Barnes & Noble Petition Update

Marc Angelucci writes "On Sunday, 1/7, I petitioned at the Barnes & Noble Bookstore in Burbank, California for a men's studies book section, like the one which exists at Borders Bookstore. After three days of petitioning I've got about 800 signatures. But on Sunday, after one hour (and 60 signatures), I was asked to leave. Even though two managers at the Burbank store gave me written permission to petition, the national store in New York called the Burbank store and told a higher up manager (John) to get security and make me leave. Evidently they don't like their customers expressing their views about the store's poor coverage of men's issues in their gender studies section. I'll be back next week at another Barnes & Noble bookstore in Los Angeles where there is a public sidewalk outside the front entrance (rather than in a private mall) so I can assert a 1st Amendment right to speak based on the public forum doctrine. I'll mail copies of the signatures to B&N when I have 1,000 of them, and for each 1,000 thereafter. I'm averaging 250 signatures a day, but I'm alone and very busy. At this rate it could take forever, but I'm not stopping. A few letters and phone calls to them always helps, though." Please click "Read More" below to read where to send your letters, e-mails, or phone calls to.

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Washingtonian says "IWF in, NOW out"

David Byron writes "The Independent Women's Forum or IWF is thrilled to report that the Washingtonian has featured them in its annual "What's in and what's out" for 2001. The IWF is "in" and NOW is "out" says the Washingtonian. As far as I can remember the IWF has a far larger membership than NOW and has had for some time. The IWF opposes VAWA and the gender wage gap myth, and tends to be more conservative than the Women's Freedom Network. Both women's groups oppose the sex discrimination of feminism. Congratulations IWF!"

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Women's Violence To Cause "A Fundamental Conceptual Shift In How Domestic Violence Is Being Studied"

The truth can't be held back much longer...the reality of violent women was reported on in this Massachusetts News article. Even the liberal Mother Jones magazine is saying that "Women report using violence in their relationships more often than men." More data is expected to be released by the U.S. Justice Department to demonstrate this disturbing trend.

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German Women Can Now Join Military Combat Forces

As reported on by BBC News, women in Germany can now join combat units of the armed forces, after a woman took the law to court and won. Could this be an opportunity for greater equality of responsibility, or will it turn into another disaster of sexual harassment suits, as has happened with the U.S. military? Time will tell.

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Divorced Dad Forced To Visit Daughter By Internet Videoconferences

In a surprising ruling, a New Jersey court ruled that a mother could move across the country with her daughter, and have the father "visit" with her through internet videoconferences. This is an awfully shallow form of "visitation," and the father is justifiably upset over this. David Levy, president of the Children's Rights Council, is disturbed by the precedent set by the case, calling it "unacceptable." Father's rights groups now have yet another issue to protest. Salon.com reported on the story at this link.

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Montel Williams Show To Feature Philip Cook

An Anonymous Reader writes, "Philip Cook, author of Abused Men - The Hidden Side of Domestic Violence will appear on an upcoming Montel Williams Show. Taping is set for Weds. Jan 10th. Show will air in about two weeks after that date, but no air date has been set yet. Watch your local listings in late January and
February. Cook will also appear on the O'Reilly Factor, Fox News Network on January 22nd. This show usually airs the same day, but it may be next day.
" Mark your calendars!

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Many Countries Now Phasing Out Military Draft

The Washington Times had a great, in-depth article about how several countries are eliminating the military draft, and the reasons for its demise. From the article: "'The draft was very efficient if what you needed was a large mass of semiskilled labor to deal with a direct and massive threat to your homeland,' said Philip Gold, director of defense studies at the Discovery Institute...'That does not even remotely describe the threat that the United States and its European allies are facing for the foreseeable future.'" Economic concerns as well as the social unpopularity of the draft, demonstrated during the Vietnam War, are other reasons that the draft is coming to be seen as obsolete.

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Boy Facing Two Years For "Butt Slapping" Incident

The UK Telegraph has an article stating that the boy who recently slapped a 13-yo classmate's butt could be facing two years in a juvenile detention center for the incident. Note that both mothers of the children involved in the case do not feel this is necessary. So why is this madness continuing?

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More News About Canada's Bill 117

Although this is from Dec. 20, I only recently found a web link to this story and want to include it for the sake of thoroughness on the Bill 117 saga. The Ottawa Citizen printed another article on the Bill, also by Dave Brown. In it he mentions, "Reader reaction [to his original article] was the heaviest I've experienced in more than 30 years of column writing. Many refused to believe it. They thought I must have my facts wrong." Unfortunately - and frighteningly - the media seems to be completely ignoring this issue.

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Making Boys More Like Girls

There's some surprising info from the Massachusetts News about William Pollack, who "joined the feminists at Wellesley College and Harvard's Graduate School of Education in their attempt to alter the nature of men by starting with boys in public schools across the country." Have a read of it right here. And there are some excerpts from his book, Real Boys. Of course, by "changing men," he means to make them more like women. Also, they included some soundbites from The War Against Boys by Christina Hoff Sommers to balance Pollack's claims, which was unexpected but a very fair move.

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Police With Too Little To Do

Fred Reed's latest column is a commentary on the recent news of a boy who could be charged with a felony for slapping a girl's butt. Fred provokes insight into the story with his usual humor and sarcasm. "Do you suppose Chief Salazar doesn't have enough to do?...The prissy confused in Espanola are teaching Sally that sexual attention from boys is sick, reprehensible, and a cause for calling the police. Gee, that'll make for happiness later in adulthood. And, dead serious, they may put the boy in juvie for two years, destroying his life forever. They're teaching Bobby that females are dangerous, that a man should never trust them."

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Scientists Grow Sperm In Laboratory

A team of scientists in Japan have successfully cloned the embryo cells of mice and turned them into sperm cells. The UK Sunday Times reported on the story here. From the article: "The team, from the Machida district of Tokyo, also believe they will be able to reprogramme male cells into producing eggs so that men can both father and 'mother' children." The research is also controversial due to the use of cloning technology, and while the sperm haven't yet been used in creating a mouse offspring, it is widely believed among scientists that it would work.

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CNN Coverage Of Choice For Men Issues

CNN is reporting on the new Ohio law that allows men who were tricked into paternity to stop paying child support and sue to recover past payments in the event that a DNA test proves that they were not the father. It is great to see more coverage of this issue, and there are several anecdotes in the story from men who've been tricked into fatherhood and are still forced to pay. Interesting fact: "Lab directors say that in about one-third of the welfare cases and 10 percent of other cases, the father named by the mother turns out not to be the biological parent."

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Deconstructing "Machismo"

Bill Kuhl pointed me to this St. Louis Post-Dispatch article and writes, "My gut reaction to the article is that on the one hand it's good to see men coming together to try and help each other with their problems, and to hear about Latino men for a change, but on the other hand the support groups referred to in the article sound as though they were born out of a gender feminist ideology - perhaps these men should be reflecting on the word for Spanish word for 'hypocrite' instead of 'macho'." The article is about profeminist men's groups that subscribe to myths about domestic violence and try to "keep men in their place" by reinforcing the male workhorse role with chivalrous sympathy and subtle shaming. I share Bill's mixed feelings about these groups.

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Marriage And Quality Of Life

Bill Kuhl writes "On the NBC Nightly News on New Year's Day there was a segment debunkng the myth that following marriage, on average, the quality of men's lives improves while the quality of women's suffers. The recent study was done by sociologist Linda J. Waite of the Univ. of Chicago. Previously, as NBC pointed out, experts in the field had agreed that, after getting married, men's health tended to improve while women tended to become depressed. (I just can't help but wonder, how were they able to compare their sampling with a cloned group of unmarried men and women? There are too many variables that could have brought about the changes in the two groups' quality of life.) Nonetheless, kudos to Dr. Waite and to NBC for reporting on the politically incorrect study. I might add that the segment mentioned a number of areas in which the quality of women's lives tend to improve. A summary of Dr. Waite's findings can be
found at this link. Perhaps the nicest tidbit that NBC reported was that
only 4% of the married female respondants said they had 'unhappy marriages,' certainly not the picture of marriage that the media and academia would have us believe.
"

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