Free Republic

Transgender people will no longer be classified as “mentally ill” in Sweden, the country’s main national health authority has announced, in a decision widely criticized as overdue. Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare, or Socialstyrelsen, announced late on Friday that it would no longer automatically apply the diagnosis “gender dysphoria” to transgender patients. “…more than anything, this change has an important symbolic value,’ Kristina Bränd Persson, the organization’s head, said in a press release. “This is a completely reasonable change. Many divisions and categories are obsolete. For us, the decision is uncontroversial. We tend to follow the changes the...

Hillary Clinton fired back at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Monday after he accused her of playing the "gender card" during her presidential campaign. "Wow," Clinton told HuffPost during a Facebook question-and-answer session. "If that’s what he said, Mitch McConnell really doesn’t get it. There is a gender card being played in this campaign. It’s played every time Republicans vote against giving women equal pay, deny families access to affordable child care or family leave, refuse to let women make decisions about their health or have access to free contraception." McConnell criticized Clinton at an event at the...

I really wish I could take credit for this but I can't. If Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner goes missing, will they put his/her picture on a carton of Half & Half?

Last Friday’s cross-dressing day at a Milwaukee elementary school proved contentious. The school-sponsored event was one of the theme days during school spirit week at Tippecanoe School for the Arts and Humanities. While the themes for each of the other days were sufficiently milquetoast, Gender Bender Day — as it was originally named — raised a few parental eyebrows. Members of the school’s student council chose the transvestite theme, reports WITI-TV. The idea was straightforward: boys were encouraged to dress like girls and girls were encouraged to dress like boys. Deidri Hernandez, the mother a second-grader at Tippecanoe, found out...

<p>MILWAUKEE (WITI) — Students at Tippecanoe School have participated in several different theme days during School Spirit Week, but Friday, May 23rd’s theme of Gender Bender Day caused some controversy.</p> <p>Members of the Student Council decided on day’s theme. It called for boys to dress like girls and girls to dress like boys.</p>

PRETORIA, South Africa (CNN) -- The president of Athletics South Africa has admitted that he lied about gender tests on runner Caster Semenya before her gold-medal win at the World Athletics Championships last month. Caster Semenya celebrates her gold at the world championships in Berlin. The national sports body has always denied that it agreed to the tests before the race in Berlin, Germany -- an event that kicked off international controversy over the 18-year-old Semenya's gender. But after South Africa's Mail & Guardian newspaper printed e-mails on Friday showing that ASA President Leonard Chuene was aware of the tests,...

Last night, I told you about the fake political hate crime here in Colorado at the Denver Democrat Party headquarters involving one “Maurice Schwenkler.” This hammer-wielding person has been charged with felony mischief. This person’s accomplice is still on the loose. Eleven windows were smashed, causing $11,000 in damage. Schwenkler is a far Left nutball and transgender activist who guys by “Ariel Attack”. As part of Schwenkler’s work for the SEIU-tied 527 group Colorado Citizens Coalition, he/she canvassed for a state Democratic candidate, Mollie Collum. Schwenkler has a prior criminal history… On the last day of the 2008 Republican National...

<p>The gold medal favourite in tonight's women's 800m World Athletics Championships race is today facing claims that she is really a man.</p> <p>South African Caster Semenya, 18, is set to race in tonight's final in Berlin after sailing through a semi-final on Monday in her first major international sporting competition.</p>

Country to perform complex gender test on 800-meter runner Semenya BERLIN - South Africa’s track and field federation had been asked to conduct a gender test on an 800-meter runner amid concerns she does not meet the requirements to compete as a woman. Eighteen-year-old Caster Semenya is a favorite in Wednesday’s 800 final at the world championships. The world track and field federation requested the gender test about three weeks ago, after Semenya burst onto the scene by improving her personal bests in the 800 and 1,500 by huge margins. IAAF spokesman Nick Davies said the “extremely complex, difficult” test...

DELRAY BEACH, Fla.—High on prescription drugs and four days without sleep, Michael Berke raced his Harley to the megachurch where he'd found a home. He barged into the church office, cursing loudly and wearing a mesh shirt printed with profanity. In his hands he held a picture of a woman with long, red hair and pouty lips. "This is who I used to be," he said. "And this" — he gestured to his breastless chest, bald head and red goatee — "is who I've become." He was born a man. After a lifetime as a social misfit, he had transformed...

SAUDI ARABIA: WOMAN CHANGES SEX, DREAMS OF DRIVER'S LICENCE (ANSAmed) - RIYADH, AUGUST 21 - A 19-year-old Saudi Arabian woman, Myriam, has undergone a successful sex-change operation in Jeddah and now, with her new name of Khaled, aspires for just one thing: a driving licence. Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where women are banned from driving, added Okaz daily, reporting the news today. "The first idea that came to my mind a few hours before the operation, was to have a driving licence," Myriam/Khaled told the newspaper, adding she was encouraged by her family to have...

As a woman, New Yorker Norah Vincent was used to being stared at by men she passed in her Village neighborhood. It's a way men "assert their dominance," she says. But she often wondered what was behind those stares. So she conducted an experiment. Like John Howard Griffin, who disguised himself as an African-American in the South of 1959 for "Black Like Me," and Gregory Peck playing a writer posing as a Jew to investigate anti-Semitism in the Oscar-winning "Gentleman's Agreement," Vincent went undercover. With makeup, workouts, wardrobe and a voice coach, she became a man and plunged into a...