The Verizon Foundation has produced a frightening video titled Monsters. The video's perverse message can be summed up in this slide: "She's afraid of her dad."

The video revels in powerful yet destructive stereotypes: fathers as abusers, wives as victims, and young boys as future abusers. The video tells the impressionable viewer:

"The child who lives with domestic violence... is afraid of the monster just down the hall," a girl's voiceover intones, while frightening images of a hunchbacked monster-dad flit across the screen: http://www.multivu.com/mnr/52044-verizon-foundation-national-domestic-hotline-video-launch-monsters

To be honest this video is not just biased, it's awful. Tell Verizon (politely) to clean up its act.

Contact Bob Varettoni, Executive Director of Media Relations:

Email: robert.a.varettoni-at-verizon.com

Please email today - thanks!

Sincerely,

Story here. If this were a man, it would have been front page news in Boston.com with several other articles that would overview the case in detail. Also, the woman got out of harsher charges because she invoked her her neo-feminist jurisprudence override and claimed she was "abused". Funny how these issues get worked out very differently in public opinion and sentencing. Excerpt:

'A Lowell mother has pleaded guilty to raping her four children, putting an end to a 16-year-old case that was reactivated last month when the Massachusetts Appeals Court overturned her conviction.

Nancy Adkinson, 49, was convicted in a jury-waived trial in Middlesex Superior Court in 1997 and given a sentence that would have kept her behind bars until she was 70 years old. However, the appeals court ruled last month that Adkinson was a battered woman whose husband, Corby Adkinson, also controlled the trial strategy that led to her conviction. The court ordered a new trial.

Link to media release here. Excerpt:

'The outstanding achievements of Australian Nobel Laureate Professor Elizabeth Blackburn have been recognised through a new fellowship from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) awarded to top female Research Fellows.

This important new NHMRC Fellowship was announced today by Minister for Health and Ageing Nicola Roxon and Minister for Mental Health and Ageing Mark Butler.

“The NHMRC Elizabeth Blackburn Fellowships will foster the career development of female scientists excelling in biomedical, clinical and public health research,” Ms Roxon said.

“Professor Blackburn’s stellar international career, which includes the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2009, has inspired the NHMRC to recognise the next generation of Australian women in science.”

Column here. A one-sided response from Amy Dickinson. She blames the husband as does the wife. The husband did say "I could never have kids." Amy does not say a word about the wife's deceit when she tried to subvert her husband's desires by secretly going off the pill. Apparently both Amy and the wife think women have a right to do this. Excerpt:

'I knew it was wrong, but I would accidentally-on-purpose skip days of my birth control, eventually ceasing to take the pills at all. I knew that if we had a child, my husband would grow to love it.

The problem was that, after months of this, I never conceived. A few weeks ago, I finally decided to broach the topic again with my husband.

I discovered that he had a vasectomy a year before we met!
...

Dear Seeking: When your husband stated "I could never have kids," it sounds like he seems to think this is the same thing as saying, "I had a vasectomy."

Link here. Excerpt:

'A new study is challenging the widely held notion that men's minds are preoccupied with one topic: sex.

The research in college-age participants suggests that while men do think about sex more often than women, the subject crosses their mind an average of only about 19 times per day, compared to 10 times per day for women.

The results seem to disprove the popular notion that men think about sex every seven seconds, which would total more than 8,000 thoughts about sex in 16 waking hours, the Ohio State University researchers said.

Press release here. Excerpt:

'Washington, DC/November 29, 2011 — A domestic violence video produced by the Verizon Foundation distorts the facts, plays on emotions, and serves to alarm and frighten young children. Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE), an advocate for domestic violence victims, has communicated with Verizon executives about the numerous factual errors, but the company refuses to correct its dangerous misinformation.

Titled “Monsters,” the video revels in powerful yet destructive stereotypes: fathers as abusers, wives as victims, and young boys as future abusers. “The child who lives with domestic violence… is afraid of the monster just down the hall,” a girl’s voiceover intones, while frightening images of a hunchbacked monster-dad flit across the screen: http://www.multivu.com/mnr/52044-verizon-foundation-national-domestic-hotline-video-launch-monsters.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Short version: Washington Department of Social and Health Services seized Maile Metalwala, the 4-year-old daughter of Solomon Metalwala, away from her unfit mother, Julia Biryukova, and put Maile in foster care. It is a common but unjust practice for child welfare agencies to put children in foster care instead of giving them to their fathers. Moreover, the Washington court separated Maile from Solomon based on spurious abuse allegations from a now thoroughly discredited accuser.

We want you to contact all relevant Washington authorities and demand that Solomon and little Maile be reunited--to email and fax them a letter, click here.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'A COURT in France has ordered a man to pay 10,000 euros in damages to his long-frustrated ex-wife after he failed in his marriage "duties" by withholding sex from her for years. In the May ruling, published overnight in the Gazette du Palais judicial review, an appeals court in the southern city of Aix-en-Provence upheld an earlier decision to award the damages for "absence of sexual relations".

The couple, who are both 51, married in 1986 and have two children. They divorced in January 2009 in Nice.

In its ruling, the court said the man's wife deserved the damages due to the suffering she endured because of her sexless marriage.

"The wife's expectations were legitimate in the sense that sexual relations between married people are an expression of their mutual affection and part of the duties that proceed from marriage," the court said.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A new study finds women can be downright nasty when they don't approve of members of their sex.

The harsh reactions of 43 women to a provocatively dressed peer, caught on tape by Canadian researchers, reveal just how sassy women get when they think someone else is sexier.

"I was convinced, having lived a life as a woman, that we're not as pleasant as some people make us out to be," said Tracy Vaillancourt, professor of psychology at the University of Ottawa and lead author of the study published in Aggressive Behavior.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Now the feminists in Barack Obama’s Department of Education are starting to apply the same anti-male regulations to high schools and demand that high schools apply the same gender quotas that have cut back men’s teams in colleges. The feminists have filed charges against hundreds of high schools all over the country.

Much research shows that males and females have different interest levels in sports, but the feminists claim that is “a stereotype” that can even be ruled “impermissible” under the Title IX law. Research and common sense are unlikely to deter feminist activists. They’ve made it clear time and time again that their real goal is not equal opportunities for women, but equal outcomes, regardless of whether most women desire that equal outcome or not. It is predictable that if boys sports are reduced, we will have more and more high school dropouts.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'While men's attitudes are difficult to gauge, The VicHealth National Survey on Community Attitudes to Violence against Women 2009 found that 22% of men believed that rates of violence were equal between men and women and just under two-thirds of Australian men would describe violence against women as a "common" problem; alarming figures that hint at a wider scepticism about the clear contrasts between victimisation and perpetration rates in Australia.

Some simply do not trust the appalling national and state statistics that have either remained unchanged over the years or risen in some areas. Every time a journalist dares publish a figure that slightly widens the lens to better view the full horrifying scope of the issue, the internet comment backlash is merciless.

Article here. Excerpt:

'NEW YORK – A New York man was stunned to find out that his four-year-old twins were not an accidental pregnancy after all -- but that his desperate girlfriend secretly stashed away his sperm and used it for an in-vitro procedure, he charges in a lawsuit.

Joseph Pressil, 36, was not planning on having children with Anetria Burnett, with whom he was in a relationship for six months in 2007, he said.

So she took matters into her own hands, he told the New York Post, in order to remain in his Texas house and make a legal bid for half of his possessions.

"A gold digger is an understatement. She was trying to get community property and alimony. She's ruthless," he said.

Now, Pressil is suing Burnett in Texas for custody of their sons.

"This is more than a nightmare -- it's a horror story," he told the Post.

Pressil, a telecommunications manager, said he hooked up with Burnett, 34, when he lived in Texas -- and was a little surprised when she announced she was pregnant.

Story here.

'PHILADELPHIA -- Police in Philadelphia said a woman fatally crushed her boyfriend with a car early Sunday following an argument.

The incident occurred at around 2:00 a.m. local time in the city's Grays Ferry neighborhood after the couple was arguing inside the car, WPVI-TV reported.

When the man got out, his girlfriend struck him with the car and pushed him into the side of a home.

He was crushed by the impact and pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

The woman was arrested at the scene and was facing several criminal charges Sunday.

Police have not yet identified the man or woman, according to WPVI.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Gerald Lebovits ruled that there was probable cause to hold McIntosh in custody while prosecutors take more time to present his felony case to a grand jury, which they are generally required to do within five days of an arrest, in order to keep the suspect in custody.

Video of the incident, which rapidly spread online, was played in court, but the excerpt did not include the moment as the women jumped over the counter. Prosecutors blamed the missing footage on a glitch in the recording.'

Hmmmm...the version of the video available online at http://www.helpfreerayonmcintosh.org/ does not suffer from this "glitch."

Something's fishy, no?

Article here. Yep, that's Rachel Edwards, who along with accomplice Denise Darbeau attacked employee Rayon McIntosh at a Greenwich Village McDonald's. One of them slapped him and then jumped over the counter, pursuing and cornering him. He grabbed a pan cleaning utensil, dubbed a "metal bar" or "pipe" by the media to defend himself, and was arrested on felony assault charges. Excerpt:

'A Brooklyn woman caught on tape getting beat up in a Greenwich Village McDonald's has been busted for harassing her cousin, court papers show.

Rachel Edwards, 24, was blamed for sparking the fast food fight after she and a friend cursed out a worker and leaped over the counter last month.

She was arrested for trespassing for that incident and busted a day later for allegedly displaying the same potty mouth in a series of calls and text messages sent to Allison Belmosa.'