Bulletin Board v183

Boys ‘worse at school due to stereotypes’ — Stereotypes about boys being intellectually inferior to girls affect children during the first years of primary school and prevent them fulfilling their potential, researchers found. Teachers should assure boys that they are just as academic as girls and avoid doing anything which could make them feel inferior such as splitting classes by gender, they said. In the first stage of the study researchers presented 238 boys and girls aged four to 10 with a range of scenarios related to behaviour or performance, such as “this child really wants to learn and do well at school”.

Circumcision DOES reduce sexual pleasure by making manhood less sensitive — Men who are circumcised are in for some bad news – it puts them at a disadvantage in the bedroom, according to experts. A study found those who’ve had their foreskin removed as children or adults experience less intense sexual pleasure and orgasm than their peers. ‘We’re not saying less sexual activity or satisfaction, but sensitivity,’ senior author Dr Piet Hoebeke, from Ghent University Hospital, said. The practice is common in the U.S, with three-quarters of men having the procedure for non-religious reasons.

Former area Boy Scout tells his story of abuse — The Boy Scouts of America are under heavy fire these days: first, for the group’s stance against membership by gays, and second, for the so-called perversion files. A judge in December ordered the release of tens of thousands of pages detailing decades of alleged sexual abuse by men inside the organization against Scouts in their care. Instead of turning these tips over to law enforcement for investigation, the Boy Scouts of America chose to keep them in private files. 

Franciscan Brother Who Sexually Abused Boy in Inver Grove Heights Commits Suicide — A Franciscan brother who committed suicide on Jan. 26 in the midst of wide-ranging sexual abuse allegations also abused a Minnesotan boy while he was teaching catechism in the 1970s at St. Patrick’s Church in Inver Grove Heights. Brother Stephen Baker, 62, was found dead in a Hollidaysburg, Penn., monastery as a result of a self-inflicted knife wound to the heart, the Associated Press reported. Douglas Larson, 49, of St. Cloud, Minn., told a Youngstown, Ohio, television station that he felt closure when he heard about the suicide and that he felt his name should be public because he had done nothing wrong.

Police: Woman employed at school raped 14-year-old boy — A woman who allegedly had sex with a 14-year-old friend of a relative over 10 months last year has been charged with 10 counts of third-degree rape, Delaware State Police said Thursday. Katheryn L. Carmean, 35, now of Berlin, Md., but formerly of the Laurel area, also faces charges of continuous sexual abuse of a child and endangering the welfare of a child, Master Cpl. Gary Fournier said.

Sandusky Scandal: Joe Paterno’s Family Issues Report, Challenging Louis Freeh’s Findings — A report commissioned by Joe Paterno’s family says the late coach did nothing wrong in his handling of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal and portrays Paterno as the victim of a “rush to injustice” created by former FBI director Louis Freeh’s investigation of the case for Penn State. The family’s critique, released Sunday, argues that the findings of the Freeh report published last July were unsupported by the facts. Former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, one of the experts assembled by the family’s lawyer to review Freeh’s report last year to Penn State, called the document fundamentally flawed and incomplete.

Teen sues Boy Scouts, alleging abuse at Pennsylvania camp — A young man who says he was sexually abused at a Boy Scout camp in northeastern Pennsylvania by a supervisor who later committed suicide as he was about to go on trial filed a lawsuit against the national Scouting organization and its local affiliate Friday. The plaintiff, now 18, said he was sexually assaulted by Gregory Ritter, a 44-year-old first-aid supervisor at Camp Trexler in the Poconos — and the Boy Scouts’ negligence allowed it to happen.

When ‘feminism’ becomes sexism — Although I suffer the cultural drawbacks of being born and raised as an Australian male (i.e. to be ‘masculine’), I empathise with Kali Goldstone’s frustrations at the disadvantageous treatment of women in many organisations, to the detriment of both (On Line Opinion February 11, 2013). It is unfortunate, however, that she often relies on and quotes poor science. Here are some more research-based findings. There are observable differences in the respective structures of male and female brains in some areas (e.g. part of the hypothalamus) and in some brain activities (e.g. women’s brains show a 28-day cycle of certain activities throughout their lives, not observed in men’s brains).