Wendy McElroy writes, "This Sunday (12/16), the jointly sponsored ifeminists.com/mensactivism.org chat room will feature a discussion of Men Under the Taliban. Has the coverage of Afghan women totally overshadowed the abuse experienced by men?" The chat begins at 9:00 PM EST at this page, which is the ifeminists chat room. We hope to see you there!

Neil Steyskal sent in this article from the Washington Times and writes "Women who claim child sexual abuse are stepping up their rhetoric. Look out for due process. Comment to: letters@washingtontimes.com." It looks like the widespread use of false accusations against men is coming back to hurt children who are really being abused, as this article claims that abuse allegations are losing credibility before judges when in a divorce setting.

Mike LaSalle writes "Australian Barry Maley has written a book pertaining to family and marriage in Australia. Several articles [including
this one and this one] and a radio interview are available. Also, Men's News Daily will be "cool site of the day" at Askmen.com on 12/17/01." Nice job, Mike!

Anonymous User sent in this Boston Globe story about some recent cases where a child on life support is taken off of it by the mother, after realizing that the father had been abusing the child. The idea being that the child is better off dead than continuing to be abused. What strikes me as unfair here is that the father is then charged with murder, and the mother is not. If he was abusing the child, charge him with child abuse, but murder? Murder was the woman's choice, and she should be accountable for it. Also, thanks to Luek for sending in this CNN article on the same story.

The sexual harassment overshadowing of America continues, and spreads all over the world, as evidenced in this commentary in The Australian. And like passive smoking, passive watching is the next big lawsuit. A directive from the Minneapolis Equal Employment Opportunity Office in May suggests walking by someone who happens to be looking at something offensive may create a hostile work environment.

nagzi writes "This isn't directly a men's issue thing, but still a nice idea. If you want to learn some new programming skills (for beginners), check out this
article and then follow the link to icanprogram.com. Just make a donation to your favorite cancer charity and you can take any course of theirs for free." This is a neat idea. The course teaches some of the fundamentals of programming in the Linux environment and you can donate to the Lance Armstrong Foundation (testicular cancer) or the Prostate Cancer Research Institute, among others.

NBC's Law & Order: Special Victims Unit will tonight air a controversial episode in which a male victim of rape must fight to prove he was victimized by a group of women who hired him as a male stripper. The advertisements for this episode include scenes in which one of the women is shouting "women can't rape men" and another scene in which the victim, tears in his eyes, fights to make his voice heard. It looks like powerful episode worth watching. Scott's note: I accidentally deleted a user submission on this same topic, and I apologize to this person!

Neil Steyskal sent in the following story from USA Today which was so strongly biased with gender politics that the Men's Health America campaign reopened just to urge people to respond to this article. Comment to: editor@usatoday.com.

Christina S. writes, "On a recent trip to a local shopping mall in Louisiana, I noticed a disturbing 5' tall sign prominently displayed in the Nine West store window. The advertisement shows a woman in an extremely short, snake scale patterned, red leather dress wearing shiny black, knee-high boots. The woman is stepping on the bare chest of a prone man with one boot." Click Read More to see more of Christina's comments and contact info for Nine West.

The streaming audio news program about men's rights, The Men's Hour, has currently released episode 8. Among the topics discussed are: An interview with Richard Hayden of the AbusedGuys Yahoo! club, the recipient of the "Manhater of the Month" award, and news about a study showing that gender counted much more than race in sentencing drunk driver homicides, which I found to be the most interesting. Click here to visit the Men's Hour site and listen to it in RealAudio or Windows Media streaming audio.

tparker writes "This bill (S 1249) is aimed at insuring economic safety for women who are victims of DV. Senator Murray (D-WA) is pretty clear about this. For more info on the bill, see this site. There is also a link to the companion House bill. The language of the bill seems gender-neutral, but the intent of Senator Murray and her co-sponsors seems otherwise."

Neil Steyskal and Subversive both sent in this link to some more commentary in the National Review about the abhorrent treatment of Christina Hoff-Sommers at the CSAP forum. The whole episode is doing a lot to the CSAP's discredit, and is rightly turning into an enormous negative campaign against them.

Tony writes "This article, from The New York Times (free registration required) is another example of male issues in Afghanistan being ignored. It does mention men and boys in two portions: "In the Dari language, a man who does not beat his wife is sometimes dismissed with the phrase "to nadari," which suggests that he is a eunuch. and hints at some of the issues but fails to discuss them." and another were a local merchant is going to fire all the boys working at his factory because "girls are better workers.""

wiccid stepparent writes "I saw this article and thought it was interesting. It claims that ultrasounds may cause some amount of brain damage in male fetuses. This could have some impact on boys and men if it the evidence is correct."

Trudy W Schuett writes "In the latest edition of the DesertLight Journal, see the chilling details of the latest infanticide by mother in Yuma Arizona. There is no daddy here to take the blame! *** Family Friendly Groups Merge - 10 Yahoo! groups get together to work for serious change *** Pro Se All The Way - to the Supreme Court!--a North Dakota Man bets the farm to get his kids back. And more!"