Free Republic

Governor Deval Patrick canceled at the last minute a speech he was scheduled to give before a little-known but prestigious men’s group, saying the invitation was accepted before he knew of its policy toward women. Patrick withdrew from the speech before the 126-year-old Clover Club about two hours before a dinner was scheduled to begin at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel on Saturday, according to event organizers.

How Americans vote is strongly linked to their religious identities, but it is not an independent influence that transcends race, socio-economic class and gender... Thomas A. Hirschl, Cornell professor of development sociology and first author... James Booth, Cornell professor of biological statistics and computational biology, and Leland Glenna, a sociologist at Pennsylvania State University (who has a master's degree from Harvard Divinity School) -- found, for example, that "white support for Republicans is fractured by religious tradition, biblical authority, social class and gender," while black support for Democrats is equally strong across religious tradition, biblical authority, social class and gender,...

<p>According to McClatchy news, in the Democrat's 2006 campaign book, in the "integrity" section, the Democratic leadership vowed that legislation would be posted online for 24 hours before consideration of the final versions of any bill. That promise coupled with their president's claims that he'd post all bills online for five whole days -- that's 120 hours in case anyone's counting -- not to mention his now hoary claim that he'd put all debates on C-Span so that we the people could keep tabs on what Congress is doing makes for a facade of a deep interest in government transparency. And facade it has turned out to be for all these promises have been completely forgotten now that Democrats have taken up the reins of power.</p>

We couldn't possibly get this waste of prime Manhattan real estate shoved to the bottom of the Atlantic quickly enough. The United Nations has to be the most God-awful collection of human beings outside of Cave Osama. In case you weren't sure, human gender is "changeable over time and contexts," sex slaves must not be "stigmatized" for their work, and it's important to recognize the role of "transgender and intersex individuals as stakeholders" in counterterrorism policy. This sick little group of people whose few joys in life are largely due to the protection and largesse of the United States spends...

Progressive Lamentations Allie Winegar Duzett, October 20, 2009 Is the government’s proper role to take care of gender inequality? Speakers believed so at the October 19, 2009 Shriver Report conference, A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything. The event, which is sponsored by the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress (CAP), featured multiple panels discussing the role of government in women’s lives. Ellen Bravo, moderator of the panel The Government’s Role in Supporting Today’s Families and coordinator of the Families Values at Work Consortium, announced that the government has had far more roles than just governing: indeed, Ellen stated, it is part...

CNSNews.com) – A counter-terrorism report that has been presented to the United Nations General Assembly would bend the U.N.’s definition of gender. The report, written by UN Special Rapporteur Martin Scheinin, is titled “Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms While Countering Terrorism.” While the main focus of the document is gender-based issues that arise from counter-terrorism efforts, the report’s definition of gender that has generated opposition. “While many of the measures discussed in the report relate to the human rights of women,” Scheinin wrote in his report summary, “gender is not synonymous with women, and, instead, encompasses the social...

In the next 20 years, it's estimated that 30 million Chinese men won't be able to find wives. For mothers and fathers who visit the "People's Park" every weekend there's a lot more to it than just finding love for their kids. There's a tradition in China of the young looking after the old. The government hasn't paid pensions and provided health care for most Chinese. So many parents' social security is on the line.

Population Controls, Including Abortion, Spark Gender Imbalance in China; 30 Million More Men Expected in 15 Years BEIJING — China will have 30 million more men of marriageable age than women in less than 15 years as a gender imbalance resulting from the country's tough one-child policy becomes more pronounced, state media reported Friday. The tens of millions of men who will not be able to find a wife could also lead to social instability problems, the China Daily said in a front-page report. China imposed strict population controls in the 1970s to limit growth of its huge population, but...

"US-based toy retailer Toys"R"Us has been reprimanded for gender discrimination following a complaint filed by a group of Swedish sixth graders about the store’s 2008 Christmas catalogue. Last winter, a sixth grade class at Gustavslund school in Växjö in south central Sweden reported Toys"R"Us to the Reklamombudsmannen (Ro), a self-regulatory agency which polices marketing and advertising communications in Sweden to ensure they are in line with guidelines set out by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). According to the youngsters, the Toys"R"Us Christmas catalogue featured “outdated gender roles because boys and girls were shown playing with different types of toys,...

Perhaps you've heard the tragic story of David Reimer.  Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in 1966, David was the victim of a botched circumcision that left his penis charred beyond surgical repair.  His parents Ron and Janet, no doubt beside themselves, were confused about the best way to proceed.  Then, one day, they saw a man named Dr. John Money on television. Money was talking about his theory of "gender neutrality," which states that "gender identity" is learned rather than innate.  The idea was that the sexes were the same except for the superficial physical differences; this implies that if...

BOCA RATON - If a battle of the sexes is taking place on college campuses, women are the clear winners. In Florida and around the country, women are graduating from college in record numbers, surpassing men in almost every degree category. "I think that women are probably more mature as college students," said Sharron Ronco, associate provost at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, where women received 64 percent of all degrees in 2008. "They tend to come in with higher high school GPAs, and they tend to achieve better academically."

The other day CTV reported the astonishing statistic that in the whole of Canada there are just 33 sperm donors. That seems awfully low for a nation of 30 million people. Three sperm donors per province plus one per territory? Surely we can do better than that. All hands on deck!

The controversy over South African athlete Caster Semenya's gender has given the public a view into the complexities of gender. At first blush, the issue should be fairly straightforward: a person is either a male (with an X and a Y chromosome) or a female (with two X chromosomes). But the reality is that a number of conditions can blur the gender line. After her 800-meter final on August 19 at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin, the International Association of Athletics Federations announced that they had asked Semenya to undergo tests to verify that she was female, with IAAF...

The BBC has seen the birth certificate of South African athlete Caster Semenya, which states that the new 800m world champion is female. Ms Semanya, 18, has been told to take a gender test after several remarkable improvements in recent performances.

The IAAF has given new meaning to the term "governing body." The organization, which oversees track and field internationally, has asked the South African athletics federation to conduct a gender verification exam on the nation's running sensation, Caster Semenya, who Wednesday won the 800-meter event at the World Championships in Berlin. Semenya finished in 1 minute, 55.45 seconds, the best time in the world this year. Behind her were Janeth Jepkosgei of Kenya (1:57.90) and Jennifer Meadows of Great Britain (1:57.93). Results won't be available for several weeks, apparently because gender verification has become much more intricate than it was...

The chart above shows the estimated number of new cancer cases in 2008 for gender-specific cancers, using data from the American Cancer Society. For men most of the cases were for prostate cancer, and for women it was mostly new cases of breast cancer, but also cervical and ovarian cancer. The ratio of new gender-specific cancers in 2008 was 1.32 new female cases of cancer for every one male case. What about government funding for gender-specific cancers? The National Institutes of Health (NIH) estimate that they will spend $4,446,000,000 in 2009 for female-specific cancers (breast cancer, cervical cancer, ovarian cancer,...

(CNSNews.com) – The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee’s health care legislation will give the Health and Human Services secretary the authority to develop “standards of measuring gender” -- as opposed to using the traditional "male" and "female" categories -- in a database of all who apply or participate in government-run or government-supported health care plans.

There's been a lot of panic recently over the current state and uncertain future of the American male, most often expressed by the formerly stoical American male. Obviously, the recession - unofficially and unfortunately dubbed the "he-cession" - is the main cause of worry, with 80% of job losses in the last seven months hitting men. (It's estimated that 28 million men around the world will be unemployed by the end of the year.) But there's something else going on, a sort of free-floating anxiety about not just the current utility of men but what substantial role, if any, they...

In high school, music was Bill Zircher’s thing, mostly drums. He studied electrical engineering in college. In 1994 he married a woman he met in a band. The couple had a daughter, and Zircher was thrilled to be a father. Dana Zircher still plays the drums, is still a self-described high-tech nerd, and still a parent. She still works as a software design engineer for Microsoft in Beverly, though she now uses the ladies’ room instead of the men’s. As part of an aggressive grass-roots campaign, Zircher will testify today at a State House hearing in favor of civil rights...

A couple of Swedish parents have stirred up debate in the country by refusing to reveal whether their two-and-a-half-year-old child is a boy or a girl. Tax agency ready for June 1st ID card rush (29 May 09) Sweden rules 'gender-based' abortion legal (12 May 09) Swedish gays made to wait for church wedding (3 May 09) Pop’s parents [see footnote], both 24, made a decision when their baby was born to keep Pop’s sex a secret. Aside from a select few – those who have changed the child’s diaper – nobody knows Pop’s gender; if anyone enquires, Pop’s parents...

The Catholic Church makes men . . . Of such she may also someday make soldiers. — Hilaire Belloc It is a source of no small irony that, even as radical feminists within and without the Church have railed for two generations against patriarchy and phallocentrism, it can be quite plausibly said that the post-conciliar Church in this country has, for all intents and purposes, been run by women. Consider a Sunday in the life of a typical American parish. Father Reilly, once his mother's darling, says Mass before a congregation disproportionately representative of widows (both the traditional and the...

Democrats have figured out that race and gender matter. The GOP puts their heads in the sand and tries to pretend that they don't. Politically, the GOP needs a new strategy if they don't want to become un-viable

it's a boy! Or a girl! A group of New York moms has filed suit against the makers of a "99.9-percent accurate" baby-gender test, claiming the results they got were 100 percent wrong. The product was advertised as "infallibly accurate in foretelling the gender of a healthy baby," and its Web site said the "prediction of your baby's gender is unmistakably correct or we will double your money back." The Baby Gender Mentor is touted as allowing women as little as five weeks pregnant to tell if they're expecting a boy or a girl, the suit says. That's nine to...

NORTH AMERICANS of my generation grew up with the 1970s children’s record Free to Be...You and Me, on which Rosey Grier, an immense former football star, sang ‘It’s Alright to Cry’. The message: girls could be tough, and boys were allowed not to be. For almost 40 years, that era’s Western feminist critique of rigid sex-role stereotyping has prevailed. In many ways, it has eroded or even eliminated the kind of arbitrary constraints that turned peaceable boys into aggressive men and stuck ambitious girls in low-paying jobs. Feminists understandably have often shied away from scientific evidence that challenges this critique...

June 6th at precisely 1:45AM will go down in history as one of the most important points in the Obama Presidency. It is the moment that Barack Obama signed an executive order. Some are saying it is the most important piece of legislation since the "Emancipation Proclamation" of 1863 in which Abraham Lincoln, with the stroke of a pen freed the slaves. In the same way, Barack Obama will forever be known as the President who gave our country the "Proclamation of Gender Equity", and in so doing guaranteed Americans would once and for all be truly equal. Paving the...

A lot of controversy has been generated by Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s statement “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.” In an effort to repair the damage, President Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said, “Well, I think if you look at the context of the longer speech that she makes, I don’t — I think what she says is very much common sense in terms of different experiences that different people have.”

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” — Judge Sonia Sotomayor, in her Judge Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural Diversity Lecture at the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law in 2001 The above assertion and the rest of a remarkable speech to a Hispanic group by Sotomayor — widely touted as a possible Obama nominee to the Supreme Court — has drawn very little attention in the mainstream media since...

As transgender activists protested outside the American Psychiatric Association (APA) meeting, speakers at the meeting were presenting on the same topic: gender identity disorder (GID). Some of their words would add clinical weight to the political slogans. Some of the speakers are activists themselves, including Rebecca Allison, MD, cardiologist who is transgender, widely published author Sarah Hoffman, whose son is gender variant, and Hewlett-Packard engineer Kelley Winters, PhD, founder of GID Reform Advocates. Winters1 has called on the APA to use the DSM-V revision to affirm that “in the absence of dysphoria, gender identity and expression that vary from assigned...

Now that Ben has had his final day at a west Omaha Catholic school, the 8-year-old gets to give away the last of his boy clothes — his school uniform — and live full time as the person inside: Katie

Congratulations to the NCAA for making beach volleyball an official collegiate sport — for women. Just what we need: another sport that is not sponsored by high schools and is played largely by people who have access to, oh, I don't know, a beach. By the way, the new sport is being called "sand volleyball," because, as the NCAA explains it, not all schools have a beach. Did you already figure out why they added the sport? Here's a hint: Title IX.

IN THE CUTTHROAT world of business, companies are always looking for ways to increase their profits. They outsource to Bangalore. They endlessly tweak their "brands." Some even try to shed their least desirable customers. Now, a growing number of consultants and corporate leaders swear by a new strategy to boost the bottom line, one that departs from the standard bag of tricks: put more women in charge.

<p>Why no women's bracket? asks Christine Brennan of USA Today.</p>

A new study connects young adults' use of video games to poorer relationships with friends and family – and the student co-author expresses disappointment at his own findings. Brigham Young University undergrad Alex Jensen and his faculty mentor, Laura Walker, publish their results Jan. 23 in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. The research is based on information collected from 813 college students around the country. As the amount of time playing video games went up, the quality of relationships with peers and parents went down. "It may be that young adults remove themselves from important social settings to play...

Butcher, baker, candlestick maker -- all noble professions, indeed. Stay-at-home Mom? Well, get a real job. At least, that's what one Australian mom was told when she went to buy a cell phone. Lyndal Fair, a thirty-six-year-old mother of three, wanted to purchase a mobile phone, presumably to keep track of her brood, to call their schools and doctors and to be available in an emergency. Not good enough, said Vodafone -- they don't sell phones to moms. In fact, the store employees suggested she get her husband to purchase the phone under his name for her. Sound familiar? "I...

There is an enormous and growing body of research, encompassing the fields of biochemistry, neurobiology, physiology and psychology, which all point to a clear conclusion: that there are profound differences between men and women. These go well beyond the obvious physical appearances and reproductive differences; men and women differ at many levels, and also approach relationships differently. As such, this document rests upon, and makes the case for, these four foundational principles: 1. Gender differences exist; they are a fundamental reality of our biology and impact our psychology. Our maleness and femaleness is a key aspect to our personhood. 2....

The African American Slide: Colin Powell and Beyond I will refer the reader back to the May 16, 2008 post I made (In America, Race Trumps Gender and Class Trumps Race). Here was my close: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------Barack has peaked in popularity and will never be as popular as he was two or three months ago. The primary reason for this occurrence will be the hard lesson Hillary learned in her primary race: the bottom line in America is that race trumps gender. Unfortunately for Barack's enablers on the left, the great progress we've made in this country (unattained anywhere else, I...

The reaction to Governor Sarah Palin’s selection by Senator John McCain has been nothing short of epic. From the first moment people saw and heard her, most either hated her or loved her. What made her instantaneously extraordinary to both sides of the political spectrum? It has to be more than the media-driven issues. This election has turned into an unspoken referendum on human nature and the idea of “gender neutrality,” the poster child for the left taught to the past several generations as something real, instead of the imaginary nonsense it is. Men and women are different – not...

The emphasis on identity has always been, for most of the left, a matter of political expedience rather than true belief. The proof for that is easily seen in the left's treatment of Sarah Palin, Clarence Thomas, Michael Steele, etc. It is also easily seen in their unconcerned and defensive reaction to Bill Clinton's serial philandering. For the left, the identity issue is only a means to a leftist end, and the identity itself only matters if the holder of that identity also adheres to the left's orthodoxy. Otherwise, he or she is a traitor, a phony, an Uncle...

Just when you thought that legislative, judicial, law-enforcement, media, and reproductive biases in favor of women were the epitome of double standards, there is new evidence that “life control” is increasingly shifting to the female domain: in four years, women also will rule men financially. Remember this the next time the waiter brings the check to your table, and your woman insists that YOU pay it — or worse, you acquiesce. By 2010, women will own all the power points of society. According to a new study by Allianz, a mammoth-sized financial-services firm, women in that year will control 60%...

Members of the Red Hat Society get a little funk in their trunk. Drawing comparisons to gender-equity movements like Title IX and ERA, white girls are now demanding that society smash the glass mirrored-ball ceiling that has kept them from playing that funky music. White girls are also demanding the right to lay down the boogie on a equal status as white boys. Dominique Lativia, a gender funk studies professor at Penn State, said the anti-female bias that exists in the male-dominated funk industry is reinforced by negative stereotypes of non-funky females and a habitual need for funds to support...

Is Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain’s campaign strategy “demeaning to women?” Yes, according to CBS’s Bob Schieffer, because the McCain camp is selective about when and where GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin makes media appearances Schieffer, the host of CBS’s Sunday morning public affairs program, “Face the Nation,” appeared at Politics & Prose, a bookstore in Washington, D.C. on September 15 to promote his newest book, “Bob Schieffer’s America.” Schieffer, who is scheduled to moderate the last presidential debate between Obama and McCain, on October 15th, called it the McCain campaign’s “obligation” to make Alaska Gov. Palin available to...

An unsettling fact about lung cancer is that not even clean living can guarantee a free pass. A significant proportion of cases — 10 to 15 percent — occur in people who never smoked, and just in the United States, 16,000 to 24,000 a year die. What causes the disease in nonsmokers is not known, though researchers suspect genetic susceptibility combined with exposure to cancer-causing substances like asbestos, radon, certain solvents and other people’s tobacco smoke. A huge new study conducted in Europe, North America and Asia, based on 2.4 million nonsmokers who had lung cancer, provides new information about...

When men and women take personality tests, some of the old Mars-Venus stereotypes keep reappearing. On average, women are more cooperative, nurturing, cautious and emotionally responsive. Men tend to be more competitive, assertive, reckless and emotionally flat. Clear differences appear in early childhood and never disappear. What’s not clear is the origin of these differences. Evolutionary psychologists contend that these are innate traits inherited from ancient hunters and gatherers. Another school of psychologists asserts that both sexes’ personalities have been shaped by traditional social roles, and that personality differences will shrink as women spend less time nurturing children and more...

Teaching Law, Testing Ideas, Obama Stood Slightly Apart

Female transsexuals may have their genes to blame for feeling like they belong to the wrong sex. Scientists identified a specific gene variant in female-to-male transsexuals that meant they had been exposed to higher levels of sex hormones during their early development. Almost half the female-to-male transsexuals in the study carried the gene variant.

If you believe that girls fare significantly worse on math than boys in high-school tests, you would have been right — twenty years ago. Thanks to a concerted effort by parents and schools to get more girls in advanced math classes, the test-score disparity has completely disappeared, according to the National Science Foundation:

When it comes to memory it is clear that men and women are simply not on the same wavelength. While men may fail to match a woman's ability to remember the date of an anniversary, they are better at storing a seemingly endless cache of facts and figures. Scientists believe they have now uncovered the reason for this difference between the sexes – they make the memories in different ways.

Jack and Jill’ aren’t allowed to live together at the University of Kansas yet, but more and more school are allowing members of the opposite sex to live together . Most colleges didn’t allow students of different genders to live in the same dormitory 40 years ago. After gender-neutral buildings were opened, universities began to allow members of the opposite sex to live on the same floor. Now, there’s a new gender-based issue to debate in student housing. “We’re at the next phase in the evolution,” Jeffrey Chang, co-founder of the National Student Genderblind Campaign, said. “Why can’t men and...

MADRID (AFP) - Women have historically suffered discrimination in the name of religion, and the world's great faiths must do more to encourage gender equality, theologians told a seminar at a Saudi-organised conference Thursday. "Women have been forgotten and marginalised in religions," Juan Jose Tamayo, director of theology at Madrid's Juan Carlos III university, told a roundtable on the second day of the World Conference of Dialogue in Madrid, aimed at bringing the great monotheistic faiths closer together. "They are organised hierarchically and patriarchically, excluding women in all fields of knowledge and religious matters." Now, at the start of the...

Sacha Millstone is nobody's sweetie. The Democratic insider will stand up at August's national convention and cast her vote for the candidate who suspended her bid on Saturday. And then Millstone will quit the party with which she is falling bitterly out of line. "This isn't sour grapes. This is about the best candidate losing the nomination because she's a woman. It's the most blatant example of sexism in our society. This is about the party breaking my trust, women's trust. And that can't be fixed," she says. Millstone hails the day in 2007 when Hillary Clinton announced she was...