would you see the issue of the inability of the child to give its consent as a bigger issue than that of the child's physical integrity?

I don't think you can separate the two. Physical integrity is certainly the highest value. That goes without question. There are certainly medical conditions and situations in which people want to decide for themselves that they would like to change something about their body. That is standard procedure in cosmetic surgery - it's the same in pediatric surgery, for example, when we correct protruding ears. For that, the child has to be able to judge for itself the seriousness of the operation, as well as its risks and side-effects, and that is only possible when the child is 14 or 16 years old.'

Article here. Excerpt:

BERLIN, July 17 (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that Germany could become a laughing stock if it fails to overturn a district court ban on circumcision that has enraged Jews and Muslims.

Merkel's government has already criticised the Cologne court ruling and promised a new law to protect the right to circumcise male infants, but the conservative leader's strong comments underline how sensitive Germany is to charges of intolerance because of its Nazi past.

"I do not want Germany to be the only country in the world where Jews cannot practise their rituals. Otherwise we will become a laughing stock," the Bild daily quoted Merkel as telling a closed meeting of her Christian Democrats (CDU).'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Public schools are hereby ordered to meticulously log and report to a federal officer (in the interest of “broadening data collection”) the gender breakdown of their math and science classes. Virtually all public and private colleges (“grant-receiving universities”) will be held to a new standard.

If federal officials think your classes are too male-dominated, the government will order you to put more women in them (“help you to comply with Title IX rules”) until it likes the ratio.

Punishment for failure to obey will be severe (nice federal funding you have there — it’d be a shame if anything happened to it).
...
“While we’ve made some progress in closing the gender gap . . . at the higher-level classes,” explained Education Secretary Arne Duncan, “we still see underrepresentation of young girls, and we have to improve upon that going forward.”

Article here. Excerpt:

'Gender disparities in a major are not the product of sexism, but rather the differing preferences of men and women. The fact that engineering departments are filled mostly with men does not mean they discriminate against women anymore than the fact that English departments are filled mostly with women proves that English departments discriminate against men. The arts and humanities have well over 60 percent female students, yet no one seems to view that gender disparity as a sign of sexism against men. Deep down, the Obama administration knows this, since it is planning to impose its gender-proportionality rules only on the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math), not other fields that have similarly large gender disparities in the opposite direction.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'But lately, and especially under the Obama administration, the Education Department has been inserting Title IX aggressively into other aspects of college life. One of them is sexual misconduct, typified by the department's new rule demanding that colleges lower the standard of proof required to prove sexual assault in a campus disciplinary proceeding. And now the department has been asked to intervene in what is supposed to be a problem: that more women than men choose to major in the humanities--or biology--rather than in the math-intensive STEM fields. Yet the administration's view that bias reduces women's entry into STEM fields has little scholarly support. A task force from the National Academy of Sciences investigated 500 university science departments and concluded that men and women overall "enjoyed comparable opportunities," and that female candidates for jobs at major research universities actually had a slight edge over their male competitors.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'In its zeal for gender balance in science, technology engineering and math courses, the Education Department could impose quotas on male STEM students by 2013, warns Hans Bader, who once worked for the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. The White House has promised new Title IX guidelines in STEM fields.

To comply with Title IX, colleges have eliminated men’s sports teams to create a gender balance. “Title IX isn’t just about sports,” President Obama wrote in Newsweek. It’s also about “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.”

By the Title IX model in sports, that means if 60 percent of undergrads are women — common in many colleges and universities — then 60 percent of engineering and physics students must be female.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The number of suicides and the prevalence of suicidal tendencies is rising faster among older men than in any other age group, according to research released in the week the government postponed its suicide prevention strategy.

Data from the Office for National Statistics shows that the number of suicides among men aged over 55 has risen by 12% over the past decade, while suicides by men aged under 34 dropped by 30%.

The mental health charity Calm said men aged 45 to 54 were still most likely to seriously consider taking their own life.

Charities and mental health experts are concerned that across all age ranges there are far more male than female suicides.

Jane Powell, the chief executive of Calm, speculated that the recession may be having more of an impact on older men.

Anyone's guess which side of their editorial mouth they will speak from on any given Sunday. One week is "single moms are all the rage, you go girl!" and the next it's "if only I had a man!". Please, NYT, make up your mind! Article here. Excerpt:

'But a friendship that evokes parity by day becomes a study of inequality at night and a testament to the way family structure deepens class divides. Ms. Faulkner is married and living on two paychecks, while Ms. Schairer is raising her children by herself. That gives the Faulkner family a profound advantage in income and nurturing time, and makes their children statistically more likely to finish college, find good jobs and form stable marriages.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman said it was a case of protecting religious freedom.

Steffen Seibert said: "Circumcision carried out in a responsible manner must be possible without punishment."

European Jewish and Muslim groups had criticised the Cologne court ruling.

The case involved a doctor who carried out a circumcision on a four-year-old that led to medical complications.

The court said that a child's right to physical integrity trumped religious and parental rights.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'NORTH PLATTE, Neb. — The Nebraska mother of two boys police found locked in a dog kennel will serve two years of probation after pleading no contest to felony child abuse.

Prosecutors made deals with Clark and other defendants in the case after a judge ruled some of what they told investigators couldn't be used as evidence.

Police say they found Clark's two boys, ages 3 and 5 at the time, sleeping in a wired-shut kennel Oct. 24 inside a filthy trailer home littered with trash and feces. Police were following up on a tip that four children in the home were living in an unsafe environment.

Police say Clark told officers she put the boys in the 30-by-42-inch kennel at night to keep them from climbing out of a window.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The sad thing about Title IX is that no one benefits from its if-we-can't-have-it-no-one-can mentality. A 2007 study by the College Sports Council studied athletic participation at universities between 1981 and 2005. The study found that the number of male athletes per university dropped by 6 percent during that time period, and the number of male sports teams dropped 17 percent! While non-mainstream sports like wrestling, gymnastics, tennis, and swimming were hit hardest by these cuts, even perpetual cash cows like football and basketball experienced declines during this time frame.

Title IX proponents like to claim that the law is responsible for increases in female athletic opportunities. Not only is this misleading, it wholly ignores the great cost to male athletes and to American sports in general. In the 1990s, for every female opportunity that was created (though not necessarily by Title IX), 3.4 male opportunities were lost. The average university has 8.7 women's sports teams and only 7.8 men's teams.'