There is good news to follow up to the recent story about Terry Johnson, who was convicted of sexual assault due a videotape of the victim's accusations, which was shown in court even though the alleged victim has publicly recanted the accusations. Thursday, the NH Supreme Court ruled that the videotape should not have been used as evidence in the trial. Johnson will get a new trial, and it is unlikely he can be convicted with the victim still recanting the accusations. Foster's Daily Democrat had the latest news here.

As sad as it is to say this, any man who is going through a divorce or will be doing so soon should read this. The Washington Post printed this article, which is a series of tips on what to do in the event of parental child abduction, and what information you'll need on hand to try to stop it before your children are taken abroad. With so much at stake in a situation like this, it is better to be safe than sorry, and to be prepared.

Ian Murray wrote an article for Jewish World Review that debunks the three statements that President Clinton recently made, that "In America today, domestic violence is the number one health risk for women between the ages of 15 and 44 ... Every twelve seconds, another
woman is beaten. That's nearly 900,000 victims a year." It is of course very damaging to have the US President making these false claims, and all the more important to have the true facts ready. Bookmark this article!

This article from the New York Times (free registration required) is about the disappointments many women are experiencing as their "biological clocks" run down and they still cannot find a man (breadwinner) to marry and have children with. "'There are no normal men,' [a woman] complained...'They've all got an inferiority complex because they can't earn enough money to support a family. All of them live with their mothers. They all earn 1,000, 1,500 rubles a month,' $35 to $55, roughly. 'Who would want to bear a child with a man like that?' she asked." There's more than a bit of irony in this quote, in several ways. I'll leave it to you to interpret it. :)

"A Ghanaian woman whose campaign against her deportation from the United States became a rallying point for prominent American women, including Hillary Clinton, Gloria Steinem and Julia Roberts, has been exposed as an impostor and faces prosecution for fraud." The story is from the UK Guardian and can be read at this link. She had used the argument that if she were returned to Ghana, she would face female genital mutilation. But it was a lie.

Don Feder in his latest column for Jewish World Review writes about the new movie What Women Want. The movie, of course, is degrading to men and features a feminist utopia where Mel Gibson puts aside his traditional masculinity for the traits of a female-worshiping lapdog. As Feder puts it: "Like most of today's movies about relationships, What Women Really Want is relentlessly anti-male. Men are dense. Men are crude. Men are self-centered. Men just don't listen." There's no need to support male-trashing movies such as this, and I'd be wary of anyone who enjoyed it.

Backlash.com is reporting that Steve Blake, president of R-KIDS of Minnesota, is currently in prison for failure to pay child support. However, Steve claims to have paid his required $750/month payment and has begun a hunger strike to draw attention to his injustice. I plan to follow up on this story for further developments. I have no contact information for people to call at this time.

Related to the recent ABCnews story about a boy who could face felony charges for slapping a girl's butt, this story from The Tennessean is about a girl who could face discipline charges for sexually assaulting two other girls. While this does bring up the issue of sexual assault/abuse by women, I really think we should leave kids out of it. Click here to read the story.

Here's a great move for men's health that could hopefully be imitated by other states: New York recently passed a law requiring the coverage of prostate cancer screening by insurance companies. Ed Bartlett's post to the Men's Health America list can be read here. Please take a moment to sign up with Ed's list if you care about men's health issues!

I received a couple of anonymous submissions about coverage of the recent report on the fragility of boy's health. The story was also distributed on Yahoo! News and also ABCNews. Although I'm glad to see this get more media attention, I have to wonder if it's being done to encourage the need to "resocialize boys" under the stereotype that masculinity is toxic.

We'd like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays/Happy Newtonmas/etc, and the best in the New Year! The Men's Activism News Network, now about six months old, has been our gift to help a movement that we strongly believe in. We hope as many people as possible can spend time with their families this season, and for those that cannot, we will continue to fight for you. Take care everyone.



Scott and Adam.

Here's some excellent work from the British Medical Journal about boys and masculinity, as this essay by Sebastian Kraemer tells us: "A typical attitude to boys is that they are, or must be made, more resilient than girls. This adds social insult to biological injury." He explores the basis of this vulnerability in greater detail in the essay, which you may read by clicking here. Also, be sure to send Sebastian an e-mail telling him how you much you hope he'll continue to do research on boys and masculinity since it gives men's issues some much needed credibility, and to put it simply, without scientific studies to back up our issues, we will not gain public support unless we can demonstrate some proof of our claims. So be sure to send him some praise and encouragement.

This piece in Irish Times by John Waters describes many journalistic attacks made on him by others offended by his columns on men's issues and criticisms of feminism. "What I have suggested is that men are in certain ways oppressed. Feminists, claiming a monopoly on suffering, do not like this. Nor do they like the fact that, by advancing a plausible case, people like us have had an effect on public opinion. We must be shamed into silence." It's a superb article - maybe we could write John some letters of support for standing up for men and not being shamed into silence.

ABCnews is reporting that a 14 year-old boy could face a felony charge of sexual assault for slapping a girl's butt at school. The mother of the victim was quoted as saying, "What he did wasn't right, but I wouldn't have pressed charges, given that it was just a slap on the butt." Likewise, I agree that the boy should be disciplined, but this is going way too far.

David Byron writes "The so-called discussion boards at NOW have realised they must censor and ban comments by non-feminists after several weeks of worrying about how censorship will hurt their public image. Without any announcement NOW has moved its discussion board to a new URL and has deleted many previous posts and threads at the same time placing many non-feminist posters on a banned list to prevent the truth about feminism getting out. Here is the old board and here is the new board.

The mass deletions, bannings and the move to a new URL were made secretly to prevent giving the impression that NOW supports censorship...." Please click "Read More" below to read the rest of his account of censorship...