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The Pentagon is planning to open the ranks of the Navy SEALs, the Army's elite Ranger units and other specialized combat outfits to female soldiers for the first time, according to reports. The first opportunity female soliders will have to join the military's elite combat units will be with the Navy, according to Pentagon plans outlining the transition, obtained by the Associated Press on Monday. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel could officially announce plans to expand access to those units as soon as Tuesday, according to the AP. Hagel's pending announcement builds upon former Pentagon chief Leon Panetta's decision in January...

On this Father's Day, we celebrate a dying role. With all of the problems currently plaguing our culture -- crime, violence, promiscuity, poverty, divorce, drug abuse, and so on -- the one thing that we as a nation could do to remedy such things most quickly would be to return fathers to their families. You've almost certainly heard the sad statistics when it comes to fatherhood in America.

These days we expect a lot more of fathers. As women have returned to the workplace, and the division of labor in families has changed, we have come to think about fathers as nurturers and caregivers as well as breadwinners. Some families have undergone role reversals, with mothers in the work force and fathers as primary caregivers. As a result, fathers sometimes get the same scrutiny to which mothers have long been exposed. Sometimes that scrutiny comes from mothers themselves, who are used to playing the major role in child-rearing (and certainly child care). Despite their own anxieties, mothers may...

In which Bishopess Schori’s “Theo-fantastic” Curacao sermon is reexamined, evaluated, judged, and ditched. Brethren, Peace and good to all of you. I can't listen to this sermon! I’ve been asking myself what (or who) possessed Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Episcopal Church’s presiding bishopess of the Episcopal Church, to deliver this sermon in Curacao. As you might remember, I commented on it not long ago on a previous blog post. I think I got the answer after reading a chapter of this book, God or Goddess?: Feminist Theology : What Is It? Where Does It Lead?, by Manfred Hauke....

A British study has identified the age at which men finally grow up -- and it's 43. That's 11 years later than their female counterparts, according to research commissioned by Nickelodeon UK. Men demonstrate their immaturity by being amused at farts and burps and playing video games, among other things, said women who participated in the survey. Not being able to cook simple meals, re-telling the same old stories and jokes when out with the boys, and owning a skateboard or BMX were also high on the list. Nickelodeon UK released the results in support of its launch of a...

"What do we want from modern man?" is the headline on the cover of the Style section of The [London] Sunday Times' latest issue. The man in the cover photo, almost naked, looks androgynous, as if he hadn't quite made up his mind whether to be male or female (a common occurrence these days). I'll answer that question by taking a cue from The Sunday Times itself, which for years - at least until I stopped reading it in disgust, no, I mean, because it was too riveting and captivating to bear - has been telling us that man...

This is an excerpt The parents of a Tampa Bay student have started an online petition asking for improved tolerance training after their son was castigated for wearing makeup on the last day of school.

WANTED TO WRITE something snarky about Moira Johnston because what she's doing kind of begs for snarkiness. But after hanging with her in Rittenhouse Square - where her bare breasts caught the morning sun, elicited picture-taking and drew a blasting honk from a Roadway Express truck - Johnston won me over to her cause. Which is this: Women should be allowed to go topless anywhere that men are allowed to. Maybe it was the flowered pasties that covered Johnston's nipples. Or the glorious breeze. Or the guy who grinned at Johnston's chest and said, "God bless ya, babe!" Mostly, though,...

Looks like Mike Barnicle's not going to let anyone get to his PC-left when it comes to women. On today's Morning Joe, Barnicle claimed that "a lot of men . . . fear the fact--and I think it's a fact--that women are better balanced than men. They have better judgment about things than a lot of men." Barnicle's comment during a discussion about the statement made yesterday by Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant that the decline in educational outcomes for children today is due to the entry of women into the workforce. View the video here.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is exempting around 500 civilian sexual assault prevention personnel from this year’s mandatory furloughs, a senior defense official told POLITICO, in a bid to show the Pentagon is serious about cracking down on sexual assault in the ranks. Hagel is expected to make the announcement on Wednesday. His move comes after a rash of arrests and investigations into service members accused of sexual misconduct and a summit of top military leaders at the White House last week, when President Barack Obama called the problem “dangerous to our national security.” Hagel has ordered most of the...

Writing for The Atlantic in September of 2012, Hanna Rosin argued that the “hookup culture” so prevalent on college campuses and in the lives of young adults is “an engine of female progress—one being harnessed and driven by women themselves.” She wrote: To put it crudely, feminist progress right now largely depends on the existence of the hookup culture. And to a surprising degree, it is women—not men—who are perpetuating the culture, especially in school, cannily manipulating it to make space for their success, always keeping their own ends in mind. For college girls these days, an overly serious suitor...

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 20, 2013, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Would the woman most closely associated with the TSA airport stripsearches make a good presidential candidate? The abortion lobbying group EMILY's List and The Washington Post think so. This month, EMILY's List launched an initiative entitled "Madam President" dedicated to electing the first female president. The group's president, Stephanie Schriock, said she was not placing all her bets on a Hilary Clinton candidacy. "If she chooses not to, our options are far from exhausted," she said. "We have a deep bench of women leaders committed to fighting for progressive change who are up...

It was not immediately clear who killed Zara Shahid Hussain, 59, a senior member of the Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI). Hussain "was leaving her home for some work when three gunmen attacked her. She thought they wanted to snatch her purse and handed it over to them but they killed her", Firdous Shamim, a local PTI leader, said. Police said all three gunmen escaped after the attack late on Saturday. "They shot her with one bullet near her chin and she could not survive," senior police official Nasir Aftab told AFP. Around 150 people were killed in the run-up to national...

The reason why most Freeper men happen to be well-adjusted, manly, heterosexual men, is because they were likely raised by traditional American Christian women, with traditional American values. Not all men in America had the good fortune to be raised by traditional women. I refer you to Christina Hoff Sommers 2001 book, The War Against Boys, which I consider to be the most important book on the greatest danger facing Western Civilization, radical feminism: http://www.amazon.com/The-WAR-AGAINST-BOYS-Misguided/dp/0684849577 Most American Christians do not understand the radical feminist sub-culture. If you have grown up among Christian women, it is difficult for you to imagine...

The war on the English language from gender-neutrality advocates has reached new lows in Washington state, where the governor signed a new piece of legislation dictating that the terms “fisherman,” “freshman,” and “penmanship” all be replaced because of alleged sexism. “Fisherman” will now be “fisher”; “freshman” will now be “first-year student”; “penmanship” will now be “handwriting.”

In an open letter to UC President Susan Herbst, self-described feminist student Carolyn Luby wrote that the redesigned team logo will intimidate women and empower rape culture. Not realizing that she was being over-the-top ridiculous, and claiming that she was threatened with rape, she went to he campus police and was told by a UConn police officer to keep a low profile and wear a hat. We get an insight into what Luby views as rape by this comment: Luby, who openly shared her experience as a survivor of rape and sexual assault at Take Back The Night, an event...

The new logo for the University of Connecticut’s sports teams is a terrifying husky dog that calls to mind images of sexual assault, says one student. The new logo was unveiled last week, receiving mixed-to-negative reviews from UConn fans who preferred the older, cuter husky dog. But one student went much further, criticizing the new, meaner logo for being a pro-rape symbol. In an open letter to UC President Susan Herbst, self-described feminist student Carolyn Luby wrote that the redesigned team logo will intimidate women and empower rape culture. UConn basketball coach Geno Auriemma said the logo “is looking right...

Why topless protesters will hound Islamic leaders (CNN) -- For the past five years now, we here at the international women's movement Femen have been waging an active campaign of resistance to the patriarchy in various corners of the world. We have been bringing the world the simple idea of women's liberation by means of sexual emancipation as expressed in highly visible acts of political protest. We believe that the enslavement of women began with the enslavement of their sexuality, so we therefore consider it legitimate to use their liberated sexuality as a symbol of women's worldwide liberation. We divide...

Feminism could destroy Russia, Russian Orthodox patriarch claims. Kirill, head of church and close ally of Putin says feminist organisations 'proclaim the pseudo-freedom of women' Feminism is a "very dangerous" phenomenon that could lead to the destruction of Russia, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church has said. "I consider this phenomenon called feminism very dangerous, because feminist organisations proclaim the pseudo-freedom of women, which, in the first place, must appear outside of marriage and outside of the family," said Patriarch Kirill, according to the Interfax news agency. "Man has his gaze turned outward – he must work, make money...

Up to 74 girls in Afghanistan have been treated after a suspected poisoning attack at their school, officials said yesterday. The girls became ill after smelling gas at their school, Bibi Maryam, in Takhar province's capital, Taluqan. Many of the children remained in a critical condition in hospital last night.

I am a feminist. I have marched at the barricades, subscribed to Ms. magazine, and knocked on many a door in support of progressive candidates committed to women's rights. Until a month ago, I would have expressed unqualified support for Title IX and for the Violence Against Women Act. But that was before my son, a senior at a small liberal-arts college in New England, was charged—by an ex-girlfriend—with alleged acts of "nonconsensual sex" that supposedly occurred during the course of their relationship a few years earlier.

Recently, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council reintroduced a tired refrain: Legalized gay marriage could lead to other legal forms of marriage disaster, such as polygamy. Rick Santorum, Bill O’Reilly, and other social conservatives have made similar claims. It’s hardly a new prediction—we’ve been hearing it for years. Gay marriage is a slippery slope! A gateway drug! If we legalize it, then what’s next? Legalized polygamy? We can only hope. Yes, really. While the Supreme Court and the rest of us are all focused on the human right of marriage equality, let’s not forget that the fight doesn’t end...

As we've noted, the liberal media generally and the Big Three broadcast networks in particular have studiously avoided paying attention to the Kermit Gosnell murder trial. The Philadelphia abortionist is charged with murdering newborns who survived abortion attempts and were born alive. But aside from the criminal aspect of the case, there's other angle in the Gosnell matter that is of interest to political observers of the 2014 election cycle, particularly the Pennsylvania governor's race. One of the Democrats vying for the nomination to challenge Gov. Tom Corbett (R) is Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.), who operated an abortion clinic from...

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis has reaffirmed the Vatican's criticism of a body that represents U.S. nuns which the Church said was tainted by "radical" feminism, dashing hopes he might take a softer stand with the sisters. Francis's predecessor, Benedict, decreed that the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), a group that represents more than 80 percent of the 57,000 Catholic nuns in the United States, must change its ways, a ruling which the Vatican said on Monday still applied. Last year, a Vatican report said the LCWR had "serious doctrinal problems" and promoted "radical feminist themes incompatible with...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis reaffirmed the Vatican's call for reform of the U.S.-based Leadership Conference of Women Religious. Archbishop Gerhard Muller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, told the U.S.-based nuns' group that he had "recently discussed the doctrinal assessment with Pope Francis, who reaffirmed the findings of the assessment and the program of reform for this conference of major superiors." The doctrinal congregation met April 15 with the LCWR leadership and Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain, who had been assigned by the Vatican to oversee the reform of the pontifically recognized leadership...

“It means strong women. What would you, as a straight white man, know about that?” – Feminist on Twitter

. . . feminism didn’t result in equality between the sexes; it resulted in mass confusion. It tore apart the family and turned men feminine. More than that, hundreds of millions of women have been raised in a society that eschews marriage. The complementary nature of marriage- in which two people work together, as equals, toward the same goal but with an appreciation for the qualities each gender brings to the table- has been obliterated. Life itself has been devalued. Rather than carry peace, it has caused division. Read more: http://patriotupdate.com/articles/feminism-weakening-the-world-since-the-1960s/#ixzz2QEpsn5mw

Could a mail-order bride website become the new Match.com? Fortune magazine reports that websites like AnastasiaDate are trying to shed the shady images of green card goldiggers and abusive American men in search of Stepford slaves. They have re-branded the mail-order bride business 'premium international dating'. AnastasiaDate's traffic grew by 220per cent in 2012, and it now has four million users.

The Russian Orthodox Patriarch has cautioned against the dangers of feminism, denouncing "propaganda" that encourages women to take roles beyond housekeeping and rearing children. "I consider the phenomenon called feminism very dangerous," said the powerful Patriarch Kirill in a speech delivered Tuesday and posted Wednesday on the official Russian Orthodox Church website. "Feminist organisations proclaim a pseudo-freedom of women, which should be manifested outside marriage and family." But he argued: "The man should be focussed on matters outside (of the house), he must work and earn money, but the woman is always directed to the inside, towards her children and...

Four women wanted in alleged sex assault of 19-year-old man in downtown Toronto Toronto police are looking for four female suspects who they say allegedly sexually assaulted a 19-year-old man. The incident happened during the early morning hours of Sunday, March 31, after the man met the four women at a nightclub near King Street and University Avenue. The man left the club with the women who offered to drive him home, according to a written statement from Toronto police. “The complainant was instead driven to a parking lot in the area of Queen Street West and Spadina Avenue where...

It's no secret that marriage has been in decline in America, but most people don't realize how quickly it has been crumbling. The numbers are staggering and the sea change in attitude that has gone along with them would shock previous generations of Americans. "In 1960, two-thirds (68%) of all twenty-somethings were married. In 2008, just 26% were." "To get a sense of how different attitudes were in the 1960s, perhaps this will do it. (M)arried women were asked, ‘In your opinion, do you think it is all right for a woman to have sexual relations before marriage with a...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — For the first time in the event's 183-year history, a woman has led a prayer at the semiannual gathering of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Jean A. Stevens led the morning session's closing prayer Saturday for the more than 100,000 church members gathered in Salt Lake City for the two-day general conference, and the millions more watching via satellite, radio or Internet broadcast. A feminist group launched a campaign earlier this year asking church leaders to let women lead the opening and closing prayer — a first for the conference — as...

Melanne Verveer, Hillary Clinton's longtime confidante and former chief of staff, isn't defending a picture of President Barack Obama's all-male inner circle. To her, it naturally begs a question: "Where are the women?" Verveer, the first ambassador of the State Department office for Global Women’s Issues and now executive director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, also didn't criticize the reaction that followed an early January New York Times story topped with a photograph of Obama facing 10 male top advisers. "Well, you heard the reaction—it reverberated across the country," Verveer said in an interview with Yahoo...

Earlier this week at the PyCon conference (the largest annual gathering for developers using the open-source Python programming language) a woman named Adria Richards overheard a joke between two men sitting behind her during a crowded presentation. Richards was offended and took a picture of the two men who were making jokes. She tweeted, "Not cool. Jokes about forking repo's in a sexual way and "big" dongles. Right behind me #pycon." She also attached a photo of the two people making the jokes.

Angie Schuller Wyatt has issues. The granddaughter of Robert Schuller, the retired televangelist, the former pastor of the Crystal Cathedral, doesn’t like religion, doesn’t like socially conservative men and doesn’t much like her family. She says so in her new, provocatively titled book, “God and Boobs: Balancing Faith and Sexuality,” which, she complains, the small-minded Christian publishing community “refused to publish.” That’s because, the authoress asserts, hers “is the book about God that religious people don’t want you to read.” And why so? Well, says she, “Some argue it’s anti-God because of a cover that displays a woman’s bare back...

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Kay Hymowitz posits the following conclusion regarding the current culture of masculinity in the United States: Not so long ago, the average American man in his 20s had achieved most of the milestones of adulthood: a high-school diploma, financial independence, marriage and children. Today, most men in their 20s hang out in a novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. This “pre-adulthood” has much to recommend it, especially for the college-educated. But it’s time to state what has become obvious to legions of frustrated young women: It doesn’t...

In the past few weeks, militant jihadism has won two major propaganda coups. First, Al Gore, the world's most famous critic of dirty oil, sold his "progressive network" Current Media, LLC, to the oil sheikhs of Qatar for a reported $500 million. Second, Naomi Wolf, renowned author of Vagina: A New Biography and other top feminist works, sold her soul to the same Islamist patriarchy. The price of Naomi's soul (possibly including other appendages) has not yet been named. As one wag put it, Naomi will now be the official "on-air Jihadess" of the biggest Islamist propaganda network on the...

Among the landmarks in the 2013 Women’s History Month is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique—a work that was once hailed as the “the spark that ignited second-wave feminism.” Yet Friedan’s dictum that women be “liberated” actually had limiting consequences. A perspective with 50-year hindsight reveals that, as the foundations of the family began to deteriorate, a rise in single-mother households had repercussions for the health, happiness, and financial well-being of women and children. Today, a steady decline in the rate of marriage and sharp decrease in the proportion of adults who have married...

Fifty years ago, Betty Friedan described the suburban woman as the unhappy housewife. She lacked challenging choices. Her abilities and identities were attached to her kitchen. She could whip up sour-cream-and-artichoke dips in a flash in an up-to-date kitchen with a refrigerator, range and blender in coordinated shades of peach, tan and aquamarine, but you could hear growing laments of discontent as the grrr in the purr became a growl. The "woman of the house" became a frazzled chauffeur carpooling kids to school, baseball games and ballet classes in a station wagon that Detroit stripped of the wood that once...

In an interview with New York's Cardinal Timothy Dolan on Thursday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer worried about the age of the newly elected Pope Francis: "...there was some stunned silence for a second. I think some had expected a younger man, he's 76....When you looked at that image of the new pope standing with some members of the Church hierarchy, visually, Cardinal Dolan, it didn't exactly scream a modern Church." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] At the same time Lauer was worried about the Church not projecting a more "modern" image, NBCNews.com offered...

uring CBS's special coverage of the papal election on Wednesday, correspondent Mark Phillips singled out two dissenters from Catholic tradition in the middle of crowd of hundreds of thousands in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City, mere minutes after the white smoke went out of the Sistine Chapel's chimney, and before Pope Francis emerged onto the balcony over the piazza. The two activists, who wore pink "ordain women" pins, not only sought to change the Catholic Church's teachings on the all-male priesthood, but spotlighted "LGBT issues [and] reproductive health care" – a thinly-veiled reference to abortion and contraception – as...

Anna Maria Hoffman explains why "The Vagina Monologues" degrades women and should not be promoted to raise awareness against sexual violence. And watch out, Tyler O'Neil makes an appearance! Song clips, from Beyoncé's "Run the World (Girls)", are sung by Anna Maria herself! Spread the counter-cultured love! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YUBbr7Naj4

A feminist abortion clinic that hosted a “Women for Obama” event where Obama volunteers helped with groundskeeping in a show of support for reproductive rights is profiled in the current issue of The Socialist, the official publication of the Socialist Party USA, in which a clinic official urges feminist socialists to “influence policy” and quotes a famous socialist writer. The Emma Goldman Clinic in Iowa City, Iowa was the site of a Women for Obama event called “Iowa City Women for Obama Service Project at Emma Goldman Clinic,” which was promoted on the events page of Obama’s official 2012 campaign...

Whoah! What place was Mika Brzezinski talking about? On today's Morning Joe, Brzezinski said that at a place where she used to work, "any woman who did anything or got to the top immediately had something revealed to the press or online or whatever that would bring them down." And whatever happened to solidarity among the sisters? Mika added: I suggest that some might even argue that it's women doing that." We don't know which employer Mika had in mind, but before coming to MSNBC, by far Brzezinski's longest stints were at CBS. View the video here.

Brookline — Brookline resident Colin Stokes started to see a trend when he sat down to watch kids’ movies with his daughter and son. Namely, he focused on the messages from the films about what it meant to be a man. Male protagonists are generally focused on defeating the villain and getting their reward, most commonly a female character. Conversely, female characters are many times underrepresented or shown as damsels in distress.

Wait, so the academy fired Brett Ratner from his gig as Oscars producer for making sexist and crude comments, but then, as Vulture’s Kyle Buchanan smartly points out, allowed host Seth MacFarlane to make “that kind of un-PC humor the cornerstone of his whole act.” BuzzFeed has rounded up the nine most sexist moments of Sunday’s Oscars, including MacFarlane’s sophomoric “boob” song. And New York Magazine transcribed the most offensive barbs, in case you want to relive the horror. …

Never mind looking for a good man, says the author of a hot, new book being released this week – good women are the ones who are hard to find.

This week, the administration that rode to a second term decrying a fictitious war on women by the opposition, opened real fronts on the war on women, perpetuating feminism's worst inconsistencies through its contradictory programs and in the words and deeds of the avatar of these inconsistencies, Hillary Clinton, the "Athena" of low information women voters. Only CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson by her persistence and competence keeps me from burying my head in shame. As the Weekly Standard's Daniel Halper noticed, there was a serious disconnect this week in the administration's approach to women. On the one hand, the president's...

Willingly or not, women play a starring role in the death of the West. Women in Europe and America have made one great big fat suicidal error as a result of modern feminism since the movement’s inception: They have confused work with freedom. This confusion has had catastrophic consequences for all of us because it has fatally infected the core activity of any healthy civilization: the creation and upbringing of children. During World War II there was a chilling slogan stamped in wrought iron above the entrance gates of Auschwitz in Poland where it can still be seen: ARBEIT MACHT...

Why has the American society changed so drastically in the past few decades? How did the feminist movement get started? How did Obama get elected? Why are there so many single parent families? Where is God?