Tag Archives: Feminism

News

Lehigh University student could stand trial for false rape accusation

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First, here’s the story from Lehigh Valley Live.

Excerpt:

A 19-year-old Lehigh University student who allegedly made a false report about being raped by a campus police officer waived a preliminary hearing today and could stand trial.

Brielynne Neumann, of Shrewsbury, Mass., was lying in the center of Parkhill Street at 11:49 p.m. Sept. 3 when Bethlehem police approached her, according to court records. She identified herself as Brei Scano and gave a fake date of birth, records say.
The lie backfired when police, who claim she was intoxicated, took her to her sorority house to verify her identity, records say. Neumann then told officers she had been raped the day before by a man who claimed to be a Lehigh University police officer, records say.

Bethlehem police turned the investigation over to Pennsylvania State Police, who interviewed Neumann on Sept. 4. According to records, Neumann told a state trooper a different tale then the one she spun for Bethlehem police. She told the trooper she got into a car with a man who said he was a police officer; he groped her before she fled, records say.

When the trooper asked Neumann to sign her statement, she refused, according to police, and recanted the entire story. The trooper wrote in the criminal affidavit, “She admitted that she made the whole thing up.”

So, this woman was drunk in a public place even though she was under the legal drinking age. To cover up her indiscretions and to blame others and appear as a victim, she invented a false rape accusation. I understand that this was a stressful situation for her, but imagine the problems she could have created by getting innocent men in trouble, as happened with the Duke Lacrosse players or the Tawana Brawley case or the Hofstra university case.

According to one study, false rape accusations are commonly used by women to provide an alibi for some other crime they are guilty of committing. The study lists this reason as one of the three reasons why women invent false rape accusations.

Excerpt:

A study of rape allegations in Indiana over a nine-year period revealed that over 40% were shown to be false — not merely unproven. According to the author, “These false allegations appear to serve three major functions for the complainants: providing an alibi, seeking revenge, and obtaining sympathy and attention. False rape allegations are not the consequence of a gender-linked aberration, as frequently claimed, but reflect impulsive and desperate efforts to cope with personal and social stress situations.” ( Kanin EJ. Arch Sex Behav. 1994 Feb;23(1):81-92 False rape allegations. )

In 1985, a study of 556 rape allegations found that 27% accusers recanted when faced with a polygraph (which can be ordered in the military), and independent evaluation showed a false accusation rate of 60%. (McDowell, Charles P., Ph.D. “False Allegations.” Forensic Science Digest, (publication of the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations), Vol. 11, No. 4 (December 1985), p. 64.)

Feminist Wendy McElroy writes about the cases of Tucker Carlson and John Fund:

In his forthcoming biography Politicians, Partisans and Parasites: My Adventures in Cable News, Crossfire co-host Tucker Carlson discusses another motive that underlies some false accusations. In 2001, a woman he had never met alleged he had raped her in Louisville, a city he had never visited. After $14,000 in defensive legal bills, Carlson discovered that the woman had a chronic mental disorder. He decided not to sue for redress since it would further link his name with the word “rape.”

And it happened to John Fund of the Wall Street Journal:

Consider journalist John Fund who was arrested on charges of domestic violence and publicly excoriated for sexual misconduct. The charges were later dropped.

Columnist Eric Alterman recently published an article entitled “Who Framed John Fund?” There, Alterman chronicled the false accusations that haunt Fund. Once a high-profile presence on the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page and a frequent television commentator, Fund now writes for the WSJ‘s far less prestigious Opinionjournal.com and is rarely on TV.

On his Web site, Fund posted a notarized affidavit from his accuser, stating, “Mr. Fund has not been abusive to me contrary to what I said in reports to the Jersey City police.” He has also posted the transcript of a deposition in which she testifies under oath that she has “borderline personality disorder.” Nevertheless, it is not clear whether Fund’s career will recover.

For a more detailed treatment of how false accusations are used to gain the advantage in divorce courts, check out this essay by Dr. Stephen Baskerville. Andrea Peyser writes in the NY Post about how these false accusations can lead to real victims of sexual violence not being taken seriously. I think that the solution is to prosecute false accusers . Their sentences should be proportional to the sentence that the victim of their accusation would have received, if convicted.

News

Scientists discover how fathers improve brain development of children

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Story from the Wall Street Journal. (H/T Andrew)

Excerpt:

Dr. Braun’s group found that at 21 days, the fatherless animals had less dense dendritic spines compared to animals raised by both parents, though they “caught up” by day 90. However, the length of some types of dendrites was significantly shorter in some parts of the brain, even in adulthood, in fatherless animals.

“It just shows that parents are leaving footprints on the brain of their kids,” says Dr. Braun, 54 years old.

The neuronal differences were observed in a part of the brain called the amygdala, which is related to emotional responses and fear, and the orbitofrontal cortex, or OFC, the brain’s decision-making center.

[…]The balance between these two brain parts is critical to normal emotional and cognitive functioning, according to Dr. Braun. If the OFC isn’t active, the amygdala “goes crazy, like a horse without a rider,” she says. In the case of the fatherless pups, there were fewer dendritic spines in the OFC, while the dendrite trees in the amygdala grew more and longer branches.

A preliminary analysis of the degus’ behavior showed that fatherless animals seemed to have a lack of impulse control, Dr. Braun says. And, when they played with siblings, they engaged in more play-fighting or aggressive behavior.

In a separate study in Dr. Braun’s lab conducted by post-doctoral researcher Joerg Bock, degu pups were removed from their caregivers for one hour a day. Just this small amount of stress leads the pups to exhibit more hyperactive behaviors and less focused attention, compared to those who aren’t separated, Dr. Braun says. They also exhibit changes in their brain.

The basic wiring between the brain regions in the degus is the same as in humans, and the nerve cells are identical in their function. “So on that level we can assume that what happens in the animal’s brain when it’s raised in an impoverished environment … should be very similar to what happens in our children’s brain,” Dr. Braun says.

Read the whole thing.

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Commentary

Barbara Kay analyzes the anti-male policies of the Liberal Party of Canada

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Check out this editorial written by Barbara Kay. (H/T Andrew)

She doesn’t like the way that feminists discriminate against men. In the editorial, she considers the Liberal party of Canada’s plan to use government power to discriminate against men.

Excerpt:

As for a gender commissioner, if the Women’s Caucus really wants to go there, they might start by recommending the abolition of equity programs in university. Enrolment in most programs is so female-skewed, an outsider might think men have fallen victim to some mysterious plague. And given the dropout rates of boys, one might call it a plague, because gender-wise the education system is sick. Boys are disadvantaged K-12, with teaching methods geared for girls and a very poor understanding of how boys learn best. Just this week Toronto proposed sweeping changes to education to make up for years of apathy toward the eroding performance gap.

Maybe this putative gender commissioner could ask why Ontario health units only screen for abuse in incoming female patients 12 and older, not male patients, even though male adolescents suffer nearly as much sexual abuse as girls.

And how about a thorough investigation of the family court system, where almost 90% of contested custody cases end up with sole custody going to mothers? How about support for equal parenting, a long-overdue gender-fair initiative that can’t get traction because groups like the Liberal Women’s Caucus aren’t interested in gender fairness?.

Because when the Women’s Caucus says “gender” they mean “women’s interests.” If an honest gender commissioner were ever appointed, he or she would recommend the complete dismantlement of all women’s government-funded lobby groups.

This article made me think of how a man is 184% more likely to die if he gets prostate cancer in Canada, where single-payer health care is politicized and extremely anti-male, when compared with the free market system in the United States. I am wondering how it helps women to constantly overlook the needs of men. Don’t women have sons, fathers, brothers and husbands?

By the way, if woman wants to impress a man, a good start would be to read books on the issues that Barbara talks about and then start to write and advocate for men in the public square. Stephen Baskerville’s “Taken Into Custody” is a good start. Or Jennifer Roback Morse’s “Love and Economics”. Women need to make marriage seem reasonable to men, and the best way to do that is to convince the man that you understand all about marriage and parenting.