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"Flagship status goes to the issue of the vote…[but] it turns out that the real struggle for the franchise was that of ordinary men – who paid the taxes and were drafted into the armed forces to fight the wars their taxes paid for. These were the people who for centuries, millennia even, were denied democracy, not women."
 
Norman L., one of the top blog commenters on my site (see the "Top Commentators" rankings in the right-hand column of my home page) is a big fan of The Woman Racket (pictured) by Steve Moxon. Moxon makes the point that because people are judged in large part by their "mate value," most men, being of low-status, have always been the victims of deep-rooted prejudice.
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Guest Article... by Marty Nemko
Do Men Need to be Wary of Women?...
A recent guest on my radio show was Carnell Smith, an expert on paternity fraud. He claimed that 30% of men who went to blood banks for paternity tests found that they were not--as the child's mother claimed--the father. Smith went on to say that in most states, DNA evidence, in many cases is inadmissible. He estimated that, currently, one million men are paying child support for kids they did not father.

Of course, it's outrageous that 30 states would enact such unfair-to-men laws. But why would a woman falsely claim that a man is the father of her child when he isn't, thereby forcing him to unfairly pay many thousands of dollars in child support, and manipulate him into spending 18 years involved in raising a child who he didn't father?
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Related News Article... from TIME Magazine
Despite DNA, Dad's Paternity Denied
For nearly two years, James Rhoades, a university librarian in Tallahassee (Florida), has been fighting to establish in law what science and fact already have shown beyond any doubt: He is the biological father of the boy dubbed J.A.R. He's got DNA tests to prove it, and videos and loads of pictures of him with the boy. In the photos too are the boy's mother, J.N.R., whom Rhoades met while taking an online graduate course. She was — and still is — married to another man, who was stationed at a Pensacola Air Force base during their affair in 2005. And that's the problem.

Last week, in a decision that underscores the tense relationship between science and law, a divided Kentucky Supreme Court told Rhoades that he could not press his paternity claim, no matter what evidence of fatherhood he might have, because J.N.R. was, and remains, a married woman. When it comes to defining fatherhood in the Bluegrass State, where Ricketts and her husband now live, the marital "I do" mean a lot more than DNA.
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Guest Article... Kathleen Parker ©2008
'Bad Dads' a Bad Idea...
Of those everyone loves to hate, few can compete with the deadbeat dad for longevity.

How much do we hate him? While we're counting the ways, Fox TV may try to help America organize its contempt and put a face on this loathsome character.

Bad Dads, redundant in these male-bashing times, is the name of a new reality show Fox is considering. While the network reviews the pilot, outraged fathers' advocates are trying to nip this bad seed before it buds.

As proposed, the show features a bounty hunter sort of character, which is not an entirely fictional device. Bounty hunters do exist and pursue noncustodial parents who are behind in child-support payments -- for a cut of the proceeds, sometimes as much as a third.
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Guest Article... Robert A. Glover, Ph.D. ©2008
Embracing Abundance...
Opening up to abundance isn't a pursuit; it's a state of mind. Abundance isn’t an issue of degree; it’s an issue of awareness and acceptance.

Abundance is not defined by how much a person has, but by how aware a person is of how much he or she has. If you can’t see that you are already abundantly blessed, you won’t be able to see it if it is multiplied by 10, or 100, or 1000, or even a million.

While it may appear that some people have more material things, that doesn’t mean that they have more abundance. The accumulation of stuff does not necessarily mean that a person feels blessed, abundant, or prosperous. In fact, having a lot of things often gets in the way of a person’s ability to feel wealthy or satisfied. Abundance can’t be defined just in terms of volume or mass. It can include health, friends, happiness, or well-being.
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COYOTE... monthly column by Dick Prosapio © 2008
If it Feels Good....... (Revisited)
As soon as I ate the Ritz cracker with the "Old English" cheese spread on it I knew I was doomed.

With my, relatively, high cholesterol I should be watching the fat content of everything. My VA doc has said that since the "good" stuff is better than the "bad" stuff and my triglycerides are really good, and I check out in every other way, even the high C rating isn't really that bad....so..why not? One rationalization being as good as any other.

Besides, one bite of Ritz coupled with good, sharp cheddar and I'm a goner, right back at the first place we lived that I remember really well, 66th and Marshfield on the south side of Chicago. Every now and then, to blow off steam I'm sure, all the musicians my father played with would come over to our apartment and have a party. These would turn into jam sessions, though I didn't know what a "jam session" was at the time, featuring accordion, guitar, base, piano, and vocals. No, this wasn't some polka band, when these guys, and the female singer, sometimes my mother, got together, they sounded like the Benny Goodman Quartet. I didn't know just how "hip" they really were until years later when I heard some of their recordings.
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JEFF'S LIFE: Raising an Autistic Child... monthly column by Jeff Stimpson © 2007
Didn't Hurt a Bit...
Alex's previous dental appointments included the doctor wrapping him in a papoose (a kind of zipped-up sleeping bag for autistic kids who really can't take the exam), and, needless to say, screaming. "Well," said that dentist, a sweet guy named Lee, "at least when he screams it's easy to look in his mouth." I liked Dr. Lee. He was the one who pointed out that we need to switch toothpastes often because bacteria builds up immunity to one brand. I did not know that.

There's a hitch at the door for this day's appointment, which is with Dr. Lee's replacement who is also named Dr. Lee. "Everyone's gone. She's not there anymore," the receptionist tells Jill at 10 to five. Our appointment was for 4:30. Would the new Dr. Lee like to know how many doctors have keep me waiting a whole lot more than 20 minutes throughout Alex's lifetime?

"She said she called you," the receptionist insists.

"She never did!" Jill replies.
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DADS, DON'T FIX YOUR KIDS... monthly column by Mark Brandenburg, M.A © 2007
Shame on You ...
"What are you thinking? Haven’t we talked about this before?” My seven-year-old son looked down at the food that had just spilled on the kitchen floor.

LATEST REVIEWS

REVIEW: Men are Great: How to Build a Relationship that Brings Out the Best in Both of You
By By Karen Jones ©2007
Karen Jones, the most youthful-looking woman on the high side of 50 that you are likely ever to find, and a relationship trainer by trade, has written a deceptively simple book. (Full disclosure: At the Boys and the Boy Crisis Conference in Washington DC in July 2007, Karen and I spent some brief yet treasured time together in the company of other conference attendees.) Men are Great: How to Build a Relationship that Brings Out the Best in Both of You is a modest book. It’s a quick read and it is pretty much summed up by its title. Nevertheless, it is highly recommended for a number of reasons.
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REVIEW: See Jane Hit: Why Girls are Growing More Violent and What We Can Do About it
By James Garbarino, Ph.D. ©2006
Seven years after writing “Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them,” James Garbarino, Ph.D., professor of humanistic psychology at Loyola University Chicago, has published what could roughly speaking be described as a companion volume, “See Jane Hit: Why Girls are Growing More Violent and What We Can Do About It.” Garbarino writes well, and his book addresses a topic that has drawn significant interest in recent years, having been addressed in at least four other recent volumes. “See Jane Hit” is interesting reading for gender activists, since Garbarino writes from a more mainstream perspective that uncritically accepts some anti-male falsehoods, yet at the same time is a generally thoughtful and fair-minded commentator.
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REVIEW: Straight Talk for Men about Marriage: What Men Need to Know About Marriage (And What Women Need to Know About Men)
By Martin G. Friedman ©2006
The author has put together an appealingly presented, male-friendly guide to improving the quality of our marriages. As Friedman is the first to point out, this isn’t exactly rocket science. We need to learn to do the basics. A marriage is a path to learning about ourselves. Projecting our discontent onto our spouse doesn’t do either of us any favors.
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REVIEW: Self-Made Man: One Woman’s Journey into Manhood and Back Again
By Norah Vincent
Norah Vincent has produced a new book whose simple underlying concept nevertheless seems to possess all the potential power of, say, John Howard Griffin’s classic Black Like Me, in which the Caucasian author masqueraded as a black man and was astonished at the depths of the discrimination and barriers he discovered.  Author Vincent tries to do the same thing for gender, dressing in drag as “Ned” and entering various supposed male bastions to report on what she discovers.
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REVIEW: The Smart Couple’s Guide to the Wedding of Your Dreams:
Planning Together for Less Stress and More Joy
By By Judith Sherven and James Sniechowski
Judith Sherven and James Sniechowski, husband-and-wife psychologists and authors of three books previously reviewed by me in these pages (The New Intimacy, Opening to Love 365 Days a Year, and Be Loved for Who You Really Are) have just published a new book on their favorite topic, love and marriage. In a literal sense, The Smart Couple’s Guide to the Wedding of Your Dreams covers a narrower subject than any of their three previous books.  But actually, predictably enough given the authors’ excellent writing skills and tireless, creative devotion to promoting passion, their latest offering manages to transcend the limits of the genre of wedding guides.  Not seeing a book that went beyond the technicalities of wedding planning and touched the spirit of the event, they took the plunge and wrote it!
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REVIEW: Partnering: A New Kind of Relationship
By Hal Stone and Sidra Stone © 2006
Hal and Sidra Stone are, like Judith Sherven and James Sniechowski (whose latest book is reviewed elsewhere in this issue) a husband-and-wife psychologist team who have written a number of books and who travel the world giving workshops on their techniques for improving one’s life and relationships.  Partnering does not represent a stunning advance on the authors’ previous work but it does expand, in the specific context of relationships, on the work they have helped pioneer in exploring the multiple selves each of us contains through the voice dialogue technique.
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REVIEW: The Prodigal Father: A True Story of Tragedy, Survival, and Reconciliation in an American Family.
By Jon DuPre.
Jon DuPre’s achievement with “The Prodigal Father” is stupefying. What this correspondent for Fox Network News has done is so simple: He has told the story of his family of origin, consisting of two brothers, himself, and his mother and father. As a novel, the book would fail. For one thing, the plot would be utterly unbelievable! But “The Prodigal Father” is billed as an “autobiography,” and written with loving detail and self-revelation so honest and so deep that took my breath away. As such, it is utterly compelling and simultaneously completely credible.
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REVIEW: Gendercide and Genocide
Edited by Adam Jones © 2006
Apart from the rarest exceptions (such as the not-to-be-missed “Female ‘Circumcision’ in Africa: Culture, Controversy, and Change,” Edited by Bettina Shell-Duncan and Ylva Hernlund), edited volumes tend to be hit-and-miss affairs. It’s hard enough simply to find an appropriate topic, to accumulate contributions that are varied enough to provide interest but not so different that they work at cross-purposes, and to publish the work. Maintaining a razor-like focus as can easily be done with an individually authored book by definition becomes almost impossible with an edited volume.
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Archive of All Reviews & Interviews... by J. Steven Svoboda.

MILITARY HONOR ROLL... Pay tribute to the Veterans or Active Duty military in your life on our perpetual Military Honor Roll page
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FATHERS HONOR ROLL... Pay tribute to your father (grandfather, great grandfather, etc.) on our perpetual Fathers Honor Roll page
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MENSIGHT Magazine is another free service of The Men's Resource Network, Inc. (MRN). It has grown out of the response that we have received from articles posted on TheMensCenter.com (TMC), our official web-site. The first issue went on-line on May 1, 2000. (Archive)

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