Article here. Excerpt:

'Among those in Washington, D.C., for this week's International AIDS Conference, there's little to no debate about whether the world community should do what it takes to stop the global pandemic. But when it comes to how that goal should be accomplished, even those who care most passionately about the issue can disagree.

Case in point: The issue of voluntary medical male circumcision, known as VMMS. Depending on whom you ask, it's either a lifesaving procedure or "torture" that could have the unintended side effect of discouraging condom use and fueling the spread of the disease.
...
"Over the next five years, enough men can be circumcised through voluntary medical male circumcision to prevent 3.4 million new HIV infections and save billions in care and treatment," said Benjamin Mkapa, former president of Tanzania.

But just outside the convention center, there was a different take. Protesters held banners reading "Circumcision Is Torture" and "Intact Genitals Are a Human Right."

Article here. Excerpt:

'I have all the respect in the world for the impossible challenges working moms face. The battle is not the same for men; it is not as tough. We don’t have both the maternal voice and the feminist voice in our heads telling us we should be at home nurturing our kids and also at work building fulfilling careers. But it’s nearly impossible for men to have it all too. Many men want fulfilling family lives. I want that even as I fulfill my familial role by providing. But most of the time I feel like I’m not involved enough in either my career or my kids’ lives. I usually feel as though my life is like a plate of food sitting in front of me, but there’s so much that the plate is overwhelmed, unable to hold it all, so it spills over onto the table.

Article here. Excerpt:

A prospective cohort study of 300 boys and girls has found that boys' greater willingness to risk being wrong may play a role in boys' superior math skills. A press release describing the study is available here, and the study itself is available here. Story excerpt:

'COLUMBIA, Mo. – In a University of Missouri study, girls and boys started grade school with different approaches to solving arithmetic problems, with girls favoring a slow and accurate approach and boys a faster but more error prone approach. Girls' approach gave them an early advantage, but by the end of sixth grade boys had surpassed the girls. The MU study found that boys showed more preference for solving arithmetic problems by reciting an answer from memory, whereas girls were more likely to compute the answer by counting. Understanding these results may help teachers and parents guide students better.

Story here. The story is not framed in terms of genital mutilation or psychiatric trauma, but instead in lighthearted terms that trivialize the matter, provoking ridicule and trivialization on the part of commenters themselves. Excerpt:

'Fei Lin, 41, of the Niqiao village near Wenling City, in east China’s Zhejiang province, told police he was asleep when the thieves burst into his room and put a bag over his head, according to CEN/EUROPICS and as reported in the Daily Star.

"They put something over my head and pulled down my trousers and then they ran off," Lin said. "I was so shocked I didn't feel a thing - then I saw I was bleeding and my penis was gone."

Police believe the attackers were jealous lovers of several local women whom Lin was having affairs with, the Austrian Times reported. Lin denied taking part in any infidelity.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'LINCOLN, Neb. (CBS St. Louis) — A recent study finds that our brain objectifies women as different body parts, while viewing men as a whole.

The study, published in June’s European Journal of Social Psychology, was conducted by Sarah Gervais, a psychology professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

She conducted experiments by presenting 227 participants of the study with images of men and women, finding that men were perceived as a “global” – or whole – cognitive processing level, while women were seen on a “local” cognitive processing level.

“Local processing underlies the way we think about objects: houses, cars and so on. But global processing should prevent us from that when it comes to people,” Gervais said in the study. “We don’t break people down to their parts, except when it comes to women, which is really striking. Women were perceived in the same ways that objects are viewed.”

Article here. This was inevitable. Feminists were licking their chops at the opportunity to use this tragedy as a way to condemn men. Excerpt:

'We shouldn’t need Steven Pinker, one of the world’s leading psychologists and the author of the book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, to tell us the obvious: “Though the exact ratios vary, in every society, it is the males more than the females who play-fight, bully, fight for real, kill for real, rape, start wars and fight in wars.” The silence around the gendering of violence is as inexplicable as it is indefensible. Sex differences in other medical and social conditions — such as anorexia nervosa, lupus, migraines, depression and learning disabilities — are routinely analyzed along these lines.

Letter here. Excerpt:

'A recent weekend edition of The Marietta Times, contained the viewpoint article, "Violence Against Women Act" must be renewed. I would like to ask the writer, executive director, Nancy Neylon, to give me a good reason as to why a gender biased act should ever be renewed. I believe domestic violence is wrong and no one, male or female, should instigate such actions. Those found guilty of such acts should not be protected by a law that focuses wholly on the woman.

Men are also stalked and fear for their lives. Women file false allegations, lie to the police and courts and it is the man who is usually arrested; when women are guilty the sentence is not the same as what a man would receive. No law is needed to protect the lawbreaker regardless of gender or life style. VAWA should be rewritten to cover all genders, anything less is redundant and biased. Not all immigrants are victims, some turn out to be the abuser after coming to the states but are still covered by this biased rambling law.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Men who have been paying child support for a child they believe is not theirs have 43 days to take their case to an attorney and get a court ordered paternity test.

Texas lawmakers recently passed a bill helping men who have dealt with mistaken paternity.

It gives men who have known they may not be the father of a child for more than a year a window of time starting in May 2011 to end payments when he has been wrongly named the father.

That window of opportunity closes September first, and a new law will go into effect.

Attorneys say getting out of paying child support was once difficult for men after the court determined a man was the father of a child. Even with DNA evidence, attorneys say father could rarely win the argument.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Last week, Heritage published a blog post entitled “Obama Administration Broadens Gender Quotas in Higher Ed,” detailing the Administration’s expansion of Title IX enforcement to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education.
...
What steps is the Administration taking?

Article here. Excerpt:

'We all know by now that for the first time in history, the U.S. Olympic team will have more women (269) than men (261). Just incidentally, these numbers also exactly reflect the demographics of our country as a whole, where women make up 50.8 percent of the total population.

So the dominance of women this year is just a natural progression, right?

Not exactly. When our female athletes march into Olympic Stadium in London, they will be marching on the shoulders of feminists, male and female alike, who worked like hell against very long odds to make it happen. The London games have been called the "Title IX Olympics," appropriately laying credit to the 1972 law that opened athletic opportunities to girls and women in schools taking federal money, meaning virtually all of them.
...

Article here Excerpt:

'Amid sweeping accusations that Silicon Valley venture capital firms have failed to attract female talent, one women-only firm has been quietly raising millions for its first institutionally-backed fund.

If you haven’t heard of Forerunner Ventures, you probably will soon. This firm has been making its mark in the fashion world. In its first year, Forerunner made strategic investments in companies like Bonobos, Birchbox, Warby Parker, Hotel Tonight, Snapette, and Threadflip. And today, Forerunner announced it had closed a cool $40 million to continue funding up-and-coming digital commerce startups.

The firm has only been around since 2010, and already Forerunner Ventures has made some promising-looking investments. The secret ingredient is Kirsten Green, the firm’s managing partner, who has a clear vision for success, one that has been almost a decade in the making.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Three senior judges found that it was not acceptable for the mother to block the father’s reasonable efforts to see his two daughters.

They urged all separated parents to see the “bigger picture” and consider the harm that legal disputes cause children. Lord Justice McFarlane said mothers and fathers had “a responsibility and a duty” to help children maintain contact with the other parent.

The Government has announced plans to reform the law to enable fathers to see their children. The changes would to spell out the right of children to have a “meaningful relationship” with both parents after a separation.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'HAMDEN, Conn. (WTNH) -- A 20-year-old West Haven woman was arrested after falsely reporting that her ex-boyfriend has abducted and sexually assaulted her.

On June 4th, Hamden police responded to 16 Hubbard Place, for a report of an abduction and sexual assault.

Jessica Barrett, 20, told police that on June 3rd, when she was walking near the Truman Street School in New Haven, her ex-boyfriend exited his vehicle, punched her in the head and then forced her into the vehicle.

Barrett told police her ex then drove her to the Hubbard Place address, where he raped her several times. She also said that he kept her in a closet for a period of time and that she was not fed for nearly 24 hours.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'There are very few things everyone reading this piece will agree on. One of those things will be that rape is one of the most disgusting (if not the most disgusting) crimes that any human being can perpetrate. However is someone claiming rape when in fact no crime has taken place just as bad?

When thinking about what I should write for my first piece on The Periscope Post I threw out the idea of writing about this subject to a couple of friends and to say the response was cold would understate exactly what they said. However it is something that has been growing (or at least the reporting of it has been growing) in recent years.

Last week a 27 year-old woman from Aberbargoed, Caerphilly in South Wales was jailed for two years and eight months for making up a rape claim. She claimed rape because she was late home from a night of partying and thought that her parents would shout at her unless she had a good reason. So instead of apologising for staying out longer than she planned to she decided to cry rape.'