'Hundreds of us will die in Raqqa’: the women fighting Isis
Topic: Individualist Feminism
Source: The Guardian (UK)
Taylor, born in Blackburn 28 years ago, is a footsoldier for the YPJ – a Northern Kurdish or Kurmanji acronym for the Women’s Protection Units – an all-female force that is part of the offensive to liberate Raqqa. Fighting alongside a coalition of Arab and Assyrian Christian militias, the YPJ is steadily encircling the capital of Isis’s proto-state, supported by US airpower. Standing among the ruins of a bombed command post 25 miles north of Raqqa, Taylor looks more like a guerrilla fighter from the Spanish civil war than a combatant at the sharp end of the international coalition to eradicate the world’s arguably most feared terrorist organisation. She has no army boots and instead marches to battle in a pair of size five secondhand Chinese-made trainers, bought for £6 in the Kurdish town of Qamishli. She has no body armour or helmet, so wraps an emerald and orange embroidered keffiyeh around her forehead to, she says, help express her femininity. She watches the war through a pair of Specsavers glasses.

Yiannopolos Plotting Comeback with $12 Million in Backing
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Target Liberty
Conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopolos has wrangled $12 million from secret investors to launch a new media company focused on “making the lives of journalists, professors, politicians, feminists, Black Lives Matter activists, and other professional victims a living hell,” according to a new report. The ousted Breitbart News editor’s new venture is called Milo Inc. and will center on events with other alt-right personalities, Vanity Fair reported Friday. The mag described Milo Inc. as “corporatized trolling via live entertainment.”

New Sec of Labor Let “Lolita Express” Billionaire Off “With a Wrist Slap”
Topic: Children and Family
Source: The Free Thought Project
Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, confirmed to the position Thursday by the U.S. Senate, is one in a string of disputed appointees to President Trump’s Cabinet, but this contention doesn’t concern his politics, rather, it’s centered on his lax treatment of billionaire pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein.

This NYC school is trashing all its textbooks
Topic: Children and Family
Source: New York Post
School is no place for books, one Manhattan principal apparently believes. In a scene out of “Fahrenheit 451,” administrators at Life Sciences Secondary School have ordered all textbooks rounded up and removed — calling them “antiquated,” sources say. Principal Kim Swanson and Assistant Principal Derek Premo, who launched the ban, “really frown upon the use of books,” an insider told The Post. “They just took books that teachers have been using and not replaced anything.”

Fox News Scandal Claims Another Victim
Topic: Sexual Harassment
Source: AP
The turmoil at Fox News Channel has claimed another victim. The network said Monday that Bill Shine, the network's co-president and a longtime lieutenant of ousted Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, is out, the AP reports. Shine's departure follows the firing of top personality Bill O'Reilly and Ailes, both amid charges that they had harassed women. Shine was not accused of harassment, but there were questions about what he knew about the network's workplace atmosphere for the years problems were going on.

Undergrad, Notre Dame Expelled Me Because I’m Male
Topic: Men's Movement
Source: The Daily Beast
An undergraduate student is suing the University of Notre Dame in federal court, alleging the Indiana school launched a discriminatory investigation that found him guilty of stalking, dating violence, and harassment of an ex-girlfriend, then expelled him just three weeks before he was set to graduate. Filing his suit under the pseudonym “John Doe,” the former student is asking for undisclosed damages, but first his lawyers say he just wants to be let back in. John’s case joins dozens of other pending lawsuits nationwide alleging colleges and universities have over-corrected in recent years when it comes to the investigation of sexual assault and harassment on campus. Parroting several other suits currently making their way through the courts, the complaint alleges that in recent years Notre Dame has “created an atmosphere of institutional hostility toward accused male students.”

Former football player files $102 million defamation lawsuit
Topic: Men's Movement
Source: Wset
[Ed: against Liberty University] The defendant, Cameron Jackson, says that a press release sent out by Liberty University last September violated his Title IX rights. In that press release, Liberty announced they were investigating Jackson and another football player for "reports of sexual assault" involving another student athlete and it also included reports that Jackson was found responsible for violating the honor code and the sexual assault policy. But Jackson and his teammate were later cleared.

Wikipedia boss edited own profile to scrub porn ties
Topic: Porn, Prostitution, and Sexual Freedom
Source: Heat Street
[Ed: And, yet, I thnk he would turn over other people's browsing habits in a flash] Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales bravely rode into battle against fake news this week, announcing a new media venture called Wikitribune. He said it would harness the powers of the crowd and be above the failings of most news outlets, enabling readers to really trust it. But how does Wales’s own record on unvarnished truth-telling stack up? Heat Street is reminded of one unedifying incident from early in Wikipedia’s history, which saw Wales purge his own profile of X-rated details he didn’t like.

Rebel Catholics ordain woman priest
Topic: Individualist Feminism
Source: Charlotte Observer
An international group defiantly opposed to the Roman Catholic Church’s ban on women priests Sunday ordained its first woman Catholic priest in the 46 counties that make up the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte. The ordination ceremony for Abigail Eltzroth happened in Asheville at Jubilee! – a nondenominational faith community – with Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan presiding. Eltzroth, 64, said she is the second woman in North Carolina ordained by the rebel group, called the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests. “It’s time for a change and we’re in the forefront, leading the charge,” Eltzroth told the Observer on Sunday. “We expect that eventually everybody is going to follow us.”

Cops: 11-Year-Old Repeatedly Bullied—by Her Teachers
Topic: Children and Family
Source: KFLY News
The bullying epidemic may have hit a new low. Two Louisiana teachers were arrested and accused of harassing an 11-year-old girl, reports CNN. The victim’s first teacher, Ann Marie Shelvin, was removed from the school after the student’s mother got the school board as well as local authorities involved in Opelousas. Police say Shelvin threatened to fail three other students if they didn’t fight the victim, and reportedly told her to “go and kill herself.” Tracy Gallow, a former teacher’s aide who took over Shelvin’s classroom, continued harassing the victim in retaliation for reporting Shelvin’s abuse, deputies say. On separate occasions, Gallow was caught on school surveillance cameras pushing the victim onto bleachers, and police say she admitted doing so.

Merkel in strife for Ivanka ‘royal visit’
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: The Australian
The German foreign minister has accused Angela Merkel of treating Ivanka Trump like royalty in a backlash against the chancellor from her coalition partners before the election in September. Gabriel said that Ms Trump’s powerful position was unthinkable in a German system designed to prevent nepotism as he criticised the way she was given star billing at a women’s G20 event in Berlin last week.

Fox News group hacked, surveilled, stalked ex-host Andrea Tantaros
Topic: Sexual Harassment
Source: Ars Technica
[Ed: After a sexual harassment claim] Andrea Tantaros claims that she was stalked and harassed by multiple Twitter accounts that were coordinated by Fox News executives after she filed a sexual harassment suit. Her new lawsuit also claims that Fox had her computer hacked for spying purposes.

The Best Reason Not To Home-School Your Children
Topic: Children and Family
Source: Acticist Post
After conducting a multi-center, phase-3, double-blind, placebo controlled, independently reviewed study, encompassing 39 countries, various undersea kingdoms, and the moon, I’ve concluded that the best reason parents shouldn’t home-school their children is: They can’t. They can’t, because the public education they received was so wan and thin and bereft of substance, they’re unfit to teach. For those parents who did receive a decent education, and who can handle the schedule, home schooling is a rational decision.

Safe spaces. New bree of students come to teach, not learn.
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Huffington Post
[Ed: Again, I am surprised by HuffPo taking this stand] College campuses have become very unsafe over the past few years - not to students but to ideas. It is education itself that is under threat. A certain breed of student shows up to college not ready to learn, but to teach. And as far as they are concerned, nothing should be off limits in their effort to bring the rest of their communities to heel. Don’t like an invited speaker’s point of view? Shout him down. Or commit an act of violence. Or start a riot. When you know with certainty that you occupy the moral high ground, after all, what tactic is off limits? Don’t like the politics of Chick-fil-A’s founder? Claim to feel somehow threatened. No specificity is necessary.

Sorry, Joe Biden, But Opposing Kangaroo Courts...
Topic: Men's Movement
Source: The Federalist
In conjunction with Sexual Assault Awareness Month, observed every April, former Vice President Joe Biden recently sat down for an interview with Teen Vogue to discuss campus sexual assault, including “how sexual assault on campus initiatives may change under the Trump administration.” While the interview focused on the laudable work of Biden’s It’s On Us campaign, it was the brief treatment of the new administration — specifically, of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos — that made headlines. “Joe Biden Has Some Strong Words For Betsy DeVos,” rang the Huffington Post; “[Biden] is taking aim at DeVos,” echoed Politico’s Michael Stratford.

Rand Paul: Withhold Funds From Colleges That Violate Free Speech?
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: A Libertarian Future
The debate over free speech versus so-called hate speech rages on publicly funded college campuses around the country. The safe space generation has made increasingly drastic demands that they be “protected” from dangerous ideas that might question their worldview. Conservatives have had their events cancelled by university administrations that have kowtowed to liberal activists demands. These publicly funded universities are violating these individuals’ constitutionally protected rights to free speech but haven’t suffered any consequences. Rand Paul won’t stand for that. He would have Congress reconsider whether or not the funding they appropriate is available to these universities that have given into censorship.

Women gun owners, this young conservative is fighting...
Topic: Women, Minorities, and Guns
Source: Rare
[Ed: for your right to defend yourselves on college campuses] At the National Rifle Association Annual Meetings & Exhibits, Rare spoke with Antonia Okafor, founder of EmPOWERed and one of the featured speakers at the event’s Leadership Forum on Friday, April 28. She’s a conservative woman and a major gun rights advocate who is working to give a voice to female conservatives and gun owners. “I’m sharing a story that’s my story,” she said. “And it’s a unique story, not the story that you usually hear when it comes to the NRA or a gun owner or someone who’s an advocate for the Second Amendment. I mean, I’m proud of that.”

Hot Girls Wanted
Topic: Porn, Prostitution, and Sexual Freedom
Source: Reason
[Ed: Exploiting Sex Workers in the Name of Exposing Porn Exploitation?] Actress and porn-skeptic Rashida Jones has followed up her controversial 2015 documentary Hot Girls Wanted with a six-part docu-series on the same theme. The Netflix-original show—Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On—was released last week, earning high-profile coverage from entertainment and women's media and mostly glowing reviews. Yet in their rush to expose exploitation in adult entertainment, were Hot Girls Wanted producers indifferent to their own impact? In the past few days alone, a host of porn performers and producers have come forward with allegations of unethical practices, from using sex workers' images in the series without their consent to lying to them about the nature of the series and Jones' involvement in it.

Family by Family, How School Segregation Still Happens
Topic: Children and Family
Source: New York Times
Elana Shneyer and Adam Kaufman live a few hundred feet from Public School 165, the Robert E. Simon School, on West 109th Street, at the edge of Morningside Heights in Manhattan. When they started looking for a kindergarten for their son, who will start in the fall, the school was an early stop. That made them unusual. Although their neighborhood is diverse, the children who go to P.S. 165, its zoned school, are mostly Hispanic and low-income. Most of the white students who live in the area it serves attend school elsewhere. But Ms. Shneyer and Mr. Kaufman, who are white, liked that the school had a Spanish dual-language program and that its kindergarten classes had only 10 to 15 students. They also knew they had options.

The Un-Free Speech Movement at Berkeley
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Reason
UC Berkeley is an exceptional institution whose history includes the 1964-65 protests that gained fame as the Free Speech Movement. Long known as a hotbed of left-wing activism, it has lately gained attention as a place where right-wingers venture at their peril. In February, the administration abruptly called off a talk by then-Breitbart News troll Milo Yiannopoulos after protesters threw stones and firebombs and smashed windows. In all, they caused $100,000 in property damage and several injuries. The destruction came not from students intolerant of unwanted opinions, according to the university, but from masked self-styled anarchists bent on wreaking havoc. After Yiannopoulos was invited, the administration had issued a ringing statement condemning his views while defending his right to speak. It affirmed the university's commitment to "the principle of tolerance, even when it means we tolerate that which may appear to us as intolerant."