MENZ Issues: news and discussion about New Zealand men, fathers, family law, divorce, courts, protests, gender politics, and male health.

LONDON: Teenagers and young men should keep their laptops off their laps because they could damage fertility, an expert says.

Laptops, which reach high internal operating temperatures, can heat up the scrotum which could affect the quality and quantity of men’s sperm.

“The increase in scrotal temperature is significant enough to cause changes in sperm parameters,” said Dr Yefim Sheynkin, an associate professor of urology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, on Thursday.

“It is very difficult to predict how long the computer can be used safely,” he told Reuters. “It may not be at all, if the testicular temperature goes up high within a very short period of time.”

Adolescents and young men who use laptops several times a day over many years face the greatest risk. Sheynkin fears that if laptop use is not curtailed, in 15-20 years when they want to start a family the men could face problems.

“Long-term use may have a detrimental effect on their reproductive health,” he said.

Sheynkin and his team studied the impact of using a laptop on 29 healthy volunteers between the age of 21-35 by measuring scrotal temperature before and after they used a computer on their lap.

The research is reported in the journal Human Reproduction.

09 December 2004

An All Black who tried dragging his pregnant wife back to their home at night has won the right to keep his name secret - provided he keeps out of trouble until his next court appearance.

Yesterday, the player appeared in the Waitakere Family Violence Court - a special pilot court being trialled in west Auckland - and pleaded guilty to assaulting his wife.

It is understood that the only other person to get permanent name suppression in the Waitakere court in recent years for a similar sort of case had been another man who had played for the All Blacks.

Judge Philip Recordon said the player had assaulted his wife, who was five months pregnant at the time, on the night of October 23.

It happened after “some issues” at the couple’s west Auckland home, when the player’s wife walked off lightly dressed intending to go to her mother’s house.

To stop her from walking, the player grabbed her and tried pushing her back to the house.

There was a struggle and he then tried dragging her home.

Judge Recordon said if the couple completed a counselling course, he would discharge the man without conviction.

He remanded him on bail to reappear in February.

A lawyer for the Sunday Star-Times newspaper, Robert Stewart, argued in court for the suppression order to be lifted.

Mr Stewart argued that there was no special circumstances in the case to warrant the suppression.

But Judge Recordon said interim name suppression would continue and was likely to be permanent.

He said that the offending was at the lower end of the scale.

The main consideration was the player’s wife and child.

“I am not so concerned about (the player) but his wife and children…to this couple the non publication order is not going to affect anyone outside this family.”

But in court, police prosecutor Sergeant Peter Syddall expressed concerns about any suppression order.

In seven years, he had not heard of any other case where name suppression had been given after a guilty plea was entered except for another man who was a former All Black.

“I am worried about the message that the court may be sending,” he said.

Judge Recordon said the man, who has no former convictions, could be seen as a current All Black and was “a rugby player of prominence”.

He hoped the man continued with his voluntary work in schools and rugby clubs.

“You maybe in time can use this experience as some sort of message to people you speak with.”

Children involved with Child, Youth and Family (CYF) are 15 times more likely to commit suicide than other New Zealand children, according to studies.

Between 1994 and 1999 almost half of the 129 children under the age of 17 who killed themselves were in contact with CYF. But the new programme changed all that.

Towards Well-Being, launched in 2002 with the Wellington School of Medicine, has reduced the number of suicides among CYF youths from 15 in the two years before the programme started, to just six in the two years since it began.

And while the number of admissions to hospital for “deliberate self-harm” has increased by 25 per cent for non-CYF young people since 2002, it has stayed the same among CYF young people.

CYF chief social worker Craig Smith said the results are encouraging.

In a letter to her daughter, published in Cosmopolitan in 1978, feminist Betty Friedan said: “I hope there will come a day when you, daughter [of] mine … can truly afford to say ‘I’m not a feminist. I’m a person’ - and a day not too far away … when I can stop fighting for women and get on to other matters that interest me now.”

Many young women might say that day has arrived…

There is a new feminism afoot for many young women. One that does not depend upon the paraphernalia of a passe feminism. One that says let’s be truly adventurous and abolish separate bodies devoted to women because they only perpetuate an otherness about women and the issues that affect them. That women are mainstream hardly needs saying.

Not everything labelled as progressive is, or remains, a sign of progress. Indeed, so-called progressive movements founded on fine notions of freedom and choice have a nasty tendency to transmute into the dictatorial and doctrinaire. Feminism, or at least the version that feminists such as Summers cling to, is case in point. They talk about liberating women but continue to deride or ignore women who choose to stay at home and care for children. Some choices, it seems, are not as valid as others.

Feminism’s choice deficit has always been its greatest flaw. Perpetuating that flaw via government-sponsored offices is hardly progress. New Zealand’s Ministry of Women’s Affairs plays the role of Big Sister, overseeing something called gender implications statements, required for all papers submitted to the Social Development Committee of Helen Clark’s Labour cabinet. The gender analysis undertaken in these Orwellian statements is all about entrenching a feminist ideology, not objective policy making based upon impartial research of women’s needs and wants.

As investigations continue into three separate homicides, anti-violence groups are warning people to be more careful around the holiday period.

The National Network for Stopping Violence Services says the holiday period is a difficult time and people should ask for help if they need it.

Network manager Brian Gardner says there are steps which can be taken to reduce the risks of domestic violence.

He says people should think about budgeting and preparing for situations where there are family pressures and alcohol.

Mr Gardner says the next three months are a dangerous time for some couples as holiday pressures are sometimes like throwing a log on the fire.

Christchurch police Detective Inspector Malcolm Johnston, an officer for 25 years, said yesterday witness intimidation happened in most violent-crime cases, and while the Noble/Samson situation was extreme, intimidation was not unusual.

“It is very, very (common) and I know other staff have experienced similar levels. Intimidation can be as little as chocolates and flowers and a promise to never do it again, and that is why there is a low conviction rate for serious domestic violence.”

Johnston said comments from “ill-informed” lawyers that the low conviction rate for violent offences in Christchurch, including domestic violence, was the result of lax police investigation were not correct.

“That couldn’t be further from the truth. There is a huge commitment to these investigations and it is my experience that the low conviction rate for domestic violence rests entirely on intimidation and threats.”

Manukau homes with a history of domestic violence will receive a Christmas card and a visit from police in a bid to prevent abuse during the festive season.

Operation Merry Family Christmas will target up to 125 households throughout Otara, Otahuhu, Mangere, Papatoetoe, Howick and Pakuranga that police have been called to in the past year.

Police say analysis of priority one jobs in Counties Manukau’s east and western areas reveals almost half the workload is attributed to domestic violence.

Western area Senior Sergeant Cornelius Kluessein and Eastern Senior Sergeant Lynne Mathieson say the first phase of the operation will involve a bulk mailout to the identified families.

“The letter will tell them that we care they have been repeat victims. We want them to know we’ll be keeping a close watch to make sure the entire household has a great Christmas without the threat of domestic violence spoiling the season, especially for the kids,” says Mr Kluessein.

MEN’S CONVOY 2005 : (Child Support,Family Law……… ) Men don’t like this!

Just a reminder to all New Zealand - Following on from the success of MEN’S CONVOY 2004 we’re on the road again in 2005!

Starting Auckland and Invercargill : Sunday 6 March 2005

Converging on Parliament Buildings Wellington : Friday 11 March 2005

Co-Ordinator North Island - Kerry Bevin (09) 475-5747
Co-Ordinator South Island - Jim Nicolle (04) 586-0880

email : mensconvoy@slingshot.co.nz

Bigger, Better and Bolder than 2004!!!!

Rumored that Batman and Robin will be making an appearance!

Public events being organised at major stop points in route.

2005 is an election year - Join the Convoy and help mobilise the men for real political reform.

Book your dairies now and watch MENZ Issues for more details.

by James Hickey

Aspects of human behaviour, often has parallels within the animal world.

Individual members of a dingo pack when they are hunting down their prey work as a team, taking it in turns to chase the prey until it is finally cornered. Each individual member then takes it in turn nipping at the prey, slowly wearing it down until it is so exhausted it can nolonger defend itself, before one darts in for the kill. Even lions surrender to their kill to superior numbers of scavenging hyenas

“Sugar and spice and all things” well that’s what we’d like to think that little girls are made of. Until recently very little research had been conducted into the bullying techniques of schoolgirls. According to researchers, little girls today are not just horrid, they are the most sophisticated and manipulative bullies of all.

Bullying by schoolgirls was found to be often psychological, sometimes verbal. Verbal behaviors that were identified as bullying included teasing, hassling, name-calling, and criticizing others’ appearances. The girls perceived the following indirect aggressive behaviors as bullying behaviors: spreading rumors, writing nasty notes, telling bad/false stories, saying bad things behind others’ backs, gossiping, shutting others out of the group, and deliberately not inviting others to parties.

by Dr Felicity Goodyear-Smith

The methodology of the study reported by Fanslow and Robinson (Violence against women in New Zealand: prevalence and health consequences, New Zealand Medical Journal, 2004, 117:1206) is sound. They used a rigorous randomly selected population-based cluster-sampling with interviews in Mandarin or Cantonese (2%) as well as in English. Their sample size was 2855 with an overall 66.9% response rate which is acceptable although not high. Elizabeth Robinson is a well-qualified biostatistician and the statistical analysis appears to be accurate.

My concern with the study is not how it was conducted but what was studied and how the results were reported. This was yet another study that looked only at intimate partner violence against women by male partners. Evidence indicates that men and women physically abuse their partners in similar percentages. [1] The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development longitudinal cohort study found that within partnerships, women actually used more physical violence than men. [2] (more…)